It all started in Shawn Tyrone’s (Manager of Las Vegas Cyclery) dad’s Corvette Restoration shop. At 11 years old, Shawn started working with the simple task of sweeping floors and helping out where he could. Slowly he started taking on more responsibility involving auto repair and restoration and developed a skillset from there. In his Dad’s shop Shawn developed the spark for all things custom. The first things that Shawn painted in the shop were spot paint jobs on crash repairs.That quickly evolved and he had a lot of success doing custom paint jobs on automobiles. His first real custom job he did on his own was for a woman named Linda, and she was a female protégé of Liberraci for a show that used to be in Las Vegas. She had a black corvette and she wanted a set of piano keys across the car. Shawn incorporated some sheet music a large rose and it got featured in a number of magazines.
When Shawn got into cycling all the custom painting work translated over well. In 1991, he painted his first mountain bike, a Terry Grimes full suspension MTB. He painted it a purple pearl, with matching wheels and that was the start of his journey as a custom bike artist. Shawn has since painted bikes for Cannondale. and SRAM. SRAM hired Shawn to paint a custom triathlon bike to showcase what was then, cutting edge shifting technology! Shawn also did some work for Cannondale’s Best Buddies program.
Each bike is different; sometimes he is given parameters to work with (themes, colors, etc) and other times he has the freedom to use his creative license. Depending on what people want he will free hand graphics, use stencils, airbrush, etc. It helps when people have a theme, like the B-52 Bomber Plane bike or the Porsche bike (both on display at Las Vegas Cyclery. He’s done murdered out bikes with murder scenes- not just painting everything black but truly taking it all the way! On his Cannondale Scout he did a steampunk scene with all brass and leather. He went so far as to make the cable guides out of custom bent out of stainless brake housing on a Not every bike is all custom but they can be! These bikes are a lot of work- the Cannondale that he painted took about 120 hours!
Shawn has a waiting list of people that want him to paint their bikes in Las Vegas Cyclery but incorporating these unique bikes into the LVC fleets is something he is very excited about. Specialized sent Las Vegas Cyclery a Special Edition Splatter Paint road bike (sorry for the technical jargon). When it arrived, Shawn said, “It just cries out for embellishment.” It didn’t take long for Jared Fisher to encourage Shawn to embark on this journey within the shop walls (Jared LOVES originality and new ideas). Shawn got to work, wrapped up that bike project in a week and he has already working on decking out a CHROME Specialized Tarmac.
Las Vegas Cyclery and Moab Cyclery. To learn more, come by one of our shop locations, follow us on Facebook, Instagram and subscribe to our email newsletter.
