Back when, you know, in the early days of mountain biking, you had one “real” choice in handlebars. “Bull Moose”, and then flat bars were the norm. Then the 90’s came and the flat bar became “the broomstick” bar. Three degree bend, 23 inches wide, and bar ends maybe. That was standard issue until the mid to late 90’s when the “riser revolution” took place, and that still sums up the bar of choice for a lot of folks.

The point is, handlebars were of little concern up until recently. You got riser bars in your favorite bend/sweep, hacked off the ends, or not, and mounted them up. So, what happened? Where did all this crazy, “funky bar” stuff come from anyway?

Well, to be fair there were always some strange handlebars out there. However; not to the degree we are seeing these days. I think there are a couple of things at play here. Let’s take a look, shall we?

First and foremost, I think the “funky bar” stuff came along hand in hand with the rise of the 29″er as a viable mountain biking platform. I’ve seen a lot of reasons put forth for this, but one that I think is obvious is that riser bars don’t work all that well for a lot of 29″er riders, at least the early adopters. Why? Because the front ends of 29″ers are already taking up height that a riser bar on a 26″er uses to get your hands where you like them. For instance, a typical 100mm travel front fork on a 26″er is in the 430mm-440mm axle to crown measurement range. A 80mm travel 29″er fork has about a 470mm axle to crown measurement. Add in the headset, head tube, and what ever stem rise you have going on and you can see that height isn’t really needed in a handle bar for a 29″er if you are trying to match your 26″ers posistioning, like most early 29″er freaks were trying to do. Other alternatives were needed.

The fact that as a 29″er adopter, you were already on the outside of “normal”, (at least early on) made it easier to try different things as well. You were already “outside the box”, so why not? Several tinkerers and small builders started playing with alternatives and the 29″er freaks latched on to their off the wall ideas. Consider the Jeff Jones H-Bar, which ended up on the front of a lot of early 29″ers to the point that Titec licensed the design to mass produce it. This was also spurred on by the unique offerings of On One’s Brant Richards, whose trio of “funky bars” not only drew from mtb’s rich history ( the Midge and Mungo bars), but looked forwards as well (the popular Mary Bar).

After these bars introductions, it seemed the floodgates were opened, and now there are more “funky bars” than you can shake an aluminum broom stick at! The possibilities for new designs also affected “traditional” bars so that now a “typical” bend in a bar might be 10 degrees or so instead of the “standard” of the 90’s, the three to five degree bend. Some bars have even gone farther than anyone could have imagined just ten years ago. Take Salsa’s Moto Ace 17 degree bar as an example. Almost a boomerang in comparison to bars of the past.

Since the choices have proliferated, how does one decide what to get, and once you do decide, how do you set the bar up? I am going to tackle this gnarly mess in future posts on “Funky Bars”, so look forward to some out of the box set ups and tips. We’ll also detail some specific “funky bars” with tests and reviews here, which we hope will help you find your own handlebar nirvana!