Back Street Heroes - October 2021 - Sample

ISSUE 450

OCTOBER 2021

£4.50

(YES, AN MZ CHOPPER!)

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10: ACE CAFE TRIUMPH DAY – OLD DRIPPERS AND MODERN CLASSICS IN THE SUNSHINE… AND THAT’S JUST NIK AND THE STREET TRIPLE! 12: MUDDY BEACH HARLEYS – THREE EXAMPLES OF MILWAUKEE’S FINEST IRON PAINTED NORTH O’ THE BORDER 28: DIRT DIGGERS – THE 2021 BASH, SIDE-WAYS AND SILLY! 34: INTRUDER TRIKE – CHUNKSTER BY NAME, CHUNKSTER BY NATURE 39: CONFEDERATE COMBAT – YES, WE KNOW IT’S A STOCKER, BUT WHAT A BEAST! 44: MZ COVER BIKE – DINK, DINK, DINK, DINK, DINK (COUGH, COUGH)… BLUMMIN’ TWOSTROKES! 54: BMW CAFÉ RACER – POLICE BIKES NE’ER LOOKED LIKE THIS WHEN I WERE A LAD! 62: BBRF SUMMER SOLSTICE RALLY – THE FIRST REAL RALLY OF 202!

ET TO GGITAL Y I D MPL E TH APP, SI ACK E S B ‘ N R IO APPL EDIT ARCH FO’ IN THE D SE EROES OR iPA PLAY ET H RE F STRE PP STO OOGLE D A I G E N RO PAG OR O OR AND ACEBOO)K F F ES O SH HE B EET HER GROUP UT T R K S– CK O ACK ST BOO CHE ACE HEROE (B F H BS REET ROUP E H T ST IAL G D K N C A T BA A HE OFFIC T

4: EDITORIAL – NIK WAFFLES ON ABOUT SOME SHI… NO, ACTUALLY, THAT’S RIGHT 6: INSPIRATIONS – A NEW SERIES LOOKING BACK AT SOME OF THE ICONIC BIKES OF YESTERYEAR 21: THE 2021 BSH CUSTOM CHAMPS – THE WINNERS OF ROUNDS 3 AND 4!

32: FICTION – FEE-FI-FO-FUM… OH NO, ‘ANG, THAT’S GIANTS… 50: CENTRE SPREAD – AN ARTISTIC POSTER FOR YOU TO PUT ON YER WALL

52: SUBSCRIBE TO BSH – SEE HERE FOR THE BEST SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS 58: REAL WORLD ROADTEST – WE PIT OUR REBEL AGAINST TRIUMPH’S BOBBER 65: MR BRIDGES – THE GURU IMPARTS MORE OF HIS KNOWLEDGE OF MECHANICS 70: FOGGIE FICTION – A NICE STORY… NO, HONESTLY, IT IS! 74: NEWS – ALL THAT’S NEW AND HAPPENING IN THE CUSTOM BIKE WORLD 76: PRODUCTS – LOADS OF GOOD STUFF FOR YOU TO SPEND YOUR HARDEARNED ON 78: LETTERS – SOUND OFF, ONE, TWO, SOUND OFF, THREE, FOUR! 80: MAG NEWS – OUR REGULAR COLUMN

BY THE MAG CHAIRNONGENDERSPECIFIC PERSON 81: EVENTS – YAY, THE SUMMER’S LOOKING PROMISING! 86: READERS’ LIVES – YOUR PICS, OUR CAPTIONS… YEAH, SORRY ABOUT THAT 89: SMALLS – SELL YOUR BIKE HERE FOR FREE! 96: REMINISCING – MEMORIES OF THE DISREPUTABLE YEARS OF BIKING 97: NEXT MONTH – JUST TO WHET YOUR APPETITE… 98: RICK HULSE – THE MUSINGS OF ONE OF THE MOST ELOQUENT THINKERS IN BIKERDOM

It always makes me smile when I re-read the editorial I wrote for the issue before the one you’re currently reading, and see how feckin’ awful I am at predicting the weather. I’m not in Michael ‘don’t worry, there’s no hurricane coming’ Fish’s league of course, but… I blame it on climate change and the way it’s absolutely bolloxed up the weather – everything’s changed over the last ten-plus years, and months that you could, previously, take it as read’d be warm and sunny’re often now cold and damp (I’m writing this mid-August and I’ve seriously contemplated putting me heating on a couple of times so far) and, conversely, months that’ve traditionally been wetter than an otter’s pocket’re often scorchio. These days, it seems, the words ‘Indian Summer’ are the norm rather than the exception, and don’t mean, as I previously thought, eating curry in the garden in July…

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On me travels over the last few months, one thing that’s really struck me (figuratively, thankfully, not literally) is how badly ‘road furniture’* on our highways and byways’s situated.

It’s no wonder us lot on two wheels have so many near misses with car drivers pulling out, really, because so many signs, bollards and road dividers’re positioned in such a manner so as to obstruct a driver’s view of what’s coming down the road. It doesn’t matter quite so much when it’s a vehicle with four wheels or more as they’re generally wide enough to be spotted around a badly situated bollard, but us lot on just two ‘oops’re skinny enough to get temporarily hidden behind them and so, unless the driver’s been looking in our direction all along, they’ll pull out as there was nothing there when they looked…

Combine this with the fact that, here in the east definitely, local councils’ve been slow to get hedges and verges cut back this year, and the fact that the roads’re in such poor condition that we spend a lot of our journeys weaving in and out of the many and sundry

EDITOR:

NIK SAMSON

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NIGEL HOLE

pot-holes/piss-poor road repairs, and so may duck in and out of a waiting car’s field of vision because of it, means that, these days, maintaining a constant speed along a main road’s not the easiest thing to do, as I’m sure you know.

The problem is, as I see it, that the people who locate these items don’t ride motorcycles and, because we’re THE minority road vehicle (there’re 1.1 million bikes registered in the UK, which sounds a lot, but not when you consider our population is over 68 million, and there’re 32.5 million cars), they don’t think of us when siting them either.

What can we do about this? Well, in the real world, not much really. Some reading this’ll be saying ‘Get MAG on to it, they’ll sort it out!’, and I’m sure that they would but … MAG do an entirely laudable job in dealing with folk in the higher echelons of government who, when told, would completely agree with us – the problem is that these signs, etc., aren’t put there by folk in the higher echelons of government; they’re put there by contractors, blokes (in the main) like you and me, who just do what they’re told and go home at the end of the day. They just follow instructions given to them by road planners, who also don’t ride motorbikes or think of them, and to change this’d require a complete top-down rethink of policy, and you and me both know that i’n’t going to happen.

So, at the risk of repeating meself yet again, be bloody careful out there, yeah? The standard of driving’s slipped over the years (it must’ve done, they gave me a licence, didn’t they?), and they’ve cut the numbers of Old Bill so much that getting a tug’s such a rarity that it’s no deterrent to piss-poor driving. Sorry to be a bit depressing, but this’s the world we live in now, and putting our fingers in our ears and going ‘la la la’ doesn’t, sadly, work any more.

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Anyway, on a lighter note, September looks like it’s going to be a great month for bike events: Stormin’ the Castle, the relaunched Kent Custom Bike Show, the Ace Cafe Reunion, The Trip Out, and many more. Me, I’m looking forward most to the Trip Out… as long as I don’t get feckin’ poisoned by black stuff in a bottle this time!

See you next month!

FREELANCE CONTRIBUTORS:

BSH ARCHIVE, MURRAY ROBERTS, GARRY STUART, RHINO TRIKES, MARCEL ORTMANS, FAZERDAZE, MR BRIDGES, THE LATE JIM FOGG RIP, LOUISE LIMB, SELINA LAVENDER, RICK HULSE

NIK

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*bloody odd phrase that, isn’t it? I mean, we’re talking road signs an’ bollards an’ shit, you can’t really sit at or on them, can you?

HELLO, AND WELCOME TO THIS ISSUE OF BSH, NUMBER 450 IN THE LONG, LONG HISTORY OF THE MAG!

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THE ACE CAFE, THE LONDON BIKING MECCA, AS YOU PROBABLY KNOW, RUNS BIKE EVENTS EVERY WEEKEND DAY OF THE YEAR, AND BACK IN JUNE THEY HELD THEIR ANNUAL TRIUMPH DAY. AT THE TIME I WAS IN (TEMPORARY) POSSESSION OF A NEW STREET TRIPLE PRESS BIKE, THE DAY WAS SUNNY AND WARM, AND THE ROADS WERE DRY, SO IT’D’VE BEEN RUDE NOT TO GO REALLY…

t’d been a while since I’d been to the Ace, due to the bastard bat lurgi, but riding down there felt like going to see an old friend.

Even the dodging of the dozy drivers on the North Circular (something a little unnerving for a yokel like me… and, yes, the bit o’ straw sticking out o’ me mouth does get bent by me crash helmet) wasn’t too much of a chore, and the Park Royal turn-off came up quickly enough. Sitting at the lights, waiting to turn across the bridge, I could just see the Ace out of the corner of me eye, and I felt a smile starting.

With the relaunch of the brand by John Bloor and crew back in 1990 (was it really 30 years ago?), a Triumph Day these days is a mix of both original Meriden machines and Hinckley offerings, with the latter bikes in the majority of course, but there’re still plenty for lovers of oily old iron to see and appreciate. My

I

personal favourite was a wonderfully scruffy Hinckley Bonnie done up like an old despatch bike (complete with pig-snout fairing)… well, actually my personal favourite was a plunger-framed, girder-forked BSA chop (and the postapocalyptic ‘Onda too), but this was a Triumph event, wasn’t it, and it’d be churlish to pick a Beezer as best.

One of the things I do like about the Ace is the fact that it remains true to its roots. Other London biker eateries, like the Bike Shed for example, were set up as restaurants, but the Ace started life, back in 1938, as a transport caff (not café), and it’s still a transport caff. These days proper oldstyle transport caffs are few and far between, but many of us still feel more at home in them than in the modern plastic roadside diners. The Ace feels like a transport caff, the décor is pure transport caff, and it serves transport caff food (their breakfasts are excellent), and it just feels right. And having a day to celebrate the original transport caff bike, the Triumph, is very fitting, don’t you think?

FOR MORE INFO’ ON ACE CAFE EVENTS, CHECK OUT OUR EVENTS PAGES OR GO TO THEIR WEBSITE AT LONDON.ACECAFE.COM OCTOBER 2021

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WHEN ME AN’ HER WERE NORTH O’ THE BORDER LAST YEAR, I DID A FEW BIKES AT MUDDY BEACH CUSTOMS NEAR EDINBURGH, AND THESE ARE THE LAST THREE…

lex Shannon, the owner of the first bike here, the bagger, was inspired to build it after a friend’d casually opined that there was nothing much that could be done to customise an Electra-Glide.

As a veteran V-Rod customiser, he took it as a personal challenge, and purchased a 2013 ’Glide Classic and, deciding that a Mexican/ US-style bagger was the way to go with it, set about looking for the parts he’d need to create the look he was after.

One of his first purchases, and the one to really give the bike its stance, was a 26” SMT Penthouse wheel, and an American Suspension neck kit to get it to fit the Electra-Glide’s frame. Next was a full set of bodywork from Lithuanian bagger specialists Killer Custom (www.killercustom.com) including, of course, a suitably-sized front mudguard, one of their

A