Interesting link: the history of A.N.T.
Here's another old post from my interesting link tag on cohost. More info about that here.
Funny that this cohost post referenced my Yearning For Blogs... how the tables have turned!!
A guy who has worked as a bike frame fabricator tells you his entire life story
Check out this incredible post from Mike, the owner of "A.N.T.", or Alternative Needs Transportation, a semi-defunct custom bike frame fabricator from Massachusetts.
It's a multi-decade story with plenty of pictures describing how he got interested in bikes, traveled across the country in his early twenties, learned his trade, teamed up with other workers to start an employee-owned business making bikes, got sick of his own company, did weird bike activism, and then quit to make commuter bikes (rather than sport bikes).
I always appreciate when folks who are in co-op or employee-owned or activist spaces are honest about how fucking hard it is to get along with your collaborators. This story is unusually honest about how much arguing and negotiating and cooperating is really involved in work like this.
I miss the old days of weird blogging and people just writing about their lives online and this feels like a strange return to it. The work this guy did is super unusual so I'm glad he wrote it all down!