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Fat Chance Bikes traces its origins to Fat City Cycles, a mountain bike frame builder founded by Chris Chance in 1982 in Somerville, Massachusetts, after Chance had built custom road frames independently since 1977. The company became known during the 1980s and 1990s for handbuilt steel mountain bikes such as the Yo Eddy and Wicked, earning a reputation among East Coast riders for lightweight, responsive handling. Fat City Cycles was sold in 1994 and Chance stepped away from the bicycle industry for roughly two decades before reviving the brand as Fat Chance Bikes in 2015, debuting new frames at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show that year. Fat Chance Bikes now operates out of Medford, Oregon, where steel and titanium frames for models including the Wicked, Chris Cross, Yo Eddy, and Slim Chance are built by hand in small batches. Frames are sold individually or paired with a matching fork, with prices for a frame ranging from roughly $2,795 to $4,550 depending on material and model. All frame building, from tubing preparation to final assembly, takes place at the Oregon shop rather than through overseas contract manufacturing.
