To say Geekhouse has some repeat customers might be an understatement, considering the past few years have all shown bikes built for John Watson. And to say they have a wide range of similar bikes would also be an understatement, albeit a weird one. Over the years, we’ve seen the Brentwood city/porteur bike (with racks), the Hopedale gravel road bike (with racks), and now this Woodville touring bike. With racks. All similar at first glance, but as with all fine things, the devil’s in the details.
BIKERUMOR: What are your main building materials?
MARTY: Our main building material is steel. Preferably OX Platinum tubing from True Temper, because steel is real!
BIKERUMOR: What’s new with your company since NAHBS last year?
MARTY: As of 2014 I am officially a 1.5 man show. I’m doing all the fabrication myself while Katty Walsh-Motes [no relation] does…pretty much everything that’s not fabrication.
BIKERUMOR: Any killer custom bike builds in that time?
MARTY: We’ve built a ton of bikes in the past year that we’re proud of. But John Watson’s (of prollyisnotprobably.com) is probably one of our favorites. We built a Woodville touring bike with complete custom racks, braze ons, and a beautiful matte army-green powder.
BIKERUMOR: Say a customer gives you free reign, where do you draw your inspiration for the best projects?
MARTY: A lot of our bikes hail from an age of neon glory! We draw a lot of inspiration from the 90s mountain bike era. We’ve also been added a lot of mid century modern geometric patterns and colors to our bikes. We like to switch it up, our bikes can look as different as our customers personalities.
BIKERUMOR: What are you building this year that’ll draw a crowd?
MARTY: We like to play hard to get here at Geekhouse. Before every NAHBS we like to keep everything we’re doing secret. But suffice it to say, our bikes will awesome.
BIKERUMOR: Scenario: NAHBS introduces a new category called Mashups, pairing two completely different builders to make one bike. Who’s the yin to your yang, and what kind of bike do you think you’d build?
MARTY: We’d definitely team up with Royal H Cycles. Bryan creates lugged steel bikes and his attention to detail is astounding. As is his mustache. Our first Royalhouse would definitely be a touring bike, because we may or may not have made the mistake of promising one to Katty.
