DEATH OF THE NEO-CUSTOM
UP FRONT
EDITOR'S LETTER
REMEMBER THE “CHOPPER” CRAZE?
Of all the custom-bike trends I’ve witnessed in my motorcycling years, I’d have to say the neo-custom, or as columnist Paul d’Orléans likes to call the “alt.custom,” has been my favorite.
Because while any custom trend has its unrideable versions of work, what makes the neo-custom scene so nice—so cool—is that it’s mostly focused on cheap base bikes and has a sort of practical ethic. The bikes are generally on the lighter and simpler side, and, even if the knobby tire is a bit over-embraced, the hope and wish of builders seems to actually be a motorcycle you can ride a lot of places. And we have done our share of coverage.
In fact, Gary Inman’s story on the Wrench Monkees (“Three Danish hipsters take a bunch of established ingredients and shake up a whole new biking cocktail”) in 2010 was a great piece produced when the neo-custom ignition kernel was just lighting off on our current Bike EXIF-fueled era.
Of course, back in the day, we put Jesse James’ motorcycles on our cover more than once and for good reason. It was creative, good work for the time. “Radial Hell” in 2007 was a nice one with a seven-cylinder Rotec aircraft engine, which was pretty much just a WCC bike with a weird powerplant. Particularly good, though, was the February 2004 “Killer Cafe” Honda VTX-based, candy-redcolored custom built sometime after Jesse James told me “choppers are stupid” when I was interviewing him about a chopper-ish creation he built for a cigarette company. I do recall Jesse and a few of his guys working on very purposeful-looking Suzuki Hayabusas at the time, and the T-shirts had always been paying the bills anyway.
That is one seemingly constant theme here, no matter the era: Most custom builders don’t actually make much money on the bikes but rather use them as loss-leaders and PR exercises to demonstrate the creativity in their work. Which expands to
selling bolt-on parts, T-shirts, belts, or branded beer, and we can therefore all get our piece of the growing legend.
As they say today, it’s all about merch.
The value of the build is the creativity around the build, as the designers read and lead fashion as expressed in the machines we love. There are many caricatures of motorcycles built purely in the name of art, but, as I said, it’s great how many are built to ride today.
However. I said “death” up there. The only reason I say this is that it’s on TV. Esquire Network’s Wrench Against the Machine has three of the current top builder/branders judging a build-off between two teams. It echoes Biker Build-Off from the early 2000s but looks better and sounds better. Or maybe that’s just my memory of the chopper show. In any case, Alan Stulberg of Revival Cycles gets with Roland Sands and Michael “Woolie” Woolaway of Deus Customs as judges. It’s not a huge surprise that there’s a tight deadline and too little budget, which means the competing builders on each show are bound to have some conflict and stress. For without it, we wouldn’t have television.
Nothing wrong with the show at all, and those are three of the coolest, most talented, and resourceful guys I know. It’s just that by the time this kind of thing hits mainstream TV, it means the next big thing is brewing. I’m just glad motorcycles continue to make good programming.
And just the same way that choppers didn’t die when West Coast Choppers shut its doors, the cafe/adventure/tracker thing will not die either.
No, customs aren’t going anywhere, and creative people evolve and/or lead the next big thing. Passion and creativity are timeless.
MARK HOYER
THIS MONTH’S STATS
60 ESTIMATED PERCENTAGE OF REVENUE WEST COAST CHOPPERS MADE ON MERCH
0 NUMBEROF STAFFERS WHO'VE HAD CARPALTUNNEL SURGERY
zero FULLY FAIRED “CHARACTERS” MOTORCYCLES
