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WHY.. One Mans Story On A Thing Called Life

06/18/2021 No Comments

Story: A.J. Herold

My why..

Late May 2020, I just returned back to Redhook from San Francisco, sitting in my Cadillac staring at the broken old pier – I looked as the sun set over New Jersey ruminating in solitude as I thought of going back to the great Golden State.  One last ride, around the Bay on that rigid frame that became my identity, now it’s gone another part of life comes to an end. I have met many good, bad and or indifferent people on the ride of life that meant more to me, people are everywhere for better or ill, and baggage everyone has at least a fanny packs worth, even if they beg to differ.  In the age of pandemics and identity crisis America is still neat, the Gold Coast has no shortage of America is what I found out..

With that said I am going to try this bike thing again … I miss riding, plenty of drama on the internet, if I see you in 3D don’t worry if I don’t make sense because if you see me on 2 wheels, I am escaping outrunning the digital ghost that threatens the narrative, traveling at 800 MHz.  We have all been MK – Ultra test pilots – embrace the breakdowns

why do I ride?

It was a way out of adverse situations, the death of mom, dad, marriage , dreams , death of ideas of self , death of friends , death of relationships , the valleys of life added up to a lot of miles of escape. Five shovelheads now and a flathead, how much longer who knows the kidneys shit the bed on the rigid frames, I got like 150 miles of riding in over the last 2 years … the woods are burning.  I was the new guy late in 86 made my bones on a swingarm shovel running with the fast central jersey crowd.  No fashion art or the internet- straight feral living, by 1991 I had to act like a grown up in my mind and sold the basket case cone to Deal in Wheels in Rahway.  These years dark, dark as they could get, mom died of cancer at home, she was 47 and I was 22;  that bike burned, it burned like a the glow of the refinery just up the great route 1, the bike burned down on rt 1 –  in Rahway it was late 1990, September, my fiancé’ at the time said the words:  “ I hope that thing burns”  – before I left.  I had just repaired it after throwing a chain on the Verrazano Bridge a few days earlier, had to push it to Dyker Heights and go find a new chain and all the jollies and joys of breaking down.  What happened after that? On the way home on the overpass in front of the Kings Inn back in Rahway, fire that’s what… as I headed home from Brooklyn that HD chapter came to an end and so did that engagement, it was midnight and the tow truck chained the burnt bird to the tow hitch and that was it, a fitting end I guess because I bought that bike from a tow truck operator in New Brunswick.

Chapter 2

Rahway to Redhook and twenty years in between 10 without a bike trying to be a grown up living in NYC, selling – the suit and tie life – sitting on a co-op board and being a young father.  That’s is when chapter 2 begins, once again back in Jersey, 2001, I had just got back into it … stay under the radar STAY under the radar, tin foil hats and all the UV protection I could get.  Sold the co-op built a house in Metuchen, I would go to the taxidermy at talk to the old hippies as they prepped a mountain yak.  Flatheads, Panheads, K Sportsters in that old gas station.  Jimmy said my 45 reminded him of an old friend Jeff that use to ride his trike around in the snow of that old Jersey town.  So, it wasn’t long before I was on the radar again, 20 years later and the locals figured me out, hey we know you Captain Carl said, did you use to hang out with so and so and go to here and there and do this and that and so on and so forth … well yes that was me and that was 2 decades ago.  In 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, things happened Dad died in 02 , we had to take him off life support in Daytona, Laconia 04 to see my brother, NYC, and all over the east coast.  I met the lord of the shore, in Asbury and the Pope of the Church of what’s happening now as well. Also, Bill from California a biker celebrity, got him the Forbes cover in 07, rode to Sturgis in 08, Brooklyn invitational in O9 a few shovelheads later a hand full of dead friends, like the dead friends of the 80s they ain’t coming back either.

In parting..

So there it is in black and white WHY, because someday won’t show up on your shore.  All the friends all the miles all the memories are gone for someone else to remember.  So as I sit in this Cadillac and stare at that long sunset over New Jersey,  I think of all the life lived and the short shadow of tomorrow and I think about the next ride out west in the land of gold and orange sunshine.

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Papeel- The DNA Of An Artist

06/18/2021 1 Comment

Story: Mark V

Brazilian artist, Pamela Reis has been creating art since she was a child.  She embraces art in her everyday existence, be it with the brush, or the core elements, which are the roots of her life.    The level of expressionism of her style of art is the purest form and in a naturalistic way, an organic musing.

Her desire, that her art makes all people feel good & instils positive emotions and harmony, along with curiosity and the ability to free the mind as well as the spirit, even if it is just for a moment.

What instills such a person to dig so deep to share a piece of themselves with the world?  I believe that such non-selfishness can only come from the true essence of knowing oneself and just being ok with it.  Guard down, bush up!

 

So, what makes this young lady tick? Her mantra is really the basic aspects to a complete and balanced life. 

The DNA

The meaning of art, her style, motivation, inspiration, and the process to succeed and still please herself as well as others is her DNA and what goes into every stroke of her brush and work.  To explain it all is not why we are here. To be inspired is why you should read on..

The Formula

Pamela’s inspiration begins with the endless memories of her grandmother.  After loosing her at the young age of fifteen, the love and values that were left behind were those only a kindred soul of a grandmother could gift to someone.  She was and still is Pamela’s pillar of strength and guidance.  Her love for her flows through each stroke of her brush.

Besides this world of art there is a love of all animals, with a partialness’ to birds.  If she, had it her way her home would rival the local zoo.   Along with her love for animals comes the passion of sports and music.  A flute player at the age of seven, Pamela can also play guitar and has an obsession for the drums.  After being in a few bands the desire of playing never leaves her soul.  And I hear she is a great point guard, as playing basketball and soccer are yet other passions.  Such is a life of balance.

Now let us get to art of things. 

The Brand – Papeel

In her own words here is the 411:

Papeel is a brand founded by Pamela.  Papeel is an Art Company Brand, who ardently believes that ‘Art’ is an enchanting and powerful medium. Papeel is aiming to bring art in various forms, connecting patrons and lovers of art. The goal is simple – bring art back into people’s everyday lives.

Artwork is represented in various forms, all created by Pamela.   These variations include- canvas paintings, canvas artwork prints, artworks on motorcycle helmets and tanks, artworks for print on clothing and artworks done using pyrography/ wood art. As an art company, Papeel believes that ‘Art can make this world a better place, both emotionally and spiritually.’

As the saying goes: ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. This is true, but paintings are more than just pictures in a frame, they are a kaleidoscope of stories generating numerous discussions and perspectives. The artwork done by Papeel are artworks that aspire to spark discussions through mindfulness, thoughtfulness, harmony, and spiritual awareness.  To Pamela, the world is her canvas.

Canvas Painting is something Pamela truly adores.  To Pamela, “my canvas’ are like my companions with whom I can grow; they reveal the harmony with my surroundings and the deep connection with my inner self. I feel I am illustrating relationships between colors, lines and surfaces.”

Along with her canvas work, Pamela loves to put art on fabrics such as –shirts and is into pyrography which allows her to use wood.

Our World - Tanks & Helmets

Maybe saving the best for last, at least for me is the gift of helmet and tank art Pamela gives to the bike community. 

Being motorcycle rider herself, Pamela enjoys a good ride.  It always resets her, along with giving her great joy.  The freedom to her is priceless.

She began painting helmets in 2018 followed by tanks a year later in 2019.

Her technic is freehand painting. One-of-a-kind artwork on helmets and tanks in a style I have only seen done by her brush.  All her work is done with extreme precision and unrivalled attention to detail. Be it black-n-white, black-n-white with silver or gold papers or fully colored.  She enjoys the entire process.  From the dis-assembly to the final wipe down, each is a journey of its own, and in the end, it is a true work of art that is tailored to its owner. The intention of each design, be it helmet, or tank is to make the finished piece an extension of the owner’s personality and style.  Something that is truly unique like them.

Take the time to enjoy the art before an you will see how all that has been said ties everything together.  This gift is not an accident, it is a blessing we are lucky enough to have shared.

What’s Down The Road

Every day Pamela challenges herself. She continues to evolve, not only within herself but with new art forms.  Experimenting is an everyday adventure. 

Traveling the world is next on the short list. Showcasing her many collection everywhere and anywhere.  Her plans are to invade all industries with her craft, art galleries, automotive, fashion, footwear, hospitality, interior décor, corporate and beyond.

The vision is to see her art in many places, with no geographical or segment restrictions.  To Pamela every space or place is a free canvas, where she can express herself through her art. 

In the end I only see great this for this young lady.  She is truly focused and carries a bag full of good karma! 

As you can see, there is a world outside of what we do on our two or four wheels, but in the end just like the wheel everything comes full circle. 

Enjoy the words and images before you and follow this marvel and watch her continue to grow and take the world by storm.

Be sure to follow follow Pamela !

www.papeel.com.br

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The Type 57x® – An Honest Look at Bringing A Product to Market

06/18/2021 No Comments

By Terence Musto, Creator & CEO, Fabbro Industries, LLC.

Creating a frame with integrated suspension has been my focus for the better part of the last decade. The question I most frequently get is, “what’s taking so long?” In 2015 our first utility patent was granted. In 2017 we finished our first fully functional prototype: the Type 57x®. So, what’s the deal? Why isn’t it ready yet?

To get after this question, I’ll give you an honest, no B.S. look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.  We hit our first major success with the frame in 2017 – I was absolutely honored, intimidated, and stoked to have been invited to Michael Lichter’s Motorcycles as Art™ exhibit at the Buffalo Chip in Sturgis. The focus of the exhibit was “Old Iron, Young Blood: Motorcycles and the Next Gen,” and I knew this was the place to build and show the frame (and bike) that had been in my head for so many years. I set to work: it had to be a 1966 HD flatside shovel, 4 speed trans, and open primary. I set up the frame jig and started bending and coping tube. Three and a half months later the Type 57x prototype was complete, but the work was far from over.

Why integrated suspension?

Rigids look great, but can suck to ride. I know, I know. This is where all the rigid lovers stand up and go “rigids are fine! I put (insert any number) miles on mine!” That’s great – your backs must be tougher than others. We get it.  The simple fact is that riding one is more taxing than riding a bike with suspension. Suspension offers numerous advantages besides ride quality. Its main function is to keep the tire in contact with the ground, which means better traction & performance. By controlling the dissipation of energy through suspension, it also reduces fatigue on the components mounted to the frame. With the good, though, comes the bad. Swing arm systems tend to be bulky. The moving components create no-go zones inside the frame where nothing can be mounted; and the one thing that bothers me most of all is fender gap. Swing arm frames need clearance for the rear tire, which typically limits your fender design options. We’ve all been in a build where we have to make the choice between mounting the fender to the swing arm (leaving a huge gap behind the seat) or mounting it to fender struts and leaving a gap between tire and fender. It’s like Sophie’s Choice, but you hate both kids.

I kept all of this in mind when designing the Type 57x prototype. It had to have:

  • The design lines of a rigid
  • Open space inside the frame, like a rigid (no pivot axle or shock absorbers mounted under the trans)
  • Shock absorbers that were removeable, serviceable, and tunable
  • Minimal clearance requirement for tire movement

Our first prototype not only hit all of our design goals outlined above, but it also gave us proof of concept.  Not only does it work, and the kinematics are there, but the entire system was underdamped. While I was most concerned with stiction & binding, the result was actually a suspension system that activated too easily. So we adjusted our goals and moved forward.

There were still a boatload of questions that we had to answer: how does it ride? How does it ride compared not only to a rigid, but also to a swing arm and Softail®? Where is it underperforming? If/when it fails, where did it fail? Considering the fact that this was my only prototype, and I dumped all my money into it, I couldn’t afford to trash the bike and then rebuild it. So, we set out on building test equipment to get answers to our questions: a shock dyno (to measure performance of the dampeners that I machined in-house), a spring rate tester, and a road simulator (think of a chassis dyno, but it bounces the rear wheel up and down while it spins to simulate the bike going down the road).

We gathered a bunch of data, found some weak spots, and kept the design/redesign cycle going.

Type 57x Frame

What’s next?

Now that we have proof of concept and baseline data, we are turning our attention to tuning the suspension and having our engineering partners perform a complete review of the system for safety & reliability. It’s this step of the process that has proven to be the most difficult, time consuming, and expensive. So, we’re getting creative.

What has two wheels, a seat, handlebars, needs a rear suspension but is 1/3 of the cost to develop compared to a motorcycle? A bicycle. Ridiculous as it may sound, bicyclists face a similar pain point as motorcyclists: roughly 70% of bicycles have no rear suspension, and the bikes that do have rear suspension are meant for going down a mountainside at high speed. Buying a mountain bike for every day, all-purpose riding is like buying a trophy truck as a grocery getter.

Over the last 6 months, we re-tooled, started gathering data, read more ISO guidelines than I care to discuss, and have successfully prototyped our first integrated suspension bicycle concept. A full suspension bike with 2”-3” of suspension travel and four removable, serviceable, and tunable shock absorbers. The beautiful part is that testing is faster; making design revisions and installing them is easier; and comparing across models is significantly less expensive than with motorcycles.

With our first bicycle prototype on the books, and a pile of release of liability forms, we are beginning to bring riders in and getting feedback on the ride. While there is still a mountain of work to do for us to get this product to market, we are excited by the initial feedback we are receiving. Despite setbacks and shortcomings, I am proud of what our small team has accomplished and am extremely optimistic about the future of our suspension platform.

Find out more at FabbroIndustries

and

sign up to schedule a test ride and experience the Type 57x for yourself.

www.FabbroIndustries.com

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stay tuned here at Rubber Culture as we take you with us on this incredible journey!

Flipping off the Past – The New Motorcycle Life in Beijing, China

06/18/2021 No Comments

2021 Michael McCabe 

Photo credits: Michael McCabe, Zhang Yang, Gezi, HCB Motorcycle Club

The traditional hutong, back alley streets of Beijing, China are changing fast: What used to be a slow and quiet life now reflects the changing world. Today, young hipster kids flip off their ancestors, flaunt their tattoos and blast their fast bikes down Chang’an Jie, past the 500 year old Forbidden City.

Dong Dong has been tattooing in Beijing since the late 1990s. His Mummy Tattoo studio is located in the Sanlitun District of central Beijing where many international embassies are located and his clients are from Beijing and around the world. He has one of the best reputations in the city and is respected for his exceptional tattoo work that focuses on images of Chinese and Asian cultural themes. 

A few years ago, Dong Dong established a painting studio 90 minutes away from central Beijing in the Song Zhuang Art District. Old abandoned industrial factory buildings from the 1950s and 60s have been converted by energetic young artists into living and studio spaces. Dong Dong and his friends gravitated to the area in search of an alternative way of doing things. The area now attracts young people who are heavily tattooed, explore a creative lifestyle, and ride and wrench on motorcycles. Dong Dong owns several bikes but his favorite is a Zero Engineering chopper with a Shovelhead motor. The youth based scene at Song Zhuang− the tattoo art, and the motorcycles are tangible forms of freedom and a provocative way to push back against a controlling government.

“The younger generation has been raised up with better education and have more chance to connect with the outside world,” Dong Dong said. “So they appreciate art and are more open to different and new stuff. If they saw a beautiful tattoo, or a beautiful motorcycle they may think, ‘I want one too’, which their parents may think is crazy and unacceptable.”

The combination of tattoos and motorcycles has been around since at least the late 1940s in the west. For decades, tattooed tough guys and women on their bikes have been seen in films and print and used to describe an alt way of life that explored personal freedom. Tattoos and motorcycles are only now gaining traction for young urban people in China. 

Since 1949 under Mao Zedong’s communist system the government exercised more control over everyone’s life. Access to unfiltered information was difficult or impossible. Today for young Chinese people living in modernizing cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing the question of free access to information and free self-determination is becoming critical. Young people in China, don’t want to be told what to do. 

“I am seeing changes,” Dong Dong continued, “More and more young people want their tattoos to be artistic and meaningful. These young people ride on a motorcycle like they are making a new kind of statement.

“My painting studio at Song Zhuang is very important.” Dong Dong said. “There are many artists here and we all enjoy our motorcycles. We all see our art and our motorcycles as a way to be free. This is an old factory building from the 1960s. We changed it and made it an art place. We have rebuilt the history here. We get together and ride our motorcycles and talk about our art. We have seen images from America about art and motorcycle life. This is a good way to live. We learn about V-Twin Harley Davidson, Triumph and BSA… The parallel twin engine. In Beijing and at Song Zhuang there are still some old Chang Jiang sidecar bikes with boxer opposing twin motors. They are left over from the old Communist days. You can hear the old engines coming- chug, chug, chug. This is a sound from the past. We are moving forward now.” 

Dong Dong and his friends at the Song Zhuang Art District have created new options for themselves. They combined images and ideas from their own history together with inspiring impressions from the West in an effort to reshape their lives.

Photo credits: Michael McCabe, photos of Dong Dong in the traditional Gulou neighborhood by Zhang Yang. Several photos at Song Zhuang Art District by Gezi. He was photographing the HCB Motorcycle Club.

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