I don’t own a Subrosa product. I will likely never own a Subrosa product, but, doggonnit, I can’t help but love those crazy bastards. They just keep on repurposing all things retro for their own amusement.
I mean, it started with the Bash Bike, a shout out to the 90s that shaped Ryan Sher’s young riding brain. Then they released pictures of a new Ryan Sher signature dual top tube model. Granted no one who would want it would want an integrated, slammed, Pivotal seat post, and no one who would want a bike with an integrated, slammed Pivotal postwould likely to be fiending for an updated Haro Master, but that’s the brilliance of it. It makes absolutely no sense. You get the feeling that, like when Obama became president he started doing stuff you’d do if you were president (like having Stevie Wonder throw your a private concert) Ryan Sher has decided that the only reason to own a bike company is to make whatever ridiculous thing he always wanted as a kid. For instance…
In a world where a 20″ top tube was considered XXL, seat tube angles were close to 90 degrees and people used their seats to, you know, sit, the layback seat post made perfect sense. It allowed you to run your seat at a normal height (parallel to your bars, natch) and still have clearance to spin your bars for boomerangs and the like.
That’s the exact same rationale given for the Subrosa layback seatpost. No, I’m not making that up, look:
Pivotal seats have no way to move forward or back like a tradition
railed seat. They always seem to be a bit far forward on the seat post,
cramping the space you have between the bars and seat.
I don’t know if that’s batshit insane, or just plain brilliant. I mean, your typical BMX bike in 2009 has a top tube located nine inches below the top of the rear tire, a rear end so short that the rear tire/seat clearance that has to be measured with a micrometer and seat heights determined by a series of shrinking “rules” (two fist, one fist, half fingernail…). Into that we’re going to introduce a teeny, tiny nubbin of a layback seat post (granted, I don’t know for sure that it’s a nubbin, but, unless that logo is crazily outsized it’s not as long as the amount of post I have sticking out of my frame).
I don’t understand it. I mean, I know no one’s going to use it on a Killorado…well, not without a weight saving cut-out on the back of the seat for tire clearance, but, uhm, yeah that’s kind of the problem. Aren’t seats today little vestigal pieces which exist solely so that your seat tube doesn’t go through your wedding vegetables after a bad landing? Don’t the geometries of most modern frames leave so little clearance between the seat and rear tire that a couple bad landings with this will turn your brakeless setup into one with a seat post mounted rear brake?
The way I see it, this only has one flaw. Subrosa, this needs to be 330mm long. Yes, this needs to be a full sized, old man’s post. Yes, yes it does. Make it and I’ll buy it, I promise. As it sits, I love you guys, but not enough to give you my money. But you’re so, so, so close…
Don’t make me beg. ‘Cos I will.
