Photos by Alex De Palma, bike check photos by Mike.
Nose manual aficionado and budding photographer Mike Curley just built up a fresh steed in everyone's favourite colour, Matt Black.
Mike decided to "Switch" it up this time and is now on board Ed Zunda's signature AWAKE frame paired up with his NEW 9" Switch bar and 23mm offset Switch forks.
SPECS
Frame: Wethepeople AWAKE 20.85"
Fork: Wethepeople SWITCH 23mm offset
Stem: Wethepeople INDEX Prototype
Grips: ODI XL
Headset: Wethepople Compact
Sprocket: Odyssey La Guardia
Chain: Odyssey Bluebird
Pedals: eclat Slash
Seat: Wethepeople Team Fat Pivotal
Post: Wethepeople Pivotal
Tires: Odyssey Dugan 2.30" front and rear
Front Wheel: Odyssey
Rear Wheel: Odyssey
After riding our Clash frame for the past year, Mike is now riding Ed Zunda's signature AWAKE Frame in the 20.85" version. Mike is really stoked on the shorter 13" slammed chainstay and the steeper 75.5 degree headtube, which paired up with his super steep 23mm SWITCH fork, gives you a super responsive front end, perfect for a guy like Mike who spends most of his time balancing on his front wheel.
We try and get the team to help us out as much as possible with product testing. Mike is running a prototype of our INDEX Stem which will be available in October. We took the wider faceplate, and simple/sturdy concept of our Hydra stem, but incorporated it into a frontload version. The unique feature on the INDEX stem is that it actually rises your bars as high as some topload stems (17mm), but still keeps the classic frontload styling. Mike's been running the INDEX for a while now and absolutely loves it.
“It’s a simple and clean look, the way a stem should be, companies can get carried away with to many cut outs in my opinion. ”
“My bars and forks also have a clean look about them, the forks have super small dropouts perfect to get in and staying in those nose manuals. ”
Mike signature SWITCH bars are pretty popular with the guys on the PRO team, and for 2016 we decided to give them an upgrade and decided to boost them to 9" tall since Mike wanted to run something a bit taller.
With Mike being such a technical wizard on his front wheel, it was only fitting that he received his own signature fork. The SWITCH Fork feature the shortest offset of any street fork we've ever made. The 23mm offset dropouts, are slotted, rather than being just welded onto the end of the fork leg. This makes them much stronger than a traditional welded dropout and more resistant to the stresses and impact that a technical street rider like Mike put's through his forks. The SWITCH forks also feature tapered fork legs at the dropouts, to give your feet more room on tricks like hang5s and whiplashes.
Mike's SWITCH Forks and SWITCH Bars are available now worldwide with the rest of our 2016 line of frames and parts. Look out for the INDEX stem and more new products dropping this October.
In case you didn't see Mike's #SWITCH promo we dropped earlier this year, be sure to checked it out below...
