With an already impossible itinerary to visit all four builders who received a scholarship for Bespoked last fall, Petor decided to tack on one last shop visit, Ground Up Speed Shop. Outside of Colorado Springs is home to Eric Barr and his infamous Dizzy Drome. Read on for Petor’s deep dive into this unique shop and its eccentric creator…

Language, Symbiosis, Amerika

I love having language explained to me for the first time, especially when it’s even slightly inaccurate, because that first explanation shapes my emotional relationship to a word or phrase forever. It can be overwritten, but never fully erased. The joy in that moment is part nostalgia, part freedom. It reminds me of learning about the world as a child through flawed explanations, and also feels like aural dyslexia: the ability to interpret what you hear however you like, to make it mean whatever you need it to mean.

Bennet – half horse and 60% techno – had volunteered to accompany me on a whirlwind trip to visit and film the 2024 BESPOKED X SRAM scholars after I injured my back. He described himself as my handlanger, which he said meant someone employed by a mafia boss to do their dirty work. Not quite. The actual translation is “henchman” – someone loyal to and working under authority, willing to help even through violence or crime. Close enough. But in reality, we were more like a Trill – a symbiotic alien race from Star Trek: The Next Generation – with me as a cat-sized, physically useless cicada brain, and Bennet the body I was neurally plugged into. The difference between henchman and symbiote, I suppose, is in hierarchy, crime severity, and shared agency.

Amerika is both shiny and perverse. As a British outsider, its unreality is more obvious. It’s the fictional universe of the films I grew up watching: everything feels inherently cinematic. At a gas station in Oakland, a guy looked like he might rob us at gunpoint, but it felt like he was wearing a costume. I didn’t worry – he was probably just an extra. Sleep deprivation and painkillers (for my back) made this detachment feel comfortable, even convincing.

In eight days, we visited Montreal, Colorado, and San Francisco, then flew back to the island. We shot four short films and visited six bike shops – only four of which were scheduled. I’m used to my independence. I enjoy solitude. I’d rather sit in silence or listen to music than engage in small talk. Idle chatter is part of the constant audiovisual noise of modernity – noise that drowns ideas before they can take root, making clarity and creativity almost impossible.

That’s why Bennet was the perfect host for my frail invertebrate brain. We listened to a lot of loud techno, and when we talked, it was only about logistics, or our shared fandom for iconic builders we might never get to meet again. This is how we ended up adding hours of driving to an already impossible itinerary to visit Eric Barr. Because when your motivation is right, it’s usually better to regret doing something than to regret not doing it.

Ground Up

Colorado happens to be the global epicenter of mind-bending titanium frame builders. The kind I read about in books before Instagram, the ones I fantasized about owning like a child does a toy, imagining how it might change my life. If only I owned a Merlin Bowtie… or a Moonmen… or a Black Sheep. I still hope to one day own a Black Sheep.

We were already in Colorado visiting two builders – Good Grief and SIGO, both of whom I’m now deeply obsessed with – when Bennet casually turned the techno down 32 notches and said, “Hey Petor, while we’re in Colorado, we should go visit Eric Barr.”

As a person with volition, I can make sensible decisions. But as a symbiote? We – me, Bennet, the Dodge Charger – shared one brain. So Bennet’s idea didn’t feel like a suggestion. It felt like hunger. It was my thought. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I turned the music back up and shoved beef jerky into my mouth in an attempt to reclaim my own identity (Bennet is vegan). I chewed and Googled. It wasn’t a detour – it was an out-and-back. Two hours each way, but how could we not?

“Yeah, we can do that. It’ll be fine.”

Ground Up Speed Shop

The name fits Eric’s work so neatly that it’s impossible to tell which came first – the shop or the ethos. It’s not “Ground Up Cycles” or “Ground Up Bikes” because bikes are just one mode of GUSS. His practice transcends the form. GUSS is rare in the modern cycling world – a space for pure creativity, free from the expectations of production or marketing. Eric works to unreal standards, but without the pressure to sell.

In the UK especially, there’s snobbery toward part-time builders, as though not doing it full-time diminishes the value of the work. But creativity doesn’t scale to income. Plenty of the best builders today – certainly the most creative – aren’t building full-time. Eric, for example, is a production welder by day. That separation between “work” and the work – the real, meaningful work – gives him creative freedom.

He turns shit into gold. He creates value from nothing. He builds mastery – the thing that can’t be inherited, transferred, or bought. He’s the antithesis of late capitalism. He’s the last thread of raw humanity spiraling through a cultural wasteland.

The Dizzydrome

Eric has built his tiny universe on a dusty plot, strewn with old machinery and bits of helicopter. The Dizzydrome – a steeply banked, miniature dirt velodrome – sits between two small shacks, one for living and one for building. We visited on RC Day. A few locals showed up to race dirt-track RC cars around the Dizzydrome. Eric, ever the host, had a spare car charged and ready.

“Have you driven an RC car before? You know how the controls work?”

It could have sounded patronising, but it wasn’t. He was just concerned for the car, most of which was handmade. After some laps, he showed us around the shop.

I’d expected an American dream workshop: spacious, clean concrete floors, every machine gleaming. But Eric’s space was something better: creative chaos, machines with custom paint and pinstripes laid out not for efficiency, but accessibility. Like a painter’s studio, everything within arm’s reach in case the idea needed it right now. The entire shop felt alive.

One room is alive, breathing. The other stores past and future projects, giving the main space room to think. There were no customer frames lined up awaiting paint. Just tools, ideas, and – at the time – more RC cars than bikes.

Eric builds 2-5 bikes a year. Each is completely unique. You buy a GUSS not to dictate the design, but because you trust the vision. You’re not commissioning Lucian Freud to paint like Francis Bacon. You buy a GUSS because it’s a GUSS.

Weird and Wonderful

Eric and I had known each other from Instagram comments, but I’d never seen a bike in real life. I asked, and he brought some out from the house. In GUSS, there’s no real boundary between personal and professional. A titanium four-wheeled pedal-powered dragster stood in the living room. We took a few of his personal bikes outside – including the weirdest polo bike I’ve ever seen – and rode them around the Dizzydrome.

Until you’ve ridden the Dizzydrome, the name is just a name. After five minutes chasing Eric and Bennet around the track, I was giddy and spent.

Eric is as weird as they come, and he knows it – and he knows that knowing it is a superpower. GUSS isn’t just a studio – it’s a subculture, a public service. He started as a trained machinist in South Dakota, worked for Tomac building downhill bikes, then got into pinstriping in 2014. That snowballed into custom cars, motorcycles, and eventually back into bikes with a totally unique creative voice.

The Dizzydrome has hosted polo matches, tiny 16” bike races, and an open “Dizzydrome Hour Record” that only three people have ever attempted. One guy rode 837 laps. Afterward, he sat down and said he needed to pee, puke, and cry at once. Two friends have since beaten his record: 917 laps. The fastest lap ever? 4.28 seconds.

Scarcity

I’m always surprised – shocked, even – at how affordable high-end custom bikes are. They’re not cheap, but in comparison to art? A smudge of charcoal has value. A piece of paper, burned and discarded, can be worth more than a titanium bike built by Eric Barr.

Sure, some bikes gain value as memorabilia. But the handmade stuff – truly one-off machines – often loses half its value as soon as it’s sold. That’s frustrating. But it’s also beautiful. These bikes get used. They build culture. Like the GUSS frame we saw at Good Grief, which had passed through the hands of “Fixie Dave” and Chris from Good Grief, inspiring both to ride fixed off-road. That one-off frame changed people’s paths.

Our unplanned visit to GUSS felt like spotting a whale in the wild. This huge, impossible creature, just being what it is. Proof that creativity and eccentricity still exist. The antidote to corporate nonsense, sterile products, and standards that push real bike maintenance out of reach.

Seeing cool bikes online is one thing. But until you see them in the flesh, feel them, ride them – you can’t understand what makes them magical.

Eric just does stuff. He’s not strategic. Ground Up Speed Shop isn’t some scalable brand. It’s what humanity looks like when it leaks out of the cracks of late capitalism.

What the world needs is more Eric.