A visit to Calfee Design

Calfee's Bamboosero frames are made in Ghana.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have coveted a Calfee bamboo bicycle frame ever since I first saw one at the 2006 North American Handmade Bicycle Show in San Jose. At the time, the bikes had just gone into production, yet many of the people I spoke to at the show assumed that the bamboo frames were novelties, the product of carbon innovator Craig Calfee's restless mind. Calfee, of course, was serious: while initial sales were timid, today bamboo bikes account for about a third of the 400 or so bikes Calfee builds each year.

Since 2006 I've kept tabs on Calfee, following his trips to Ghana to teach people how to turn the local bamboo that grows all around them into strong, inexpensive bicycle frames. Calfee is unabashedly evangelical about the possibilities for bamboo bike frames in the developing world. He sees the production of bamboo bicycles in places like Ghana (shops in Zambia, Mexico and Uganda are slated to open this year) as a way of providing both jobs and cheap transportation for local residents. Those of us in the developed world can contribute to this cause by ordering one under Calfee's Bamboosero brand. The price for the frame is a fraction of a comparable frame from Calfee proper—$425 to $759 compared to $2,695 to $3,195.

My fondness for Calfee's craft would have probably remained an affair from afar were it not for a chance encounter the other day at the corner of Old La Honda and Skyline. Admiring my wooden fenders, a rider (I never got his name) asked me if I'd heard about Calfee's bamboo frames. I had. He had just purchased a Calfee carbon frame (another Calfee road by as we chatted). Before he bought his Calfee, he visited the factory in La Selva Beach, and encouraged me to do the same. I did.

Calfee Design fills a warehouse at the edge of the Monterey Bay Academy's 379-acre property, about 15 miles south of Santa Cruz. The attitude is as laid back as you'd expect for a bike shop that's a short walk from a private beach. Which is not so say the place does not feel industrious. In one corner of the building, Craig Calfee is fine-tuning the bottom bracket of a carbon tandem. Elsewhere frame parts are being laid up for assembly, sanded into submission with power tools or painted in glorious hues.

Much of the activity revolves around the arrival of as many as half a dozen broken carbon frames per day. In fact, Calfee has quite a good side business going repairing the frames of its competitors. The fact that so many cyclists look to Calfee Design to get the job done right should tell you something.

On the day that I visited, Calfee's general manager, Steve Chang, showed me around. Thank you, Steve! Check out the slide show for a quick tour.