Hi Marlon, it’s a pleasure to chat with you today. Let’s start at the beginning: tell us a bit about yourself and your childhood.
Hi Emanuele. It’s my pleasure and honor..I’ve been a fan of @save.the.rat.bike and your previous venture with Kory York since day one so It’s really cool we’ve connected and I’m really looking forward to seeing what you do next. I was born in Poggibonsi in 1990, a citadel near Siena, in tuscany. My mother came from Germany to study medicine in her early 20s and my father who’s family was part of the cameroonian consulate in Rome, was studying political sciences. Lived in the Chianti area, for the first 3 years of my life, before moving south to Umbria when my father passed away. There we lived in the middle of nowhere outside a tiny village about 40 min away from the region’s capital of Perugia. I was a country kid. I climbed trees. Chopped wood. Had large pets. Mom was a healer, creative and very resourceful..we were not well off by any means but there was no lack of love and she knew a lot of cool people , mostly expat bohemians who’d also found a home amongst the beautiful umbrian hills, exposing me to the international ,weird and wonderful side of life. All that was Juxtaposed with the simple ways of rural italian culture that I was confronted by when going to school and such and so growing up presented many interesting challenges for a mixed raced kid with a somewhat hippy mom. I spent a lot of time alone, but I always loved my own company doing little projects, drawing and dreaming big.
I soon found my tribe of misfits who were also into the things I was into and so I can honestly say that I had a great childhood. As the teen years rolled in, I was lucky to go study abroad in England and then India for my remaining highschool years, before eventually moving to London age 19/20.
How did your love for bicycles come to life?
It was a eureka moment in my late 20s..
I came to London and soon was absorbed by the night life. I dabbled in music production and djing, a hobby I still have to this day, but became somewhat disenchanted by the lifestyle I was leading and was yearning for something completely different but didnt know what yet.
The place I was working at for years was about to go bust and we were made aware in advance so I started actively looking for a plan to make some quick cash in the hopes of perhaps moving somewhere else. People I knew were starting to get into couriering and bike delivering and I thought I might try that. I didn’t have a bike though…
I started “digging” like I did with records. Over the course of a couple of weeks, even before pulling the trigger on a bike, I watched every possible bike documentary I could. All the new york and san francisco messengers stuff, Tour de france from back in the day..I got so obsessed by the poetic nature of the bike world. It spoke of independence!
Anyways, in the end, I got a Fuji Track off ebay for £100 and started doing deliveries around london. It was late november, it was dark and cold and to my surprise, I wasnt hating it, on the contrary, I absolutely loved it.
I started running it fixed instead of single speed and boom! All the tropes are true..you feel one with the machine. You’re engaged in every pedal stroke and whatever you might have been going through or thoughts disappear..you’re hooked to the path of least resistance, avoiding potholes and cars and people. I grew confident, strong and adventurous..it changed me mentally and physically. I lost weight, I started meeting all kinds of people , I got to know the city from a different angle and that’s how my love for cycling started.
“A rat bike is a dance between consideration and freedom..it is an art.”
When did you decide to open Babyldn? Was there a particular moment or event that made you think, “It’s time to start this adventure”?
Babyldn started as a diary essentially, I wanted to share my new found passion and so started an instagram page. Bike shops were ripping me off or were generally not welcoming…So I thought, I’ll do it on my own…watched a lot of youtube, annoyed the hell out of my local bike shop at the time and soon enough I got a good handle on it. All the surplus stuff that I had bought then replaced to improve my bike turned into other bikes. I was going to car boot sales, buying anything I could to then create more bikes out of; mostly single speeds and cobbled together stuff…Rat bikes I suppose. Every bike I bought taught me something different about how a bike is made…but also provided some interesting one off or rare pieces sometimes. It caught on and the page grew and I started doing more and more of that..refining and upgrading, learning, rinse and repeat for a couple of years.
A big turning point was the death of my mother in 2021. It made me reassess a lot of things obviously and it pressed the importance of doing what you love in life because it can be snatched away from you at any point, so why waste time doing something you don’t want to do.
The meditative quality of the focus required to build a bike helped me through the mourning period and projects helped me get out of bed with a mission, a purpose . At this point I was starting to approach it more as an art form, I wanted to create beauty. It reminded me of making music, like finding the right sounds, I wanted to find the right parts.
Then bike sales during lockdown sky rocketed so that gave me the financial platform to go all in.
Fate then, serendipitously, offered me to take over the reins at this community bike shop in South London; that’s when it took on a whole other dimension and the dream became manifest. It took me from my backyard to a proper physical space with all the necessary tools. But it also gave me a third motive, a why!
My passion was equally split between sourcing parts, building a bike, taking cool photos of it, the elation of a sale and the reward of a happy customer. The community bike shop added the element of giving back and the human interaction that it comes with.
I was truly excited to learn that my project, Save The Rat Bike, has been an important source of inspiration for you. That makes me so proud because we share the same philosophy. What stood out to you about Save The Rat Bike?
Save the rat bike was the mirror that said…you don’t have to follow any rules. Be experimental, be adventurous and have fun with your builds. It was raw, it was hip hop, it was punk or whatever counter culture movement you subscribe to! It said it isn’t what you have, it’s what you do with it. It was an F you to the establishment and I’m big on “F the establishment” ahaha..
Both the road bike stuff and to a lesser extent the fixed gear world I was into at that point, struck me in retrospect as elitist and I realised I was sucking up to this imaginary perfect bike crowd. I mean sure, there was that whole rough rusty grunge aesthetic around the urban track bike scene with obscure USRR frames or what not but it always felt that in the end, the pinnacle was to have what everyone saw as the ideal track bike. The Cannondale C Track or whatever with all the right dura ace or phil wood, the expensive stuff basically. And with the road bikes, even the neo retro stuff, the same…
The extent to which you could experiment was proportional to what you could afford.
Rat bikes on the other hand, seemed to propose a lateral approach..sure, you could still slap on something high end like a Chris King headset or whatever to show people you knew the good stuff, but it was so much more playful and brimming with character.
It felt like a mechanics rebellion; those confined to the rear of a bike shop, servicing bikes they would never be able to afford said ok, lets pillage off the stuff your “latest greatest people” dont want anymore, and watch me create something super fun to ride! It educated me greatly…like wow I didn’t think that would work with that…It inspired me to find my own way.
A rat bike is a dance between consideration and freedom..it is an art. And that’s what I ultimately think building bikes is, or can be.
In your shop and workshop in London, you work a lot with 26-inch MTB frames, a standard many now consider obsolete. Like Save The Rat Bike and my brand KOLE, you also seem to believe these bikes still have a lot to offer. What drives you to work with this format, and why do you think it’s a valid choice for commuting and touring?
Mtbs are fun! Fun to ride and fun to build. There’s virtually no limit to the combinations you can come up with..you can use track bike stuff, road bike stuff, drop bars or flat, single speed or gazillion speed..so versatile.
Specifically, apart from the obvious stuff like the ability to run fatter tyres or the frames being sturdy enough for carrying things and generally full of character, it’s the fact that the buy-in is relatively cheap. Secondly, if built to suit, mountain bike cruisers (atb whatever you want to call them) are much more comfortable to ride for the average person..this means that its likelier to draw more people into cycling. Just watched the Radavist documentary on how the mountain bike scene started and there’s no better explanation than that really.
Having said this, there’s definitely a new normal developing and the scene is getting a little saturated with similar looking expressions…so I am always looking to break it up in some way.
Luckily, custom builds allow me to engage with other people’s desires and preferences and that pushes my boundaries. The holy trinity being, “what the customer wants (or think they want)” plus “what the customer can afford” and “what I like (or think i like)”..and that’s rarely a boring game 🙂
Sustainability is an increasingly important topic, and I believe that giving new life to old frames is a revolutionary act. How important is it for you to contribute to a more sustainable approach in the world of bicycles? And how do you see the role of shops like yours in this movement?
The bicycle is such a low tech solution to so many issues we face locally and globally. The industry however isn’t exactly renewable. Big rubber and big metal are still major players obviously so not a green industry by default . Re-using, re-cycling and upcycling ought to be one of the tenets in any bike venture and I’m really surprised by how low of a priority it is.
The tag sustainable gets slapped on Babyldn by default. It isn’t a priority, it’s simply in its DNA. Yet it is more of a by product than a conscious act. I just have so much stuff left over that I have collected over the years and so many parts and frames get donated that it’s only natural for me to be resourceful in this way. By no means is it any easier though. Matter of fact it isn’t and I understand why bike shops don’t meddle with it much. Second hand can be a false economy, especially with parts. There’s always a little bit of risk involved and It can be time consuming refurbishing parts, cleaning them only to find out they are faulty or broken or incompatible for some reason. In the same token, aesthetically or even mechanically, a good retro part can really add something to a build, newer parts can’t.
Then there’s also the growing market of the ALT bike scene, with players such as VeloOrange and Stridsland that cater to the DIY-/alternative resto mod crowd. They allow the maintenance as well easy ways to upgrade a retro bike. I like to support them too.
This touches on the following interpretation of sustainability: for me it’s the act of sustaining the culture and community around you. I’d much rather support a local frame builder, local bike shop or a small brand, simply source bits off people I know, I like or follow than buying something off a big retailer just because it’s a few pounds cheaper there. There’s so much value in supporting your immediate community. Sustainability is also the awareness that the scene has to be sustained by those who profess to be part of it because we could ironically be running the risk of there only being one giant supplier one day because we decided to do it on our own forgetting all the small players around the corner.
What is the most important bike you own? Is there a particular story behind it?
It’s my 1988 rockhopper..its got that iconic two tone cream and blue colourway.
I had swapped one of my beloved fixies for it and it rearranged the way I looked at cycling and bikes in general. It’s what started the current Babyldn aesthetic. I thought good bikes were thin tyred, fast, stripped down bla bla bla and what I found was that chonky tyres, swept back bars and a basket is what my city life needed. I suppose it came after a couple of years of riding fixed hard, and maybe my age and knees caught up to me. Once I started looking into 26er builds on instagram more, you know how it is, the algorithm bombards you with more of the same and I suppose I got further brainwashed 🙂
Tell me about the routes you love to ride. Do you have a favorite path in London or outside the city? Maybe one of those routes that turns every ride into a little adventure.
I must confess that I don’t nearly ride enough as I should outside of my commute from home to the shop. Other than the occasional group ride we put on, I don’t really do bike packing or stuff like that much..I’m a city rat. Having said that, there’s about 3 or 4 ways to get to work and depending on the bike I’m riding, there’s always a few spots where I can go off road a bit and skid 🙂
Looking to the future, how do you imagine Babyldn in the coming years? Do you have any new projects or dreams you’d like to pursue?
In the short term, I’d like to make use of my growing social media platform to partner up with brands who would like to give back and support the community bike shop with the necessary perishables, tool kits, think brake pads, inner tubes etc…who knows, even complete bikes. Apart from a rent subsidy by the council and people donating some components and frames and the odd mix bag, right now everything is more or less self funded, meaning what I make with custom builds and services goes back to restocking the community workshop and building kids free bikes. Very proud of that, but I reckon I could get some bigger companies involved.
Currently, I am collabing with a friend of mine to create high end premium restorations. He’s a mechanical wizard, I suggest an impossibility and he turns it into reality.
Don’t want to spill all the beans just yet but our first outing will be a resurrected Bianchi Grizzly mountain bike with a modern twist…Should drop early 2025..Hopefully that will bring in the clientele that keeps everyone’s lights on…
Long term, I always wanted a spot! A place where all my interests converge…that being a record shop, food, events, bike shop all in one.
But for now I’m content with creating nice bikes, you know if I was a rich man I’d still be doing this so..just enjoying the journey, learning and helping people fall in love with bikes.
Before we say goodbye, is there something you’d like to say to all the bike enthusiasts out there?
Yes. Life’s too short to be a square…so save the rat bike cuz the rat bike will save you back…and maybe a bit of money too…hmmmmaybe not! You can follow the journey @babyldn.bikes on instagram or babyldn.com
