A new episode of Heart of Metal: our feature dedicated to the art and practice of framebuilding!
This week Columbus had a chat with Thibault Linossier (aka Tebow), Danny Heeley and Sean Talkington from Beach Club to discover more about the San Marino Beach Club’s Discless Road and its “civilized” geo.
When did you start using Columbus tubing? And why?
Beach Club & Columbus! Two storied brands whose innovation, rich history and commitment to excellence changed the world of bicycles. Clearly a few of the greatest to ever do it… In all seriousness we are still surprised you let us collaborate with you. Beach Club began not too long ago as a side hustle from 3 friends working at Team Dream and The Cub House. We wanted to make production bikes in the USA for people who still care about rim brakes, steel tubing, and lookin on a classic silhouette. We are cyclists, we love riding bikes and want to do what we like by any means. Making bikes in tune with “the people” and working with the people we love most. So from there, what better choice than Columbus? Cut to 1 year and almost 100 frames officially sold, we have now grown into a “brand” before our very eyes.
Had/have you used other brands of tubing? What are the most noticeable differences when working the tubing? From a riding point of view are there any noticeable differences?
Beach Club is born from steel and we have only ever used Columbus tubing. Through our shop the Cub House, we work with other frame builders who all use Columbus tube sets in various forms. The newest generation of Columbus tubing is now lighter and stiffer than anything Eddy Merckx used to race! For us as dummies we wanted to keep our bikes 1 tubeset for simplicity and knowing what it’s made of.
How would you define in three words Columbus tubing?
Questions like this are hard: Olive Oil, Ciao, Metal.
What frame would you like to share with us today?
Beach Club Discless Road!
How is this frame special/exceptional/particularly significant relative to your normal production?
Rim brakes in 2022? There are plenty of bicycles made from papier-mâché that you can buy built especially for Tour de France athletes… but that’s not you now is it? It’s not us either. In essence, this bike is like looking at the bike you remember loving in the early 2000’s thru rose colored lenses; light, comfortable and intuitive, without the annoyances of non-compact gearing, corncob cassettes and 23c tires at 120 psi loosening your fillings over pavement seams, literally the best of then and now. These frames are a full Columbus Life tubeset with Columbus Futura Caliper SL Forks. The San Marino Beach Club’s Discless Road comes w/ our patented “civilized” geo.
What Columbus tubes have you used for this frame?
These frames are full Columbus Life tubes with Columbus Futura Caliper SL Forks.
Why did you choose these tubes, this kind of steel, those diameters, reinforcements etc?
We talked with our frame builders, who are much smarter than us, about what we like in the bikes we ride. Darren Larkin from Larkin Cycles builds our road frames so with his help along with Oscar from Simple Bike Co and our good friend Aaron Stinner from Stinner Frameworks we came up with this awesome formula.
Is it the first time you have used this exact tube specifications?
We are used to build some of the nicest custom bikes for our customers at the Cub House, so we knew what we wanted for our own models.
Could you explain the manufacturing process step by step?
All the steel road bikes that Beach Club offers are produced in the USA by Darren Larkin of Larkin Cycles. They are all built by hand in batches of 20. Then each frame is painted with logos designed with friends/artists, a package made especially for the batch of frames. On this series, the graphics package was designed by Dan Hanafin. No decals here, everything is painted.
Who is the client of this bike, in general or in the specific?
The Discless Road is made for those who still care about rim brakes, steel tubing, and lookin good. The bike is geared for both performance and endurance and all-around hotness, but in a cool way, but not too cool. This bike allows you to interconnect any number of dirt paths, fire roads, or even cutty singletrack on your road rides. In a nutshell, this is the perfect bike for surfing the Earth’s surface because that’s what matters most right?
