SpeedofLite 

PDF attached below for easier reading.

Portlandjim

Bruce Gordon was a friend of mine from back when he helped fund the Eisentraut production attempt in Oakland. After that blew up, Bruce moved to Eugene Oregon and started building custom frames under his name. Eugene is about 100 miles south of Portland, we both regularly visited each other for riding and socializing. We shared a booth showing off our bike frames at the New York Bicycle and Toy show each year, which was great fun. During my frame building period, I realized that marketing was not my strong point. I had a brilliant marketing friend, John Kirkpatrick, who helped me with this. I also was friends with Mike Sinyard, who started Specialized Bicycle in 1974, I was one his first customers. After I had been building frames for about 10 years, I came to the conclusion that my bicycle ideas could be realized fully only by working within a company that had 1st class marketing skills. I saw that Specialized would the ideal way for the greatest number of riders to enjoy riding bikes with my designs. So I closed up Merz Mfg. and moved to San Jose to work for Mike. Bruce Gordon instantly thought I was the enemy, saying I had "sold out". He refused to face up to his lack of marketing and people skills. Over the years, he insulted me to my face every time I saw him at a bike show or anywhere else. His stunts at these bike shows got noticed, but more as embarrassment than anything positive. Eventually, Bruce alienated almost everyone in the bicycle industry. Towards the end, he was very bitter, even insulting his own customers. I tried to help him, but he would not listen to advise. His Taiwan made bicycle that he designed and tried to sell was a self inflicted disaster. It was one bump on his path to closing his shop. We were on OK terms during his last years, I purchased some of his shop dregs, to help him avoid having to put into the dumpster. When I was leaving, he admitted that I had chosen the correct path in working with Mike Sinyard. A sad ending for Bruce. He was very artistic, and a smart guy. But his ironic "humor" turned into cynicism, and that took over his world view.

Atlas Shrugged

Sad story. Many people treat frame building like a cult assigning almost mythical status to what is a relatively homogeneous product. Reynolds or Columbus tubing and lugs assembled in nearly identical fashion yet described in ethereal terms because the shops' name ends in a vowel. As you mention marketing takes priority to maintain viability in this space because of the lack of tangible differentiators between bikes. This is not meant to denigrate the artistry and dedication to doing this thing perfectly by people such as yourself however calling people a sellout because you brought your talent and knowledge to a place where it can help the bulk of cyclists is wrong, as is calling out companies or individuals who introduce modern technologies into what was a stagnant industry.

That said truly handmade unique frames should be appreciated as functional art and priced as such.

Portlandjim

Thanks for your comments. Jim

steelbikeguy

I'd seen that series of robot photos on Bruce's web site in the past and thought them to be pretty funny.
Anyone know whose idea they were?? Was it just Bruce bemoaning the automation of frame building?

It's unfortunate that Bruce never found success, despite producing some highly respected frames. Adventure Cycling did a couple of articles about him. The 2013 article does get into his discontent.















Steve in Peoria

RCMoeur 

Regrettably, this seems to be the trajectory of a few high-profile people in the bicycle community, and not just in framebuilding. In fact, it tracks closely with the history of one of the writers of one of the featured Bicycle Guide profiles - someone whose discontent with certain cycling trends (and politics he doesn't agree with) has resulted in a diminished presence due to a trail of blown-up bridges.

And this behavior isn't limited to cycling, of course. I was active in the national historic US 66 community for about 25 years, having worked on highway signing as part of my career. But a disagreement on one issue resulted in former friends slinging crude insults, and others trying to retaliate against anyone who might admit to still being friendly with me. In order to try to not fall into that trap of bitterness, I simply walked away from all of 66 about 4 years ago, and I doubt I'll be involved any time in the foreseeable future.

georges1

interesting article thanks for sharing

gugie 

Shhh!

It also helps if your name is long and hard to pronounce. I'm counting on this as I transition from part time to retired and part time.

scarlson 

Exactly! Eisentraut, Weigle, Havnoonian, Merz, Kvale, Nobilette - some of these it's like a cat walked across the keyboard and that was their name. Seems to be somehow correlated with success. This is why I can never become a framebuilder. My name is too normal. Seems it was Gordon's problem too. He'd have had better luck in England, where it seems every framebuilder has a normal name and it's fine. Ron Cooper, Jack Taylor, Bob Jackson, Claud Butler, Bruce Gordon - it fits.

gugie 

I think you mean anglo-saxon? My last name is pretty common in a small village north of Como, Italy.

scarlson 

Fair enough.. A good fraction of the world's Eisentrauts live in Saxony, which may have been the original homeland of the Saxons. But I'm no genealogist. The real question I have is, why does it help a framebuilder to have a long/hard to pronounce name?

bulgie 

I got to see a kinder, gentler side of BG I guess. He was always nice to me. My in-person hang with him (other than a couple bike shows) was limited to one ride in Crested Butte, probably '85. (Warning: obnoxious levels of name-dropping follows.) I was riding with Jacquie Phelan, and we joined up with BG and Sky Yaeger (who wrote the humor piece at the top of this thread), did a nice long ride with them. BG on his best behavior, maybe because of the civilizing effects of riding with misses Phelan and Yaeger. Sky, as you might expect from reading the article above, is hilarious and whip-smart. I also got to ride Porcupine Rim with her, a year or two later, when BG was not around. (I think their "thing" didn't last too long, but I didn't ask...) She was traveling with some other Hall of Famer, I wanna say Joe Breeze? Don't quote me on that, especially if there's a Mrs. Breeze who wasn't supposed to know about that. I didn't follow her career exactly, but I think I recall she had a fairly impressive one in the bike biz (maybe still does), I wanna say Product Manager for Bianchi or some such? someone here might know.

Anyway, BG and Sky were so cute together. They were riding matching Gordon lugged MTBs with the whole nine yards, asymmetric waves running down one side of each lug, which were painted in contrasting Miami Vice colors, beautiful. But Bruce was adamant about being on vacation — he didn't want to talk shop with rubes. So he and Sky were using fake names, taken from Lake Wobegone Days, and whenever someone said something like "whoah, Bruce Gordon makes MTBs?!", he would reply "uh, I dunno, I guess so. I just bought it because it was blue." He would feign complete ignorance and disinterest in anything bike-related. What Jacquie called "chainring talk".

On that same Crusty Butt visit, there was a big-money race, sort of a stage race with maybe 3 races (?) and of course Jacquie won them all by large margins. On the night before the biggest race, she and I had dinner at her fave CB restaurant where she was friends with the owner. I think it was there that she pointed to some attractive young ladies and said to me sotto voce, "breasted cutes", and I think beer came out my nose. Which was weird because I wasn't drinking beer... We drank 3 bottles of wine, and believe me Jacquie had her share. Closed the place at probably like 2 AM and I rolled my sorry drunk ass back to my campsite up the valley, slept in so late that the race was over by the time I got there. Jacquie had won, by something like 10 minutes over 2nd place.

But back to BG and his nicer side: Years later when I had some metric 753 tubesets and needed metric lugs and BB shells, he gave them to me, or maybe sold them so cheap it was like a gift. That was just a phone call or two, but he was not grumpy at all! Even shot the breeze a bit. A rare sighting?

He is missed. Well, his Jekyll is anyway, maybe not his Hyde.

Mark B