Self-Assembling GSXR Video

My cousin forwarded this excellent video to me. The film was made by a 21-year-old film maker from "Tullahoma" who goes by the YouTube handle, "Iamthenoah." Cool stuff. 

 

Friction Zone Review

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Mine was a whirlwind tour of friends, family, and eating that happily included some time in one of my favorite man caves, Sam's shed in rural Wisconsin. He has a giant shed (100x50, I believe) that has a small room built inside just for playing cards and talking smart. We did a bit of that, and I hope y'all did the same over the holidays.

Something that really made me feel good this month was this great review of Motorcycle Dream Garages by Kate Edwards in Friction Zone magazine. Edwards really understood the book, and her review pointed out the funky, authentic spaces in the book I love. While all the press for the book has been positive, this review really stands out to me.

Incidentally, the magazine is a great resource, and they will be getting some of my money for a subscription.

PRODUCT REVIEW

Motorcycle Dream Garages

By Kate Edwards
WHEN THE NEW BOOK from moto-journalist Lee Klancher first hit my desk, I have to admit that my heart sank a bit. After all, an arty coffee table book with the title of Motorcycle Dream Garages just seemed to be somehow, well, inappropriate in the current climate of massive job losses and home foreclosures. And the glossy cover shot of a $100,000+ custom bike sitting in front of a beautiful garage that is itself dripping with tasteful appointments and several more glistening two-wheeled doo-dads did little to alleviate my concern. Bluntly speaking, I am just not in the mood for yet another exquisitely illustrated paean to the immaculate tastes of deeply-pocketed mortgage bankers, energy traders, Levittown-developers, and so forth.

Such worries were quickly cast aside once I started thumbing through the book's 192 pages. Pretty moto-cake cover shot aside, Motorcycle Dream Garages is most definitely not Architectural Digest for the dyno set. Yes, several of the places Klancher covers in the book—that tinskinned 'show garage' on the cover surely sets the gold-standard—are drool-inducing examples of the spare-no-expense method of garage design. (And as regards the living quarters over that space-who knew that garage apartment living could ever look so . . . so inviting.) However, once those "Palaces" (as Klancher calls them) are behind us, the book quickly becomes much more than a collection of pretty pictures depicting the sparkly toys of a handful of the well-to-do. Instead, it becomes a fascinating visual treatise on what exactly is meant by the term "dream garage." (Hint: not every dream space has a floor off which one could eat.)

Take, for example, George Hood's place. Well-known as a fabricator without peer in certain circles (and completely unknown to everyone else), Hood runs his business out of a 1960s-era Southern California tract house. As Klancher's photographic essay makes clear (there is text too, but as with the rest of the book, it is the pictures that tell the story), Hood uses practically the whole house for his business. One restoration project sits in the living room, while the covered patio is crammed with lifts and tool benches; the actual garage serves as the machine shop.The welding area is in the back yard, underneath an old satellite dish 'sunbrella,' and everywhere there are mountains of old parts that Hood has come across over the years-including an entire shop's worth that he lucked into when a friend of his went out of business. Hood's 'dream garage' is the kind of place where, as Klancher notes, "[Y]ou could probably build three dozen complete Frankenstein bikes out of the piles of things in Hood's back porch."

While that particular entry in Motorcycle Dream Garages is very much a place of business for its owner (and as such fits nicely into the chapter titled, "The Real Deal"), some places are both more and less than that to their inhabitants. Those types of spaces Klancher labels "Sanctuaries," and here we learn about places of refuge not only for riders, but for bikes as well. There is "Spannerland:" a multi-user garage in deepest, darkest industrial New Jersey. Home to the toys and tools of 11 New York-based riders and collectors, this ultra-secret enterprise houses such goodies as one-of-three-everbuilt Wood-Norton flattrackers, the John Player Norton ridden by David Aldana in the 1974 Daytona 200 (against the likes of Roberts, Agostini, and Romero), as well as a fully enclosed dyno room and an area where one of the owners designs and builds his own parts.

At the other end of the "Sanctuary" spectrum we find Jeffrey Gilbert and "The List." Years ago, this California-based collector compiled a personal list of the most desirable bikes in the world, and then set about getting them for himself. And while one might think that this collector would have a purpose-built structure for his treasures, that is not so. While many of his bikes share space in his cramped three-car garage with a couple of four-wheeled goodies (including a Cobra signed by Carroll Shelby), quite a few are strewn throughout his home like so many metallic Michelangelos and rubberized Rodins. The 1914 Cyclone board track racer (which was lent to the Guggenheim for their 'Art of the Motorcycle' extravaganza) sits in the dining room, the 1957 Moto Guzzi V-8 Mark III backs up the sofa in the family room, and Gilbert's son shares space with a 1962 Honda CR1lO. Like the champion show dog that becomes the family pet, these bikes have finally come home to a nicely prosaic sanctuary after all those years of hard work.

While several of the enterprises illustrated in this book are more about the show than the go (although places like Jay Leno's gorgeous Big Dog Garage with its collection of machines that do get ridden on occasion somehow straddles that line), plenty of space is given to the outfits that are workplaces first and foremost. A prime example in this genre is John's Cycle Center in Woodside, New York.

Begun in the 1950s-and at the same store-front since the 1970s-by three race-mad brothers, this place is your prototypical 'local shop.' Every surface of the smallish shop is covered with parts-some quite vintage as befits a place that has been in business for over 50 years as well as posters, bikes, and the other detritus of a commercially viable obsession. Begun partially as a way to make enough money to keep the owners in gas and tires at the track, it is the kind of place where riders come just to shoot the breeze. About as far as you can get from a multi-brand motorcycle mall, this place works on the bikes "the dealerships won't touch," and, as Klancher puts it, the sole remaining owner is "as busy as he wants to be." Like increasingly rare old-time shops around the country, John's Cycle Center is much more than a motorcycle store-it is virtually a second home for its fans.

Some folks believe that the perfect dream garage is both home and garage. Not surprisingly in light of the wide-range of spaces illustrated here, Klancher includes a stunning example of this design philosophy in the "Takin' Care of Business" chapter. Here we get to see and learn about the design and construction of Mike Tiebold's place in Somerset, Wisconsin. A spectacular 4,200-square-foot space, this building serves as both home, garage, and business place for its owner's aftermarket parts enterprise and was designed on the back of napkins. Clad mostly in tin and brick and with lots of interior glass to help bounce light through the large structure, this place also has a pine-clad living space for its owner that includes a fireplace and other homey touches. In the end, the entire outfit manages to be both spare and warm at the same time—quite a feat.

Motorcycle Dream Garages is a fascinating and beautifully photographed homage to dozens of folks who are obsessed by motorcycles as well as to the spaces they create to house those obsessions. Klancher (along with Kevin Cameron-who wrote the foreword-and collaborators Rick Schunk, Mike Seate, and Kris Palmer) has done an excellent job

illustrating these with his excellent photography. In some of the photos, we can almost smell the grease and feel the grit of the parts-packed spaces. Additionally, Klancher manages to capture the character of his subjects with spare and succinct text that both tells us what drives these people as well as keeps us entertained. (His write-up on the secretive Hollywood fellow with the incredible toy collection is a masterful—and funny—portrait in words.)

In the end, this book certainly deserves a space on the garage bookshelf of anyone who has ever longed for a bigger/better/badder barn for their bikes. And yes, the $35 price tag on this tome might be a bit steep to some in this climate, but just think of it as research or inspiration.

Someday . . . someday . . ..