Author: Rodger Bowser
“My Fixie, My Kabuki”
by Rodger Bowser
Last week was one of the saddest days ever for me in the the garage. I was fine-tuning my Lemond into a 1X8 cyclocross machine and I had some extra time to look at getting the Kabuki back up in running. It is almost winter, after all. I was going to give it the usual new chain with enough whale blubber for the Michigan winter and the rest a bath, plus the once-over to check any headsets and bottom brackets. Incidentally, the BB is the best spinning one in the fleet. I put it on the stand and it sounded like one of those cactus rain sticks you get out west. It was clear that something was rusting. I grabbed the rear triangle and gave it a flex to check the rigidity and it gave. Large holes started forming on the chain-stay and brake bridge as I effortlessly moved the rear-end. The bike is wall food.
I’ve have had enough experiences riding this bike that I thought it deserved me talking about them aloud to the only ones that I know that could remotely understand. It was a sweet ride and I don’t have one single picture of it in its 7 year history except for the ones I frantically took last week as I watched it die, strung up, on the stand, wheel less and dirty. I’ve had bikes, killer bikes, I still own and ride all those killer bikes. This one is done.
Scott and I bought a pair of these frames off ebay when the Broadway Shop was in high gear. That was when I bought Bridgestone everything, bikes, books, stickers, jerseys, shop aprons, all of it. We ran across a pair of Bridgestone Kabuki Submariner frame sets on ebay. Most Kabuki are a circa 1975 Japanese touring bike with stainless steel tubes, cast aluminum lugs and cromo fork and triangle. Frame itself weighed 7 or so lbs. A fully showroom bike was more like 30 plus with lights and fenders. Anyway it had an awesome-looking head badge, the stainless steel had a super shine and I called dibs on the black one. Scott bought the larger pearl white one. He was driving a white Toyota Paseo at the time so it made sense. I remember the day they came. For some reason the UPS driver did it on his way home at 7pm, so they came in a white van with his kid in the back. Odd.
We quickly learned what a mess a 700c conversion could be and over the next couple of weeks we built our single speed commuter bikes sans the tight jeans. I found some Schwinn Tourney brakes that will reach almost to the floor if you want them to. I repainted the black lugs on mine flat. I went with “bull horns” and a long 130 stem as the frame really is too small for me. The combination put me in almost a TT position. Recycled inter-tube worked well for bar tape. The aluminum lugs don’t have the flex of other metals so the seat post was a quill setup. That made it hard to change seat posts, really hard. My saddle height wasn’t cutting it at all and the post was maxed out. I took it down to Hosford’s on North Main. I asked John if he could lengthen this one or make another one just a little longer. He ended up custom making a new one out of stainless steel to match the bike. Yet another sign that that guy doesn’t half-ass anything. All for the cost of a sandwich. A 53X22 was my original gearing. That is when it was set up with ridiculous, yet bad ass looking Tufo tubulars. Later Scott bought us a set of Van Dessel flip flops and I switch over to a 53X16 and ran the SpeedMax. A couple of cracked cranks later a 53 tooth dura ace crank with never been seen before dura ace chain guard was thrown on. I figured the perfect gear was any I could sprint out of the saddle up Broadway hill and still sit down with groceries and pedal up if I wanted to.
The bike slowly started to morph into the perfect winter bike. One day a rear fender showed up and the rear brake disappeared. I custom studded a SpeedMax for the front. That hour and a half of beer drinking and screwdriver paid for it self one night ride on the “Northeast Area Trail” off Pontiac Trail with Sean. After riding the trail in 6 inches of crust and headlamps we started coming out of the freshly paved parking lot. I got out of the saddle just in time to catch the moon light hit the river of ice in front of me. My front tire skidded from under me as I watched the bear claw effect the studs were having on the ice and kept riding missing at least two heart beats. I have always said that if those damn things work once they are worth it and most of the time you don’t even know when they are saving your face from hitting the pavement at instant speeds. I used the same tire and thorn proof tube for at least 4 years straight. It barely took any air at all to fill.
Year after year it was just the winter commuter that would get hung up round May and pulled out in October. It was the only bike I could make it from farmer’s market all the way to Morgan and York, making all the traffic lights doing battle with the potholes and the AATA on Packard. Long winter Waterloo rides for canned beer, snow and Iron Maiden were some of the best. I won more money on this bike than all the others combined. It won every race I entered it in. One put me into respiratory shock for a week. I just notice i could go on and on about it. I have a lot more stories of my rides with the kabuki. I’ll save the rest for the pub.
I need to build a new slushy bike and soon.
thanks for listening
Rodger
Wall hanger
Kabuki
