F E AT U R E
S PA N N E R U P PHOTOGRAPHY BY XANDER DIXON
MICHAEL DOBSON is a longtime motorbike petrolhead. He chats enthusiastically to JOHN BRISTED about his history with motorbikes.
“I
t was the motorcycle boom. We’d all been to see Easy Rider. That was a formative movie – we saw it first time for the bikes, second time for the music, and the third time I finally got all the drug references,” says Michael Dobson, remembering the excitement. “I bought a little Honda 90. I did a whole lot of miles on that thing, falling off it, and modifying it, and then swapped university for a job in construction to get enough money to buy a brand new Ducati 750 which was quite expensive in its day. I sold the Ducati, bought a Kawasaki H2 which is a 750 chopper 2 stroke – it was a great motorbike. After that I got my Ural, which is a Russian motorbike. In 1974 people would laugh at it – and now, the bike hasn’t changed in looks and people stop me on the street and say “what a cool-looking motorbike.” The other 10 or so bikes he has owned have all been BMWs. “I’d also been involved in working on racing bikes with my brother; then a friend asked me to go and help him out in a motorbike shop, so I began working as a full-time mechanic and the rest is history. “Bike racing … I spent time spannering for Bill Biber from Martinborough … he won the Castrol Six Hour…and spannering for Mike Pero (Mike Pero mortgages) … he was national road racing champion and a hugely good guy … I worked with him (and his brother Ian) in Australia. “I’ve had 40 years specialising in Kawasaki, Ducati, and BMW, and now I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home, and I spend a day a week working for Boyle’s in Adelaide Rd just to stop myself getting cabin fever.” Dobson is one of the organisers of “Polished Rockers”, a motorbike show for custom, classic and café bikes held
on the Kapiti Coast in March. “It’s a winning formula: a free-entry motorbike show, in summer, on the Coast, at a brewery, with a rockabilly band, food trucks and so on, and anyone can bring a bike as long as he or she rides it there – how bad can it be? “We had 360 bikes in the show last time and about 600 in the carpark, so almost 1000 bikes. It’s a dead-end street, we’ve got a road closure, and the X Ray Cats … the same band as last time. “Two prize-winning sections stand out. One is the Artist’s Choice; we get a judge who knows nothing about motorbikes but a lot about art. They can do it simply on what they think is a lovely looking motorbike. They don’t care that the front brake doesn’t work and it’s got the wrong sized tyres. Gerda Leenards is our guest artist this year, and she will pick what she thinks is the best looking bike.” “The other standout section is called Spirit of Smash Palace, and that’s Smash Palace in Christchurch; it began after the earthquake; they opened a bar on a vacant block, called Smash Palace, made out of scaffold tubes and old buses and it was a huge hit. This section is in the spirit of Smash Palace and the subtext is that Chrome Don’t get you Home. So what we’re looking for is outrageous, but not all highly polished … just looking good. And there are a dozen other prizes. “When you get motor bikes and their riders together, they’re just like car owners, or perhaps dogs going round sniffing each others’ bottoms. It’s what we all do. All the bikes turn up, you look at them for a while….” Polished Rockers, Tuatara Brewery, Paraparaumu, 13 March.
Bottom right: “My bike used to be a white police bike with big wide fairings. It’s an example of what happens when good cops go bad. What I’ve done is minimalise the police bike”.
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