EVERY THIRD WEDNESDAY IS “TROPHY NIGHT,” WHERE ATTENDEES WANDER AROUND THE BIKES AND PLACE A POST-IT NOTE ON THEIR FAVORITE. THE BIKE WITH THE MOST STICKERS AT THE END OF THE NIGHT WINS. “Sometimes it’s a really nice bike,” says Troy, “and
Double Love: (Opposite, middle and bottom left) The first bike that Joey built for his wife Jen Subrizi was a Vespa scooter. She’s since graduated to “Black Betty.” (All others) Joey’s dirt-bike-turnedcafé-racer features plenty of his own handiwork, including a custom rear shock and hand-pierced brass decals.
JOEY AND JEN SUBRIZI
Even though he is an original member of the OCR, Joey Subrizi is one of the “kids” of the group. A former parts manager at Touring Sport BMW, Joey is now a salesman for Öhlins, a Swedish suspension company whose North American headquarters is located in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Unlike many in the OCR gang, who started riding as kids, Joey didn’t get his first bike until he was almost 20. “My parents said I couldn’t get a bike until I moved out,” he says. “So I moved out at 19, and the first thing I bought was an old 1970 Triumph Bonneville. My dad and I rebuilt it together.” Over the next few years, Joey’s interest moved into sport bikes and road racing, but as he puts it he has “always dug old bikes”— rebuilding, retooling, and modifying them in his shop at home. “The last bike I rebuilt was Jen’s bike; it’s a Yamaha XS360,” says Joey. “I call her ‘Black Betty,’” adds Jennifer, who took up riding almost a decade ago, right after she and Joey began dating. The couple was married last November. “We only dated for ten years,” says Jennifer. “No rush.” The first bike Joey rebuilt for Jennifer was a 1980 Vespa. “Even though it was a scooter, it still hauled ass,” says Joey. Then two years later, the couple purchased the Yamaha and according to Joey, “Jen’s been raising hell on that thing ever since.” The couple rides together around Greenville and often up to the mountains of western North Carolina, Joey on his “project,” an old dirt bike he has rebuilt into a “café racer” and Jennifer on “Black Betty.” “When we ride our bikes together in a pair, we get a lot of attention for sure,” says Joey. “It’s pretty entertaining—it raises a lot of eyebrows.” For the Subrizis, the adrenaline produced by riding vintage bikes is hard to replicate elsewhere. “It’s a totally different state than riding in a car,” says Joey. “When you’re riding down a road and you go through a dip and you feel the air change ten degrees or ride by a lake or pond or fresh cut grass and smell those things, your senses don’t pick up when you’re in a car. It’s like your own little happy world.”
sometimes it’s something that’s really trashed out that we all think is cool and are amazed that it even made it there.” Troy adds that if you own a bike that’s so nice you don’t want a sticky note on it “you’re probably in the wrong place.” The prize itself is something of a showpiece, a revolving trophy that begins in January as a single part, like a sprocket or brake disk. “If you win, you take it home and add something to it and bring it back the next time,” says Troy. “And if there is something on there that you need for your bike, you can take it off and use it.” The trophy grows more interesting as each month’s winner adds a new part, although there is no rule that forbids adding non-motorcycle items. One winner fused a Barbie head to the mash-up of parts. By the end of the year the trophy becomes a piece of “modern art” and can be quite cumbersome. One December winner had to leave and return with her second bike, the one with a sidecar, in order to transport the trophy home safely. Another OCR tradition takes riders across town to Berea to sample the specialties of the local food trucks. “Somebody, usually either me or Troy, will call a ‘Taco Tour’ every two or three weeks,” says Barry. “We’ll meet at the Handlebar on a Friday or Saturday, get everybody lined up, and ride in a big group with a couple of old cars behind us to go have tacos. We hit one spot, then load up and go somewhere else.” Sometimes as many as thirty riders will make the “tour.” “There will be scooters, guys on mopeds, Harleys with drag pipes, I mean all kinds of stuff,” says Barry. So, if you stick to Webster’s definition of gang: “a group of persons having informal and usually close social relations,” then the OCR is definitely a gang. But, at its core, it is just a good group of people who love the look, feel, and adrenaline vintage bikes can provide. People who like talking about throttle cables and bore diameters over cheeseburgers and beers. Friends who want to share a common interest and the occasional taco. As Barry says while finishing his banana pudding, “It’s a mellow group. I haven’t seen anything unruly in quite a while.
Another OCR tradition takes riders across town to Berea to sample the specialties of the local food trucks. “Somebody will call a ‘Taco Tour’ every two or three weeks,” says Barry. “We’ll meet at the Handlebar on a Friday or Saturday, get everybody lined up, and ride in a big group with a couple of old cars behind us to go have tacos.”
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