When Curran Swint walked into a barbershop back in 2017, he had no idea the visit would result in him riding a 10-mile loop around Philly or starting an international bike club that now boasts hundreds of members. He just wanted a haircut. But the thing was, when he sat down in his chair, he noticed that one of the other barbers, a friend, had dropped a considerable amount of weight. Riding bikes was the man’s answer to the how. For the why, he invited Swint to join him and some friends on a ride that Sunday. And so Swint threw on some Nike shorts and a tank top and borrowed his brother’s Walmart mountain bike and helmet, and hit the road.
“They were kicking my butt,” says Swint about the inaugural ride. “I was just trying to catch up.” The struggle was real, but Swint, now 36, was hooked. He rode with the four-person crew the following Sunday, too, this time for 20 miles, and was determined to get better at it. Swint figured this called for a major upgrade to his bike, but the price for a decent one came with major sticker shock. “Where I’m from, people don’t spend $1,000 on a bike,” he says. Thankfully, he found a shop where he could finance one. From there, it was on, every Sunday. The group also put the call out on Instagram and around the city, and word spread. “All the little pockets of Black people who rode bikes [in the area] started getting together,” Swint says.
Swint was already a known entity in Philly, a man-about-town since the launch of his lifestyle blog, “Kings Rule Together” (KRT), in 2010. The blog added a clothing line the following year. And then in 2017, when the cycling club started to grow, Swint says it only felt natural to extend the KRT brand to include it, and KRT Cycling was born.
By 2019, the club had seven members riding consistently, so they signed up for the crew’s first official ride, an annual fundraiser event called The Bend to the Shore, organized by The Families Behind the Badge Children’s Foundation. The ride is 65 miles from Philadelphia to Atlantic City and raises funds to provide financial relief for the families of fallen or critically injured first responders.
“This was the biggest amount of miles we ever did,” Swint says. “We’re like, ‘Yo, we got to train for this event, because we don’t want to go out there looking crazy.’” Completing this ride got KRT street cred and exposure, and the group quickly grew to over 20 members.
Then came 2020. “When the pandemic hit, the basketball courts were down, gyms were closed. But we were still outside riding bikes,” Swint says. With the sudden surge in membership interest, Swint hosted meet-and-greets for new members, started designing KRT merch, and hunted down a manufacturer to produce club cycling kits. And by the end of 2020, KRT had more than 50 members, including a new division of the club dedicated to women cyclists called Queens Rule Together (QRT).
Yes, KRT/QRT was offering weekly rides, info sessions, and discounts on gear, and promoting healthy lifestyles—but beyond the services it offered, the club was creating a vibrant, necessary community in spaces that have not historically been welcoming for Black cyclists. KRT/QRT now has more than 360 members across 20 states and five countries. Swint continues to travel, raising awareness, boosting international interest in the cycling clubs, and launching initiatives, such as donating bikes to schools in Ghana (in collaboration with nonprofit CycleGhana).
In May 2023, the club celebrated its third annual season opener in Philadelphia, called, fittingly, the Royal Weekend. The three-day ticketed event was packed with rides, dinners, and off-bike activities and was open to members and nonmembers alike. The weekend’s focus was community, and a little over 300 riders joined the fun.
On the Saturday after the weekend’s big ride, a live funk band welcomed the tired riders as they rolled into the parking lot of Tricycle Cafe and Bicycle Shop (a Black-owned shop outside the city in Conshohocken). Over a catered lunch, riders from Virginia, Washington, D.C., and as far as away California hung out and talked about their own local rides and what events they were doing that summer. Swint also arranged a sort of “recovery zone” under a tent, where riders could get massages and assisted stretching. Next to that was a smaller tent with racks of the colorful and stylish club apparel, which was selling out fast. Swint thought of everything. “I’m in the people business,” he says. “I’m not just selling the product; I’m making people happy. It’s a whole experience.”
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Nicole Blades is a novelist, speaker, and freelance journalist who covers women's health, race and culture, books and publishing, and stories of reinvention for various national print and digital magazines. She lives in New England with her husband, son, dog, and a sky-high stack of books by her bedside that she calls Mount Nightstand. Find out more about her at NicoleBlades.com.
