FRAME FAME : Pacoima Bikes Go Worldwide

It’s not the kind of neighborhood that conjures up images of bicycling.

This section of Pacoima looks like a model for bad zoning laws. Small wood-frame houses are mixed in with factories, warehouses and discount auto dismantlers. The cement streets are cracked from the weight of big trucks. The air has a chemical sting. It’s the kind of place bicyclists find themselves when the ride has gone bad and they’re hopelessly lost.

“It’s not the end of the world,” John Slawta said, “but you can see it from here.”

However, it’s in this end of the Valley that the 28-year-old Slawta has chosen to make some of the most sought-after bike frames in the world. These frames go from Pacoima to the Tour de France, to Italy for the Giro d’Italia and to Montana for Harrison Ford. These are Landshark bikes--custom-made and very custom painted.

“Today is definitely ugly,” Slawta said as he stands in the doorway of the 850-square-foot industrial space on Montague Street that he rents for $595 a month. The low-slung multitenant building could be mistaken for a personal storage company.

“You see that power plant over there? I figure how smoggy it is by how much detail I can see on it. Today is definitely ugly.”

Ugly day or not, Slawta has six bikes to get ready to ship this week. “I keep it at six,” he said. “It gives me goal and it’s a reasonable number to get done.”

Because he makes and paints the bikes himself, six of the $760 frames--this is just for the frame, serious cyclists add their own wheels, brakes, gears and other components--are more than enough to keep him busy for the week.

He crosses the cement-floored room strewn with the odd, specialized tools of the bike-makers trade. On the wall are postcards and letters racers have sent him from around the world. A letter written in 1988 on the cheap stationery of a hotel in Belgium is from Andy Hampsten, now one of the top American riders. It begins, “Thanks for the bitchin’ bike” and ends “my season is coming.” Later that year he won the Giro d’Italia riding one of Slawta’s bikes.

The centerpiece of all this casually placed machinery is an $8,500 frame fixture, which doesn’t look very impressive. It’s a holding device that precisely aligns the tubing while it is being joined together, but it’s so basic it could have been designed in the 19th Century. The frame-builder’s art doesn’t rely on high-tech computerized gizmos. It’s the work of the seasoned craftsman who combines mechanical talents with the right artistic touch.

“This is the quality control over here,” Slawta said as he bends the rear part of an almost-finished frame, measuring with oddly shaped tools as he goes along. “You get them straight--or straight enough.”

Straight enough must satisfy the professional riders and fanatic amateurs who are Slawta’s clients, including actor Michael Nouri, Olympic volleyball superstar Karch Kiraly, ex-Laker Billy Thompson and former San Francisco 49er Dwight Clark. Getting the frame aligned perfectly is something they--and Slawta--take extremely seriously.

The Prestige tubing he uses in making the frame is tricky to handle. The center parts of the tubes are thinner than the ends, to make it lighter. The ends are thicker where the tubes are brazed together (the metal is too heat-sensitive for welding). As he tinkers with the rear part of the triangular frame the metal seems to have a life of its own. He pushes it, it bounces back.

“These frames have a lot of spring in them,” he said. He is surrounded by an assortment oddly shaped tools, all of which have some specialized purpose in measuring frame alignment.

“This is a frame-builders scale,” he said as he attaches the frame to the hand-held device. “You know a fisherman’s scale makes everything weigh more,” he said, “this one makes it weigh less.”

Joking about frame weight would be heresy to his clients. In the world of top-level bikes, less is definitely more. Racers are looking for the tiniest edge. In last year’s Tour de France, Greg LeMond made a phenomenal comeback on the last day, winning by a few seconds. Some credit the victory to a new type of handlebars he used that allowed him to lean forward and be more aerodynamic as he pedaled. The tradition-bound French had dismissed the bars as just another American gadget.

Slawta walks next door to a shop that makes fluorescent lights for the movie industry to use their photocopying machine. While he’s there he picks up an order that’s been faxed from Canada. At the rate of 300 bikes a year selling for $760 each it’s easy to figure that one of these days he’s going to be able to afford his own fax machine.

Placing the fax on the rack on which he’s just been straightening frames, he mulls over the numbers of the frame geometry--how long the customers wants the top tube, the seat tube, the angle of rake for the front wheel forks. All of this is critical in deciding how the bike will ride.

Bikes used for touring are a little more slung out, like a large car with a generous chassis. Racing bikes are tighter, stiffer, sometimes even a little “twitchy”--too responsive, like a sports car with a too tight suspension system.

There’s a strong scent of paint in the shop that’s beginning to irritate his visitor’s throat. When it’s brought to his attention Slawta looks up from the fax, said he doesn’t notice any paint smell, then looks up again. “That’s kind of scary, isn’t it?” he asked.

Slawta has been around paint so much that he’s become oblivious to it. In fact, it was painting that originally brought the Landshark much of its fame. Slawta once planned to attend Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. He now expresses himself artistically with his bike frames. At a time when most bikes were in staid, traditional colors, his frames looked like a modern art show on wheels.

“My goal is to get people to react,” Slawta said. “I like people to see the bikes and have to respond.”

Some frames are done in a pattern of Jackson Pollock-style drips, others evoke the bright patterns of surfing clothes. There are amoebas and patterns that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Amazon Indian’s face.

“I like people to look at my paint jobs and not know how I did it, even though it only took minutes to make,” Slawta said. “It’s one of those things that to do it right you have to do it quickly.”

Slawta has spent almost his entire life in the Valley, but by the end of the year he plans to move to southern Oregon. He does not know anyone there, he said, but he feels the rural atmosphere will be a more creative place to work. And since four out of five orders for his frames come from out of state, he’s not tied to Pacoima.

“I’m going to miss the convenience of living here,” he said, looking out the door at the power plant. “But if you’ve a chance to do things better, do it now. The meter’s running.”