One of the great things about the frame building industry is the steady inflow of energetic young, clever people that continues show up and set up for the long haul. Zach Weiss is all of the above, and he’s gone about it in a time-honored fashion, apprenticing for several years under a highly respected frame builder, in this case John Caletti in Santa Cruz.

After a four-year stint with Caletti, Weiss has set up Zabrina Cycles in Oakland, a short drive across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, in a part of the USA that has been a cycling hotspot since the dawn of the bicycle.

Zach Weiss and a sample of his neat TIG work. Photo: Zabrina Cycles

Cycling in the San Francisco Bay Area dates back to the 1890s. A few miles to the south of San Francisco, at the southern end of the Bay but in the same conurbation, is the city of San Jose , the site of seven Velodromes over the decades. San Francisco itself has been the location of many great cycling events over the years, going all the way back to the high-wheel racing era when competitions took place in Golden Gate Park.

The tech boom at the end of the Twentieth Century priced out many frame builders, while the older, established builders gradually aged out. With market conditions and government policy tilted toward tech startups funded by venture capital and stock market money, the barrier to both entry and survival soared well out of reach not only for new builders but many others in the arts, crafts, and light manufacturing industries. 

Moving into the new millenium, over a span of 15-20 years frame building almost disappeared from the Bay Area. But competition for tech companies from other states was starting to bite, and then came the Great Re-evaluation of Covid which saw legions of techies leave the Bay Area, and conditions eased just enough to allow frame builders back in. 

Zach grew up in Chicago, and then moved to California to study geology at Pitzer College in Claremont, at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains, where cycling is a popular activity. He started working at the university-run bike co-op there, and by the time he graduated in 2020 his experience customizing bikes had got him thinking about frame building.

This bike would be great in the San Gabriel Mountains. Photo: Zabrina Cycles

He reached out to several frame builders for an apprenticeship, and after several positive rebuffs (“Even though they didn’t have any openings, they were encouraging, saying I should keep looking, keep trying to find somebody,” he said) finally John Caletti took him on for two days a week, and then after a while fulltime.

Zach worked with Caletti from May 2020 until February 2024, when he set up in Oakland. While living and working in Santa Cruz, about 90 minutes by car from San Francisco, he’d made friends with metal fabricators in the Bay Area and now supplements his income doing metalworking jobs for them and for The Crucible, a community metal working shop in Oakland.

While working for Caletti, Zach was producing about 12 bikes a year on his own, and with 50 frames made would be generally considered a competent early-career frame builder among the industry seniors. His TIG work looks great, and the bikes he’s currently producing are lean, lightweight, and perfect for gravel and adventure rides. He was inspired by Caletti’s Scrambler design, and loves making bikes in that theme.

You'll see a lot of Caletti Scrambler themed bikes from Zabrina. Photo: PBE/Brad Quartuccio

The Scrambler is essentially a fast, flat-bar gravel bike. The top tube is longer to mitigate the reduced forward reach compared to a drop-bar bike, and the head angle is set to correctly weight the front wheel. It's the perfect vehicle for long rides not only in the Santa Cruz Mountains, or the similar topography of the big hills surrounding the San Francisco Bay, but many other regions too where there are long offroad decents.

Gravel and smooth singletrack descents are manageable on drop-bar gravel bikes, but it’s a lot more fun with flat bars. Worried about the wind? Just add mini aero bars and you’ll be better equipped than a drop-bar bike. 

“I’ll make whatever the customer wants, but the bike I like making the most is for people who appreciate them. Just having a good customer who’s a fun person to work with is way more important than having the coolest or quirkiest design. The bike should be as light and as responsive as it can be, it’s a performance oriented bicycle. That’s where I lean, and when I get a customer who really rides their bike I get really excited by that.”

With Caletti’s blessing, Zach has based several of his bikes on the Scrambler concept, but with a variation: a segmented fork. He prefers the heavier segmented fork for improved vibration damping and ride comfort as well as greater options in accommodating large front tires.  

More nice TIG work in this segmented fork from Zabrina. Photo: Zabrina Cycles

Along with Zabrina, we know of Artefact and King Fabrications as other frame builders that have opened for business in the Bay Area in recent years. HBG welcomes frame builders returning to the economically flattened San Francisco, since this community brings with it the style, colour, and culture of the arts and crafts world to a city that went far too deep down the rabbit hole of silicon tech. Looking at the long line of empty storefronts along San Francisco’s once-booming Market Street, having artists and artisans occupy those vacant spaces could be just what the city needs these days.