Highland House
Highland House
SUNDAY RIDE
No High-Speed Thrills, No Distant Horizons, Just All the Motorcycles You Ever Hoped To See
James F. Quinn
The age of motorcycle overspecialization hasn’t reached the Highland House, a restaurant at the corner of Highways 22 and 41 in Highland Park, Illinois, some 15 mi. north of Chicago. On any Sunday (forgive me, Bruce Brown), its parking lot will be filled with the widest, wildest assortment of motorcycles this side of downtown Douglas during the Isle of Man’s TT Week.
Overstatement, you say? Then you haven’t walked down the rows of bikes, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, that show up when the sun’s out and the roads are dry. You’d see lots of stockers and mild customs, Gold Wings with every touring accessory known to man, and more faired and unfaired BMWs than you can shake a driveshaft at. You might also see some of these:
• A cafe racer contingent that includes Kawasaki Eddie Lawson Replicas, Suzuki Katanas, Desmo Ducatis and Le Mans Moto Guzzis, a mid-60s Rickman Triumph street Métissé, a Laverda SFC production racer, a Suzuki-Bimota SB-2, a Honda CB1100R, several 750 and 850 cc MV Agustas (I once saw five parked in a row), and an ex-Reno Leoni, ex-Mike Baldwin NCR Ducati road racer.
• A turbo-bike group, mostly Kawasaki-powered, that includes two six-cylinder waterpumpers, one bored out to 1400 cc and the other sporting a special medallion that reads “KZ1500.” Wretched excess lives!
• A collection of vintage bikes that were legends in your father’s time—a beautiful 1947 Harley 74, an Indian Chief, an Ariel Twin, a Velocette or two and a group of Vincents that will probably include at least one Black Shadow.
• A gathering of sidecars that may include a Laverda 1200 Mirage with matching silver chair, a Vincent Rapide with Steib S501 sidecar on the left, British style, and a variety of Velorexes and SideStriders and Terraplanes bolted to various bikes, mostly BMWs.
Wally Mitchell’s burgundy-and-black Kawasaki Spectre 1100 outfit is the only one in the group to need a sidestand. (The parallelogram linkage he designed for the sidecar he built allows it to lean with the bike and change its steering angle depending on roadspeed, and that means it’d fall over unless he put the stand down or locked the linkage into its rigid mode.)
You might see other exotic machines, less easily categorized. Fred Wacker, an industrialist whose family name is commemorated in Chicago’s Wacker Drive, has nearly 30 bikes in his garage a few miles away, starting with a 1910 Fafnir, whatever that is; he can dazzle the crov/d with rare machinery for weeks without a repeat. Arnold Harvey, a body-shop owner, may show up on his full-dress Harley that’s authentic down to the decals on its fatbob tank—except that it’s really a Honda Gold Wing he lowered eight inches (he admits to being goodlooking but short) and fitted with Harley touring gear.
Or you could see something really unusual, like the big-bike rider who arrived some years ago towing a custom-made trailer, complete with windshield, that contained his pet St. Bernard!
Other than a few small bike-for-sale signs thumbtacked to the bulletin board in its entryway, there’s little in the Highland House’s Roadside Moderne décor, or in its menu, to indicate that it’s Chicago’s most popular Sunday Ride destination. Unlike such California legends as the Rock Store, it isn’t even blessed with interesting roads. Northbound Route 41 is a boring four-lane extension of the Edens Expressway out of Chicago, and Route 22 is a patchy, straight two-lane that links the restaurant with Interstate 94, a few miles west.
It is fun to take a brisk ride down Sheridan Road, a mile to the east, as it snakes south through a series of ravines, but it’s well patrolled and you have to share the curves with joggers, bicycle riders, and matrons in Mercedes Turbodiesels. Gilmer Road, which begins some 10 mi. west, has a few highspeed sweepers in its 18-mi. length, but it rewards horsepower more than riding ability. It takes a ride into southern Wisconsin and a search for curvy country roads to really satisfy the Kenny Roberts impersonators in the crowd.
Yet they keep turning up Sunday after Sunday, along with the tourists, the chopper riders, the vintage owners, and> the rest. For some, breakfast at the Highland House is a good way to start a day of riding; for most, though, the ride to and from the restaurant is all they’ll do that day.
This has been going on for more than 15 years, since the place became a regular Sunday stop for a small group of BMW and British bike owners in the mid-60s. Then called Hal’s, it was a basic roadside drive-in with bench seats, a counter where you ordered your steakand-eggs or coffee to go, and wide windows that allowed paranoid owners to keep an eye on their machines. A change of owners in the early 1970s brought a name change—it became Art’s rather than Hal’s—but the bare-bones décor remained.
When Mike Prokopolous and John Filos bought the restaurant in 1978, they gave it its third name, GiGi’s, and began a series of remodeling projects that eventually reduced the window sizes, bricked the exterior, and subdivided the parking lot. About two years ago, proud of their work, they changed the name again, to Highland House. The name changes have produced generations of riders who can be distinguished by what they call the place.
“When I tell my wife I’m going to Hal’s, she knows exactly where Fm going,” said Tom Daly, a chemist who lives in nearby Deerfield. He’s been a regular Sunday visitor for almost as long as he’s owned his 1969 Norton P-11, rigged as a cafe racer and painted British Racing Green. As a founder of the Norton Owners Club’s Chicago chapter, which existed for a few years in the early 1970s, he introduced a lot of young riders to the restaurant. Many of them still return regularly, though few have remained as true to British tradition.
Italian bikes are Bill Lorenz’ choice; he owns a Moto Guzzi Le Mans and a bright orange Laverda SFC. Although he lives in Evanston, only about 10 mi. south, he’d never heard of the restaurant until he bought the Guzzi about five years ago. “In the first weekend,” he said, “three people stopped by and asked, ‘Do you ever go to Art’s?’ ” It remains Art’s for him to this day.
John Adams’ Suzuki 1100 isn’t really exotic, although it’s probably a better all-round motorcycle than most flashbikes you care to name. It doesn’t please him, though; he says it isn’t fast enough.
You should realize that Adams, a chief deputy U.S. marshal whose job obviously doesn’t include traffic patrol, used to ride a beautiful turbocharged Honda CBX built by his friend Art Bozsi, who also put together the blown Kawasakis most of his friends ride. He had to give it up when its transmission blew; doctor’s orders after his triple bypass surgery prevented him from doing the necessary repair. The Suzuki, he says, just isn’t in the same league.
How fast was the Honda? He found out once on the two-mile crossover road linking Route 41 with 1-94 a few miles south of the restaurant. He pulled away from Bozsi’s six-cylinder, 1400cc Kawasaki, he said, and topped out at 170 miles an hour; that’s enough to give anyone heart trouble. How did it feel? “Not much different than 140,” he says with a grin. Now that’s exotic!
Yet it isn’t necessary to have the newest or the oldest or the fastest motorcycle in the lot to enjoy the Highland House. All you really need is an interest in all sorts of bikes, and perhaps the price of a cup of coffee. It’s a great place to meet old friends, to make a few new ones as well, and to get a close-up look at motorcycles you may never even have heard of before.
Hey, was that a Brough Superior that just pulled in? ES
