Johnny Coast

Photographs & Interview by Peter DiAntoni

This was my first trip to New York City where I never left Brooklyn, except for an afternoon in Queens. I was amazed at how much was happening in the tiny area surrounding the Greenpoint neighborhood where I was staying.
King Kog was just through the park, Brooklyn Machine Works on Power St, the Monster Track Goldsprints, skills events and after parties all within a 10 minute pedal from each other. And just over in Bushwick at the end of Charles St. you run straight into Johnny Coast’s workshop.

Johnny, tell us what makes this track bike interesting to you.
One of the things that makes this bike interesting to me is the seat stay cluster. I’m definitely enjoying the double tapered seat stays, where it’s really skinny and the attachments wrap around ever so slightly, and just almost touch but not quite. Also the concave wrap around seat stays–perfect for me.
It’s considered a French influence where the seat and chain stays comes down and don’t just stop and get cut off. But what you do is suck the brass in instead of leave the brass out and file it, flush. So I let it go inside and have this sort of. I guess it’s a flute.
I took some time to reshape the drop outs, although they are pretty damn good how they come. I enjoy Pacenti dropouts because there is a long enough slot yet, the drop out itself isn’t huge and clunky. I love the old Campagnolos but they look like lobster claws. These are sort of trimmed down. Where they’re strong enough but not overkill.
I really am enjoying wrapping the seat stay caps around, they are coming to a point and they’re also concave. The seat stays themselves are double tapered which means the tubing goes skinny, fat, skinny. It gives an appearance of delicacy and lightness but it’s also oversized so it’s very strong.
There were a lot of double-taper seat stays in the 60s and 70s. You don’t really see them anymore, mainly because there’s not a huge supply out there.
Other than that it’s a pretty simple bike.

How did you get started in bike building?
Well, I guess that’s kind of a good story. I was in born in Olean, New York but my family moved to Denver, Colorado. That’s where I was raised. I moved back out here eight or nine years ago.
A lot of this started a long time ago. My father is a metal worker. I apprenticed with him since I can remember. He taught me how to weld by the time I was 12 years old and I was learning before that. He taught me a lot about metal fabrication. He really helped me hone my skills in welding and braising and how to light the torches. He also showed me how to and how not to run a shop.
My father had his own shop for a number of years. Watching him through that are actually some of my earliest memories with him. From there he moved the shop to his house. He made low scale, small time production stuff out of his home garage. Unfortunately, I have his business sense which is kinda terrible. Oh well.
I went to the United Bicycle Institute and also took a class with Yamaguchi. The class with Yamaguchi was pretty amazing. It was one-on-one and really felt like you were working with a master. It was long hours of quiet concentration in his studio, out of his home in Rifle, Colorado. Not a lot of people have heard of the place. It’s amazing, deep in the mountains. In the back of his house he has this small, small, tiny kinda shack and it’s packed with bikes. His tools and his surface table are in there, his granite slab and that’s what he does. He’s a very ingenious person.
I would work for awhile on something and he would shake his head no. He would take the tools from my hands and show me the procedure. I’d move over and watch. He’d hand the tools back to me and I’d work and he’d stand back and fold his arms and watch. It was like that for hours. It was really great. And UBI was basically the polar opposite. Lecture in the morning and lab hours in evening.

**What excites you the most about building bikes? **
Well, recently the BVVW [Brooklyn Velodrome Vintage Wheelmen], visited Richard Sachs and Peter Weigle who are two guys I can sort of consider, on the East Coast at least, the top of the field. They’ve both been building for over 35 years and you can’t touch their workmanship.
The types of bikes they are building are almost opposites. Richard Sachs is into racing cycles and Weigle seems to only do randonneuring machines. We got to go see examples of each. Like the best of the best. And when we showed up to Weigle’s studio, he had his show bikes spread all out on the lawn for us. There were mixte frames that he built. There were randonneuring bikes. There was a time trial bike he built in the early 70s, everything was drilled, it was beautiful. I mean there was not a scratch on it, and for all these years it’s still an amazing bicycle.
Those are some of my recent inspirations. If I had to pick one I’d say Weigle’s are really interesting me, what he comes up with in the end. He’s making racks to fit his bicycles, as well as matching and making the parts to put on the bike. It’s not just making a bike and putting the parts on it.

I saw a lot of that at the hand-made show. More thought out…
…integrated bicycles, yeah, beautiful. So besides those guys in America, Toei, is another inspiration. Amazing, still a lot of randonneuring, camping bikes and good work. Very simple and clean.

Are there any people in your area that inspire you?
The BVVW Brooklyn Vintage Velodrome Wheelmen, organized by John T .Pergolizzi, he and a number of others from the New York area, are basically vintage lightweight enthusiasts. These are people who have a passion for the style of certain period vintage bicycles. They get together every once in awhile and have different themes for each meeting. The last meeting, another builder, Jamie Swan came and he brought some forks he was working on. Another theme was sundries, so everybody brought cycling caps they got that fell off so and so’s famous head they’d snatched up at races. I saw some very beautiful, very mint condition programs of races from the 70s in California. I mean a lot of these guys are like amateur historians. They’ll go find and meet family members of Dick Powers. Interview them and write all this stuff down and record it for the historical importance. Of course they collect bicycles too; that’s the other thing these guys do. They collect like crazy. It’s just really amazing to be surrounded by a group of people who have been collecting this information for years and years and have so much to say about it.. I soak it up, I love it. That’s what we share in common.

What are your favorite things to make right now?
There have been a few rando bikes that have walked out the door that I secretly wished the customer would have called up and cancelled, after it was finished so I could keep it. I love the idea of being able to go on a short tour with these bikes. Some rando bikes to me are really interesting. Also the track frames are very attractive to me. Very simple, very strong, solid machines. More specifically I’m really enjoying the double tapered seat stays. I’m enjoying certain things I’ve only started to do on my bikes. The way I finish off the attachments to the drop outs and you can see some examples.

How is your workload these days?
My wait list is two years at this point and it might grow.
Right now through Velo Orange, I have just as many bikes to build for them as I have for myself. Once I took them on, my wait list doubled. I build the semi-custom randonneuring and mixte frames for them. They come in one of four colors, all built to the riders measurements with limited customizations.

What’s coming up that you are looking forward to?
This spring I’m building a few show bikes that I’m looking forward to put together and go to some of the shows that are happening. The NAHBS is going to happen closer to the East Coast next year. There are also a number of smaller shows coming up I’d like to go to. So, building a couple show bikes would be my goal for this summer.

Johnny Coast Cycles