Gone Green

Fat City's Second Chance in Vermont

Dirt Rag (6/30/2002)

Brion's comments:
'Initially written for the now-defunct Mountain Biking, this piece on Chris Chance's Fat City Cycles, and the wonderful trails surrounding his shop on the outskirts of Stowe, Vermont, finally saw the light of day in Dirt Rag.'

Feature article:

For years, the parochial world of New England mountain biking looked at Randolph, Vermont, as its Mecca. Sure, everyone had their own favorite singletrack escapes close to home, but if you were planning a road trip, Randolph was the "X" on your map. It was home to Slab City Bike & Sports, the infamous Circus Ride, and the wildly popular New England Mountain Bike Festival. But that's about to change. Now there's Stowe.

Long known as a roadie haven, Stowe offers up a bounty of trails snaking through lush evergreen and hardwood forests. Plus Stowe Mountain Resort -- which features 4,393-foot Mount Mansfield, the state's tallest peak -- finally got with the program and opened a mountain biking facility last summer. Toss in the Fat Chance Ranch, the new digs for Fat City Cycles, and you've got all the ingredients for a gourmet mountain bike banquet.

Fat City Cycle's Lled Smith sweeps his arm across the panorama of hills and ridges as we spin through town, describing one trail system after another. There's the Worcester Range to the southeast, the Sterling Range and Smuggler's Notch (named after Prohibition-era bootleggers from Canada) to the north. Many routes are mapped, many more are not. "I'd tell you the name of the trail I'm gonna take you on, but then you'd print it," Lled says with a deep laugh.

Lled's reticence is understandable, since many of the trails, especially those you won't find on maps, cut across private lands. On the other hand, he's never had a run-in with the local landowners. I promise that his secret is safe with me. He points to a steep, sharp ridgeline, and announces we're going to ride the trails on the other side -- after we pedal over it.

We head off Nebraska Valley Road, duck through a small stand of trees, cross a bubbling stream, and start to climb. And climb. And climb. "It's about a mile up," says Lled matter-of-factly. And he's gone.

Recent rains have conspired to leave the rugged doubletrack muddy, soft and loose. There's precious little traction as we grind along the 1,600-foot vertical ascent. I'm surrounded by thick trees and large ferns crowding the trail. It's a far cry from the bustling, developed center of downtown Stowe.

***

From the moment you take the Stowe exit off Interstate 89 in Vermont, you're inundated with signs of all sizes and shapes luring you in to this shop and that, trying to separate you from your hard-earned coin. The advertising is relentless, starting with Ben & Jerry's ice cream emporium and continuing through dozens of antique centers, the Vermont Gift Barn, the Fly Rod Shop. After all, this is the land that made the bumper sticker "Where the Effluent meets the Affluent" famous.

In stark contrast, the Fat Chance Ranch, situated about five miles off Route 100 on the edge of Stowe in neighboring Morrisville, would be impossible to find without directions. A big, sturdy white Federalist home sits out front, nearly on Randolph Road. Behind it looms a huge grey barn, built as a meat-packing plant, and a smaller, weathered red barn. That's it. No signs, no banners, not even a mailbox -- nothing to indicate that this is the new home of Fat City Cycles, save for the stickers on the cars and trucks parked out back.

In many ways, the low-key exterior perfectly reflects Chris Chance's new approach to business in his second go-round running Fat City Cycles.

"It's really a whole different focus," says Chance, sitting on a swing that overlooks the Green Mountains. "Now our focus is 'Small is Beautiful.' We want to keep it simple.

"Before, Fat City was part of this major growth spurt in mountain bikes. Especially in the '80s, when you had new customers coming in every day, you didn't have to worry about sales -- it was easy," he says. "All of a sudden, we found one day that Fat City was a really big company, like this big machine that had to keep going. There were a lot of employees and a lot of headaches about running a business that was that large. The concept then was 'growth is good, bigger is better.' Now, we're into this thing of 'let's just be satisfied being small and keeping it simple.' "

The collapse of Chance's first venture is well-documented. Fueled by Chance's vision, the Boston-based shop was a utopia for framebuilders and counter-culture cyclists in the late 1980s and early '90s. The list of brands spun off by former Fat City employees is impressive -- Merlin Metalworks, Seven Cycles, Independent Fabrication (IF), One-Off Titanium, Specialty Racing Products and Igleheart Designs. Stellar bikes and slick marketing earned Chance and Fat City a small but revered niche in the business. Sure, other companies could make lighter bikes with more bells and whistles, but few, if any, could match the "Fat City feel" of Chance's classic steel rigs, with their trademark beefy downtubes and chainstays, or the loyalty of Fat City customers.

"There're people out there who want to impress their friends. They want to roll out this high-tech piece of machinery and say 'my dick is bigger than your dick because I've got this really cool bike,' " says Chance. "There are so many bikes out there that address that - the roof-rack zinger-zanger bikes that are just to get attention."

Chance says somewhere along the line, the bike-building industry became infatuated with lightweight rigs, since weight is a quantifiable measure.

"To some people, weight equals performance," he says. "I believe in function, and those other bikes were trying to address some market niche. I got sort of disillusioned with, for so many years, people were saying 'you're building great bikes, you're so awesome, you're so great,' but then the market said '(lightweight bikes are) really cool.' But from my point of view, I thought 'it doesn't do this, or this, and it rides for shit.'

"Because the bike business is a fashionable industry, it becomes this game of figuring out what the industry is going to do next and try to be there," says Chance. "As a designer, forget about it. That's not what I'm about. That's not why I do it. I get out of bed in the morning because I want to put quality out there, because of what I believe. What I believe is not being turned on by something superficial."

Fat City customers consider themselves fortunate that Chance didn't succumb to the wiles of market frenzy.

"I really put a lot of heart into what the bikes are. When we first started out in mountain biking, everyone was trying to figure out what worked well. I'm a very function-oriented designer. I wanted to strip away everything else and just give you the core," he says. "If I do my job right, your experience is raised and you're able to let it hang out farther and grin a bit more and feel like you're living your life fuller."

What Chance failed to bring to the table was business savvy. For a small shop, employees enjoyed generous benefits, including health care and paid vacations. Workers were driven, but the focus was more on creativity rather than the bottom line. Reality hit hard in 1994, when red ink threatened to pull the business under. Archibald Cox Jr. provided the financial lifeboat, and Chance and Ben Serotta merged their respective brands in South Glens Falls, New York. It was simply a matter of survival, says Chance, but employees left in the lurch in Boston were embittered. Though most former Fat City employees regrouped under the successful IF banner, Chance says he still hears disparaging remarks.

“There was some pretty vengeful stuff, and for how much I cared (about the employees), and how much bad feeling there was, it was really unfair," he says. "I think they ought to drop it."

Chance is still lean and youthful looking at 43, a nasty case of road rash from a recent fixed-gear spill notwithstanding. He is thoughtful and measured when discussing Fat City Cycles, but he bristles when he hears the oft-repeated rumor that his bikes, following the merger, were simply Serottas in Fat City clothing. The rumors, and the talk of whether the bikes were a product of the designer or the framebuilders, was just part of the fall-out from disgruntled former employees, he says.

"I knew what I was, what I created, and what I was expressing," he says. "I talked to a lot of people who said 'Oh my God, what are your bikes going to be now? Are they going to be Serottas?' And all I could do was sort of chuckle and says 'Obviously you don't know who you're talking to because that's just not possible.' "

In fact, Chance says he risked alienating Serotta employees because he was such a hands-on designer. "They were building a great bike to begin with, so there was no doubt in my mind that they had the capacity. But we had a lot of discussions about quality. The way we focus on it with Fat City bikes was a little bit different than Serotta. I think both brands became stronger through being together."

Still, the Fat City/Serotta experiment, though feasible on paper, was fraught with potholes. The economies of scale and labor efficiencies were never realized, primarily because the two brands were built so differently. After three years, Chance and Serotta bought back their respective brands from Cox.

***

As I clear the top of the ridge, my temples are about to explode. I'm tempted to see if my helmet has shrunk, but I realize its just my over-extended heart. The enormous omelet I woofed down at the Portland Street Cafe in Morrisville earlier in the day is long burned off.

Smith, who also helped design the new trails at Stowe ski resort, waits patiently. He and the local band of trailbuilders have done their job well. There's not much room for error on these tight ribbons of undulating singletrack. Even on the brightest days, the thick canopy of leaves make it difficult to read the terrain. The home field advantage is huge.

Lled ("My folks named me after Led Zeppelin, and then added an extra 'l' in case anyone else got the same idea.") combines this knowledge with a strong, smooth style to sprint ahead. I do my best to keep up, but in Lled's backyard, second best is way off the back. On one slick, rocky descent, I see him standing at the bottom of a particularly nasty drop-off.

"That's an interesting line," Lled deadpans as I chose the wrong route and have to leap-frog over the bars when my front wheel augers in.

We veer off onto "No Quarter," one of Lled's signature trails. It's impossible not to admire the route painstakingly carved along the hillside. This is classic New England singletrack, full of technical tricks -- greasy roots, hairpin turns, lay-off-the-brakes descents. Add a little wet weather and stinging nettles to tear at your legs, and the fun really starts. Momentum is clearly your greatest ally here.

"This all used to be logged," says Lled, glancing around at the dense forest. "We just keep looking for the old logging roads, working up through the second and third growth until we get to the really old hardwoods up top."

We shoulder the bikes as we hike over a huge rocky outcropping, named "Whaleback," and continue along a few "don't look" sections that run alongside a sheer ravine. Sweat drips steadily on my top tube as I chase after my tour guide.

***

Chance likes Fat City's chances in Vermont. It doesn't phase him that he and business partner Wendyll Behrend bought the new facility on April Fool's Day, or that Fat City may not carry the same cache as it once did.

"We're not trying to reach for the moon," he says. "Before we'd ask 'What do we need to grow, or to help the business along?' That's not to say that we don't do that now. But we're in a stable place, we've got a great location, low overhead, low cost-of-living, and we've got a solid foundation. We've got a great reputation and great bikes going out the door. We just can't help but succeed. It's all in place."

The riding is spectacular, perfect for research and development, he says. The Fat Chance Ranch serves as a business and marketing office, as well as a fork-building and repair shop. While Fat City frames are still being produced in South Glens Falls, New York, Chance foresees a day when he can bring production to Vermont. But he's not in any rush. He says the Serotta staff, though subcontractors, work more as partners and are very skilled framebuilders.

"I worked with that crew for three years," says Chance. " I know them all well. I've been out riding with them. They know exactly what it is they're supposed to do for me, and they respect that.

"The bikes we're building now are better than ever, they really are," he says. "Ben and I both have 20-some-odd years of experience, and bringing that together was, I think, a pretty potent thing."

The experience, however, also taught Chance that he's happy as a small fish in a big pond. While Fat City was producing roughly 2,000 frames at the height of the brand's popularity, he says he's content with half that number today.

"Fat City isn't a business about making money, it's a business about bringing more quality and joy into the world, and giving people a means to experience life on the planet in a different way," says Chance with quiet conviction. "Nothing gives me more satisfaction than a customer coming back and saying 'Wow, man, I just had the most awesome ride,' grinning ear-to-ear. For me, that's what it's about.

"Coming here was a total quality of life thing. I wanted to start practicing what I've been preaching all these years, being in a place that's really beautiful, and really enjoy that. We're really in Fat City now."

***

My lower back is totally worked, but I manage a big toothy smile as Lled and I prepare to point our rigs down "Bullwinkle's Drop," a mile-and-a-half rip of buffed-out trail.

"You just don't see many singletrack downhills this long here in the East," he says with unabashed pride. "Just watch out for this one off-camber section about half-way down. It can be a little sketchy." And he's off, howling all the way.

I punch out into a parking lot alongside Cotton Brook Road at the foot of the run, and find Lled waiting again, with his typical grin. "Nice, huh?," is all he says.

We meander back into town along Zog Highway, a perfectly sane rollercoaster ride provided you haven't already fried your quads on "No Quarter" or some other local trail.

After two and a half hours of riding, Lled starts to list a few more options we might try. But I don't have the time, or the legs, to explore any more. I'll save what's left of my wounded pride to fight, and pedal, another day. Instead, we rinsed off a couple of pounds of rich Vermont mud and head down to the Brown Bag Deli for some fresh pita-wrap sandwiches and a cooling Nantucket Nectar (look like you belong, and ask for the "local discount." -- a nice touch reminiscent of ski towns in the Rockies).

Of course, you might be looking for a more potent medicine to soothe those aching limbs. In that case, head over to some cool off-season apres-ski spots, like The Matterhorn, The Rusty Nail, or The Shed. You'll find them all on Route 108, heading toward Mount Mansfield. That's in Stowe, a name to remember in New England mountain biking circles.

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