This is a story about bicycle painting, but it’s also a story about what matters in life.
Photo © Bruno Ratensperger
Bruno Ratensperger, Peter Flax, courtesy Holland Cycles
This story begins in a vacant parking lot behind the Deering Banjo Company’s factory. That’s where the bike painter has his workshop. Bright light and laughter and the scent of solvents spill out of the doorway. This scene unfolds in a place called Casa de Oro, an unincorporated community near the eastern edge of civilization in San Diego, California.
He meets me in the doorway with a big grin. His name is Joe Bell. He’s far from famous, but in the relatively small but passionate culture of people who make or love handbuilt bicycles, his dedication to the craft carries a lot of weight. Closing in on 70, Bell has been painting bicycles for his entire adult life.
None of his friends or collaborators call him Joe. They all call him JB. Everyone seems to smile when they say JB out loud.
Bell starts with a tour of his workshop. He shows me the compressors, the two interconnected sand-blasting cabinets (“I don’t get a lot of tandem frames these days,” he shrugs), lockers full of specialty paints manufactured by DuPont during the Carter administration. Scraps of sandpaper are everywhere. JB points to a door and mentions there’s a one-sixth scale Learjet behind it, like that’s a totally normal thing to say.
The work of one master in the hands of another. Photo © Peter Flax
Dozens of gorgeous raw frames hang from the rafters – each of them somebody’s dream destined to be realized in technicolor with decals for Richard Sachs or Holland Cycles or Rivendell. There are vintage Colnagos awaiting a makeover and a ginormous Holland on display – one of many bikes that JB painted over the years for NBA legend Bill Walton, who passed away in 2024. The walls of the expansive space are lined with stickers of deceased bike brands and framed black & white photos and posters of races that no longer exist.
Then it’s handshakes with the guys hanging out in the workshop. All of these guys are regulars here. We’ll explore this brotherhood soon enough, but for starters it’s safe to say that hundreds of years of experience in the craft of designing and building and painting bikes are present, nursing ice-cold Tecates, awaiting the right moment to give JB shit in the most loving way possible.
One of the guys cracking jokes is Bill Holland. He’s been fabricating bikes near Casa de Oro since the 70s. He’s the one who gave a young Joe Bell his first job; the one who taught him to paint frames in a professional manner. Holland points toward the parking lot. “Walk through that door and it’s 50 years ago,” he says.
Everyone laughs, but it’s not exactly a joke.
An unlikely origin
Joe Bell grew up about 20 miles and a world away from Casa del Oro. Back then, Imperial Beach, which is closer to Tijuana than downtown San Diego, was hardly some bougie coastal enclave. “Down in IB, it was easy to fall in with the wrong crowd,” he says. “I wasted a lot of my youth at the pier, mostly standing around doing nothing.”
The journey to a different life began with a Schwinn Varsity. Bell lived eight blocks from the beach, so he used that bike to get to the pier and wherever else he wanted to go. When he turned 16, he thought briefly about getting a driver’s license but ultimately decided it would complicate his life. He realized he could go anywhere he wanted on that Schwinn, and he began venturing farther from home.
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