It’s All Funked Up! In a kaleidoscope of neon colours, vintage bike parts and funky music, we discuss bicycle customisation, bringing bikes back to life and being a cyclist in Dublin with Mark from Funked Up Bikes.
By Orla Jane O’Connor As you walk through the doors of Funked Up Bikes you are whisked away to a 70s dream oasis of bright colours and chill music. As you wander under a canopy of technicolour wheels and twinkle lights, you can admire the bicycles fashioned like something out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory adorned on the walls. The vibrant aesthetic is matched only by the amiability and patience of the staff. The tight-knit team of three Olaf, Mark, and Rory, the founder and his two trusted repairmen, receive their customers with a smile and a sense of calm that puts them immediately at ease.
“That was the idea, an affordable
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t Funked Up Bikes, not only do they repair and sell bikes, they can create the bike you could have only concocted in your wildest dreams! Using their smart tech software they begin with a simple model, a single speed fixie-bicycle, and then the customisation begins. Any shade, any colour combination under the sun and any parts you may so desire. Mark, the shop repairman, walked us through the simple and efficient software, “ They start at €640 unless you upgrade them parts wise any colour configuration is €640. That was the idea, an affordable bike with little maintenance, customised to your taste, that can get you where you need to go.” A “fixie-bike”, also known as a fixed gear bicycle, is single speed, meaning no gears to increase or decrease the base speed. This is the smart reason Funked Up set up shop in 2011 during the “fixie-craze”, “We mainly did that because Dublin is quite flat, and there are not a lot of hills, and not a lot of people like to get their bikes maintained. It’s a bit of a hassle so what we did was design a bike with as little to maintain as possible, to suit the Irish market.”
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Roof at Funked Up Bikes featuring the customisation system. Photo by Anne Woetzel.
bike with little maintenance, customised to your taste, that can get you where you need to go
The next step in the evolution of the store is restorations. Taking battered and bruised vintage bicycles and mending them, “The idea is to keep it as original as possible. Fix what you can, maintain what you can and at the end of the day if something needs replacing it has to go. Our intention is to bring the bike back to life. That in the window is a JKF (vintage manufacturer) and his initials were originally JFK, because the owner was named Jean Koffman but obviously to avoid confusion, they went by JKF. I have only ever seen two other frames from that manufacturer ever (online) so it is pretty obscure.” Irish interest in bicycles has been growing slowly over the past decade but the quiet of lockdown brought on a new burst of activity as people searched for ways to get out of their houses! “ Big boom in bikes during Covid!
