GALLUS

Jeremy Schlachter used to be a courier in Glasgow but he's now building frames in Texas and they are lovely. I've been meaning to post something about Gallus Cycles for ages but Hey! What are you gonna do?

I can't really be bothered writing much so here's Jeremy's Bio lifted straight from his website and not changed in any way:

I would be lying if I said I grew up on a bicycle, or had some successful racing career. That wasn't really how it happened for me. I stole bikes from a young age to buy drugs, but not till the last ten years or so has it played such a major part of my life. I grew up mainly skateboarding and working on my crack habit. I'd kick around the neighborhood on stolen bikes, but my real fascination with cycling and bikes didn't happen until, in a deal with The State to avoid prison, I began college.

I started college in 2001 at the University of Texas. Once I moved to Austin, I immediately crashed my car (still car free by the way), but after a short spell inside for Grand Theft Auto a decided it was much easier and safer getting around town on bicycles I had just “ Found “. I was also finding that I was getting too much attention from my parole officer to do drugs. I was looking for a new way to get my thrills, and cycling provided that. One of my roommates encouraged me to do a Porno Movie with her, and I thought I would give it a shot, just to see if I could do it.

This lead to me earning enough cash to buy a road bike, an entry level Fuji. The following year the State of Texas found that due to my Scottish great-grandmother they had a loophole to deport me to Scotland where I continued to bum around as a workshy student, studying buildings at Glasgow Art School. My bike provided a great way for me to discover my new home. During my second year, I managed to get a job as a bicycle courier, when the infamous messenger James "Jailbait" Tait drunkenly offered me a job when I started a fight with him at a pub. He told me to turn up the next morning, not really expecting me to. He didn’t know I had just been evicted, so with nowhere else to go, I did turn up. It was December 21, 2003, the shortest day of the year, albeit a cold and nasty day in Glasgow. My road bike was instantly ridiculed by the gritty Glasgow couriers.

I ended up borrowing, then just keeping a pal’s Trek 850 mountain bike. Which I eventually sold without his knowledge to a junkie and bought an On-One Il Pompino. It was a great bike for messenger work, but it fell out of the Fugly tree and hit all the branches on the way down then bounced back off the ground and hit a few more branches, nowhere near as good looking as the classic handmade frames cool messengers like Xander were riding.

During my Westcoast Messengers period, a love for drinking and fighting continued to grow. Though I enjoyed learning about architecture and the design process, I could see that my true passion was in cycling. I also found that once the Art School installed a Firewall to filter out porn I did not enjoy sitting in front of a computer all day, but preferred crafting things by hand. I made the decision to combine my passion for cycling, love of making things and my knowledge of the design process to begin building bicycle frames.

After five years in Scotland, I used the last of my couriering money to buy a new identity and returned to the United States to pursue frame building...

It goes on a bit more. He studies frame building with Yamaguchi ( who I have heard of ) then I think that in order to clear some gambling debts Jeremy eventually has to go to the Ukraine to build bikes for Priests. But that’s all sorted now.
You can read the full version HERE.

You can check out his work here:
Gallus Cycles

And if you didn't think Jeremy said " Uhmm.." enough in the first clip there's more here:


He's wearing a Millportpoloco shirt in this one which makes it better to watch.