Photos by Jim Cossey and Jamie Edwards
Frame Illustration by Adam Hayes
Comments by The Internet
We recently hit a big milestone in Starling’s journey, and knew we had to celebrate. And we really wanted to give a little nod to The Internet that’s given us so much attention over the years.
So we gave our mate Adam, a local artist, a call and got to work. Hope you like it!
Tap any of the images to expand and take a closer look:
No bike brand’s journey is complete without the highs (and lows!) of internet comments. And at Starling Cycles, we’re no strangers to exactly that. And we LOVE it.
We love creating a reaction, taking people by surprise, challenging industry bullshit and getting riders talking.
the comments are where that happens – the real-talk, unfiltered voice of the community and the genuine, can’t-hide-from-it measure of whether you’ve hit or missed.
So, when we saw the big milestone of our 1000th frame, we knew it was time to celebrate the keyboard warriors. The folks who have made Starling what we are. Singing our praises, hauling us over the coals, rating us and hating us.
Frame 1000 is the 1000th frame that Starling has made in-house in Bristol, UK.
It’s one of our handmade in the UK, steel frames and is a Twist, our mixed-wheel mullet, in size medium with 135mm rear travel.
Each frame is hand-stamped with its unique number on the dropper port, and this one bears the prestigious “M1000”.
Fun Fact: The ‘M’ means “Murmur” and shows that it’s the 29” version of our handmade, steel front triangle.
We also have frames stamped with ‘S’, which denotes our Swoop (27.5″) front triangle. And no, numbers don’t duplicate, so there’s only ever going to be one frame 1000.
To make this happen, we roped in local artist and rider Adam Hayes – AKA Its All Rideable.
Adam is based just over the border from Starling in Abergavenny, Wales and creates some fun, hand-illustrated artwork that we love. In a world of AI-generated images and fast art, it was great to work with a proper artist and illustrator.
Adam wrote a whole heap of our favourite comments on the frame in black ink, with a mix of some really positive, really heartwarming ones, and some that are considerably less so.
They’re largely from Pinkbike (The high temple of keyboard-curmudgeonlyness!) and also Starling’s YouTube, MTBnews.de, Singletrack and a few other excellent media titles.
In case you were wondering, no, we haven’t only made 1000 frames.
We made this one a while back, and it just took ages to make the project happen. We’ve also made a whole heap of frames outside of our UK workshop, alongside – such as the Factory Murmur, or Roost. The exact number is probably a secret, but also probably not something we know exactly!
Thanks to Adam and thanks to everyone who has commented on a Starling post over the years, particularly anyone whose comment was used.
Here’s to another thousand frames and many more comments.
