Revisiting The Glory Days With One of Japan's Most Violent Biker Gangs, From Vice

Custom Leather Motorcycle Tool Bag - Come And Take It

Brand new custom 12" wide leather tool bag

We enjoy creating products that will live on for a few generations. Proud to have made this new tool bag for one of our biker brethren in San Antonio, TX. The tool bag is a custom one off based upon the Slogan "Come And Take It" used in 1778 at Fort Morris in Georgia during the American Revolution and more notably in 1835 at the Battle of Gonzales during the Texas Revolution. Nothing like a bit of defiance in the face of adversity.

Find out more on the original motto and the flag, Come and Take It

Detail of a mural in the museum at Gonzales, Texas featuring the Come and Take It flag.

The Greasy Hand Preachers Documentary On Kickstarter

Shinya Kimura's workshop

"A biker crossing a beautiful landscape is an image that, for most, conveys the idea of freedom. However, the mechanic who builds and repairs this bike remains perceived as proletarian with dirty hands, a man who is without a doubt dominated in the economies of knowledge. How did this generalized devaluation of manual labour create the image of a man in his garage as a prisoner of his own intellectual and financial misery? We can often recall hearing this saying at school: “if you don’t work you’ll end up a mechanic”. As if our good report cards would forever prevent us from becoming poor and stupid.

However, recently, the media has taken a liking to this new wave of handymen who seem to have deliberately chosen their track: from vintage motorcycle customizers to bakers, the fact that they are good with their hands hasn’t been a cause for lack of respect. It’s actually quite the opposite.

Often it’s white-collar workers who no longer find meaning in the contemporary working world. They have rediscovered the virtues of “savoir-faire”, the pleasure of building something tangible by seizing control of a method of production fit for their level and, above all, the satisfaction of understanding what they are doing. So, while the contemporary working world renders the act of “working” obscure by relentlessly continuing to separate the conception from the carrying out and the doing from the thinking, these new craftsmen see in the art of mechanics a way of finding a grip on reality. And, if we look at it closely we can see that there’s a lot more to it than it seems.

Amongst these bikers/craftsmen are those who walk the path to becoming a sensei. They seek perfection in their art without any financial rationality. Their lives are dedicated to this priesthood of seeking perfection; and of going against most things by achieving a certain generosity in their work. Others are, above all, interested in travelling on the machines they’ve created, giving a soul to their motorcycles by redesigning them to fit their own images. But all of them, as craftsmen, gain an honest satisfaction from both the actual physical and practical side and the marvel of the person for whom the machine is meant to be for.

Even if they all demonstrate the same kind of enthusiasm, they remain individualistic in their approach to work. Building a motorcycle is an affirmation of your personality. But, at some point, comes the need to share. Where it be on a road-trip, at a race or at a festival, there is always a sense of community, a “band of brothers”, that involves the enjoyment of being together. There is, in this crude world of mechanics and bikers, a need and desire that reveals an original outlook on work and pleasure, on the group and the individual, on the present and the past. Like surfers, bikers are dedicated to an authentic lifestyle and pure freedom while remaining in connection with the beauty of nature. It makes you wonder if they don’t have in their garage all the tools to build a happy life."


Help them out on Kickstarter

Run What Ya Brung 3 - Western, Virginia

Nothing can be quite as good as the crisp fall air and rollin' through the Blue Ridge Mountains. For our third annual Run What Ya Brung, we are opting to hit some new roads and to get a killer back yard party running full throttle. 

This is the rundown plain and simple. Friday night we will be rolling into the Willville Motorcycle Camp in Meadows of Dan, VA. Right up the street at the Floyd Country Store is a Friday night jam session of local musicians. The campsite offers cabins, bunk houses, camp sites along with showers and other facilities on site.

On Saturday we will be hitting some back roads and eventually ending up at a buddy of ours private property for a back yard jam session off the Blue Ridge Parkway, by Galax Virginia. The Jam Session will be with JB Beverley, Buck Thrailkill and Jake Cox for some good ol' Americana, Bluegrass and Real Country music. Camping will be allowed on site for free as long as everyone cleans up after themselves and is respectful of the property.

Anyone is welcome to roll in for the Saturday party if you want to enjoy the music, as it's all about a good time. Being that there is no charge for camping on Saturday as it's private property, it will be at minimum a $10 donation for the band fund. We will be posting a more info about the run shortly, but check your calendar, tune your ride and clear the dates. 

Run What Ya Brung 3 on Google Maps

To get in touch about the run, hit us up on Facebook

Run What Ya Brung 3 - motorcycle run, Blue Ridge Mountains, VA - October 11th and 12th

Cold Beer and Burnouts At The Smokeout

There are a multitude of reasons to enjoy the Smokeout. Our favorite aspect is just to hang with friends we only get to see a few times a year and to talk shop about all things motorcycles and music. The Smokeout could do ten times better if they got a good variety of bands instead of the same stuff every year, but maybe that is what they enjoy. Was only able to stay for one night at this year's rally as too many projects required attention elsewhere and with the Buckeye Bash coming up, can't wait to roll with the bro's to Ohio in July and do it all over again.

Brad's new mistress, sweet 1968 Shovelhead

When you arrive with cold beers people swarm ya

My sexy Dyna and I put a lot of miles together down the road

As soon as the silver festivus pole went up the ladies jumped at the chance to start stripping

Need to heat up your pipes, well do a burnout and turn them this orange

Dialing in the burnout through all the gears

While doing a good burnout a beer is required

With a freshly blown tire from the burnout pit we are greeted with a ton of smoke and a glorious salute.

George Carlin Talks On The Pussification Of America

Does Sonny Barger, Of The Hells Angels Approve Hipster Indie Bands Using His Image?

How many times do you see imagery being reinterpreted by folks who haven't a clue about what they are posting? Maybe it is to dramatic effect and that is the point, but sometimes ya just have to question exactly what is going on. When did hipster indie bands try to relate to Hells Angels and an iconic photo of Sonny Barger for use on their split 7"? If this were punk or hardcore bands, it might work and be acceptable. The music of these bands doesn't jive with this 60's counter culture photo or the imagery for that matter. Do something original and create your own vibe.

Hipsters love to use imagery they haven't a clue about.

Indie hipsters the Love Language

Indie Hipsters, Spider Bags

Get your own tattoos, damn hipsters copy everything. Guessing the image was found online.

Great book by Sonny Barger of the Hells Angels

Run What Ya Brung = Damn Epic Time

There are a lot of ways we could describe a motorcycle run and or event such as the Run What Ya Brung, but in all reality, it is about the basics. The only advertising for the event, is posted on this blog or on our Facebook page. Word of mouth, from one friend to another is generally how the word gets out and that is the way it will always be. This is done for a very specific reason. Our goal is to keep the run low key and for the die hard individuals that keep their bikes mechanically sound. We invite anyone to join us and the door is always open. Just leave the attitudes else where and don't spoil the good times. How simple is that?

Huge shout out to the bands, Southbound Turnaround and J.P. Harris for a great show on Friday night. Many thanks to Dale and Matt over at Wheels Through Time for always welcoming us in and treating us great with stories for miles about all the rides they have to showcase. For all the fellas that showed up and put down some serious miles, that is what makes the run worth while. Cannot wait for our next gathering to swap more stories and drink some cold ones. Lastly, thanks to the Blue Ridge Motorcycle Camp for being such great folks and cookin' up some amazing grub. Their motorcycle camp is without a doubt an amazing place to disappear to for a few days, we highly recommend it for any season. And for you folks that don't camp, they have cabins.

Check out more photos over on our Facebook page

Rob checking out his leaky primary, figuring out a fix

Big decisions need to be made fast, just how much beer should we buy

Deputy Death Monkey kidney belt

Awesome run coins made by TWT Motorcycle Parts

Wes racked up 1109.9 miles, for the most on the run and won the wrench knife

Mad Dog Matt, hates drinking beer so he always goes straight for fruity drinks and liquor

Scotty P. of Southbound Turnaround and Mad Dog Matt

Southbound Turnaround was rockin' the hell out of the club

Rob has the fix for his leaky primary and loose bolts

Within an hour of getting to the campsite, two cases of beer and forty ouncers were already accounted for

Shaky Mike and Brad working on the brake line so it doesn't get severed by the chain

Shaky Mike's custom tool kit

Custom Wrench Knife put together for the run

Linking up with Probey Joe and Steven on the road, south of Charlotte

Frankenstein Created Bikers, An Upcoming Grindhouse Movie, By The Creators of Dear God No

There haven't been too many exploitation films that give a surefire nod to the biker classics of the 60's and up the ante on the genre king Russ Meyer, but damn if the fellas at Big World Pictures aren't at home plate swingin' for the bleachers. The grindhouse genre of exploitation will always be an underground place to mine for ideas, as it deals with recluses, vagrants, and characters whose grit can be explained easier by the coarseness of sandpaper compared to their depth of their actions. It's in the fringe element of these worlds, which captivates mainstream society and television networks have made billions off of the true watered down stories.

Scene from "Dear Go No" - grindhouse exploitation cinema

Baltimore continues on in its "Charm City" approach thanks to the likes of The Wire. Bike clubs are now being seen by the squares, who watch Sons of Anarchy, as all being gun running murder zealots. If you have a last name that ends in a vowel and have a Jersey or New York accent immediately some might think you are connected and know of a family such as the Soprano's. 

Stereotypes mixed with geographic locations help to drive these these tales of woe and films will forever be made dealing with the rougher side of the tracks. What we ask though is this. Are we blood thirsty as a whole? 

Link to Big World Pictures site for, Dear God No

"Shot on film, Dear God No has the greasy feel of the great drive-in exploitation films of the 70s. It includes everything that made these scummy opuses so great, upping the cheap thrills ante to include more blood, more b**bs and more bizarreness than a daisy chain of Herschell Gordon Lewis, Dave Friedman and Andy Milligan could ever dream of. But Dear God No is hardly an artsy homage to 70s exploitation. It's the real thing, more extreme, more twisted, sicker, funnier and crazier than nearly anything that's ever b!tch-slapped the silver screen before. Unlike a lot of 70s grindhouse fare, though, Dear God No never has time to be boring or get stale. Long biker montage scenes are creatively shot so they never devolve into the kind of tired filler that Corman biker epics were known for. A seemingly endless scene with topless dancers in Nixon masks is still too short for my money. The characters are so sleazily charismatic that you never get tired of any of them, and deliver some of the most politically incorrect dialogue you'll ever hear. And the girls are all gorgeous, so what do you want from life? Dear God No is the farthest thing from slick modern "horror" films you'll find. It's a PBR-soaked, sweat-stained experience that makes special effects spectaculars like Saw seem like an episode of Mr. Bean. Viewing it would feel like a violation if you weren't having so much fun. So take a road trip with the Impalers! Burn down the drive-in. Drink a mat shot. And shake hands with Bigfoot. It's more fun than a Hell's Angel initiation ceremony, and ten times as bloody." - Doctor LongGhost, Amazon.com Review

Dear God No, film poster shot on 16mm film to help authenticate the vintage look

Dear God No, film poster for the grindhouse exploitation cinema drama

Dear God No, official cover art poster

Dear God No, grindhouse exploitation film advertising

Frankenstein Created Bikers, by Big World Pictures

Run What Ya Brung - October 5th and 6th 2012

We started a new run last fall as a sort of gathering for like minded folks, that wanted to put some miles down and disappear into the hills. What we thought would be just a weekend of riding turned into some debauchery, lasting memories of good times and one high quality bike run. The measure of this event is based up on the quality of those involved along with tuning your machines to be ready for the terrain.

Our ideal run involves quite a few clicks down the road, as 200 miles is just getting warmed up for us. On the map for Run What Ya Brung we didn't include any actual routes for the run, instead we focused on meeting points. Folks are planning on rolling in from far and wide so choose your routes according to the roads you want to roll on. These mountain roads are absolutely epic and especially in the fall.

For Friday October 5th we will be meeting up at the Blue Ridge Motorcycle Camp. If you are worried about missing the run, due to work, have no worries. Show up whenever you can, as a lot of us will be getting to the campsite before sunset. If ya want to roll with a pack, there will be an event page added to Facebook for everyone to link up.

Below is a map with most of the information and web links already put into it, so click away. There is no cost to the run upfront. The Blue Ridge Motorcycle Camp only requires reservations for those who want a cabin. The cabin's easily sleep two and potentially one on the floor if yall want to be pack them in. On saturday afternoon we will also be rolling over to Wheels Through Time to pay homage to the best damn motorcycle museum in the nation.

As for Saturday night, we have reserved an entire house in West Asheville that is a Bed and Breakfast, part hostel, that easily accommodates around sixteen. Whoever wants in on this, get in touch asap as these spots will go fast. Just map out other hotels close by as we are working on a big parking lot roll in party to the spot for Saturday night. The Get Down in West Asheville will be rocked by The Go Devils, She Rides and Southbound Turnaround.

Need any more info, hit me up on Facebook. Let's Roll!

Run What Ya Brung, Oct. 5th & 6th 2012 - Western, North Carolina

View Run What Ya Brung - Oct. 5th & 6th 2012 in a larger map

A few photos from last year's Run What Ya Brung

One Eyed Willie was our patron saint

Rollin' into the after party in Black Mountain, NC

Wild Wil' Wes and a serious batch of Moonshine

Shakey Mike tends to get naked in random locations

Stopping into Wheels Through Time is always a must

Run What Ya Brung after party on Saturday Oct 6th at the Get Down in West Asheville, NC

Dirt Drags - Living the Life - The Photography of QBall

"Dirt Drags" by QBall, aka Doug Barber from "Living The Life"

“Dirt Drags” circa 197? from “Living The Life”, biker photography book.

One of my crew’s favorite runs was the Dirt Drags. It was an all day adventure getting there, and a long time before we got home. While we there we excelled at getting drunk, falling down and getting dirty, after all we had a reputation to uphold. One of the events we won nearly every year was piling on a bike, and see how far you could ride before breaking bones.  The reason we did so well was, we practiced all year long, at getting drunk and breaking bones.

Long May You Ride,
Q-Ball

Buy his book, "Living the Life"

Lens Of Anarchy - Baltimore City Paper's Write Up On Qball's Legendary Photography Of Biker Culture

Damn stoked to see our good buddy Qball made the cover of the Baltimore City Paper a couple years back. He has worked his ass off to become the great photographer that he is and has the journal entries of stories mentally logged to talk on at any given time. If you ever get a chance to see Qball at a run, rally or just milling about waiting for miscreants to enter stage right, shoot the shit with him as he is as genuine as they come and most of all is a true rider.

Link to Article below from Balitmore City Paper

Check out more on Qball over at VTwin Biker

Buy his book Living The Life

Doug Barber aka Qball, featured in the Baltimore City Paper for his photography

Motorcycle Diary

Doug Barber captured old-school biker life through his camera's lens

By Christianna McCausland | Posted 6/30/2010

"Doug Barber never set out to publish a book. In fact, sitting in the park at the foot of Broadway in Fells Point outside his former house, he appears downright nervous about sharing his story. Perhaps it's not surprising for someone who has lived much of his life quietly and on the edge of the grid.

A professional corporate photographer by trade, Barber has been in hard-core motorcycle clubs (please, don't ever call them "gangs") much of his life, using his camera to record the rough-and-tumble lifestyle. By being a part of what bikers call "the life," he had unprecedented access to a notoriously camera-shy population. Earlier this year, Barber self-published a collection of his photographs, coupled with verses by poet Edward Pliska, aka "Sorez the Scribe," entitled living the life, one man's perspective inside what Barber refers to as "the old-school biker's world."

"It's a collection of personal statements not meant to explain or justify the biker existence," Barber says. "Those who find inspiration and solace living outside society's conventions will take this book to heart."

Barber, who goes by Q-Ball in the biker world, started to step out of the boundaries of societal norms as a military brat living in Okinawa where his stepfather was stationed in the 1960s.

"I was the red-headed stepchild," he says. "There's a lot to being a red head that people don't understand. You're treated a certain way and because you are you get pushed in a certain direction. I became an outlaw of sorts at that time of my life. And motorcycles were the quintessential status symbol of being an outlaw."

He was 16 when he bought his first motorcycle, a Honda. He loved the freedom--and the fear. "Anything that would intimidate me I'd come at head on," he says. "Even today there's aspects of riding a motorcycle that are frightening and once you survive it, the feeling is probably the same as bungee jumping or sky diving."

 

Though he was never a malicious kid, Barber was always in trouble. A high school teacher in Okinawa saw some promise in him and helped to get him a scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he found photography and his wife, who he's been with since 1976. Shortly thereafter, he was asked to photograph the funeral for a member of a major motorcycle club, which began Barber's slow and cautious integration into "the life," with his Nikon in hand.

Barber looks as much like Santa Claus as he does a biker and is just as gentle. Now his thick flowing beard is more white than red. He's raised two daughters and abided by his non-biker wife's one request of no tattoos. Some of his friends from his club have passed away. Those that remain encouraged him to publish his photographs. In 2006, Hot Bike Japan found his photos on the internet and asked Barber to create a year's worth of covers and a calendar. More press followed and the pressure increased to publish a book.

Ever one to defy authority, Barber turned down an unfavorable publishing deal. Then he fortuitously met Richard Gohlinghorst of Ridge Printing when he snapped his picture at a motorcycle event. Gohlinghorst had launched a design and publishing venture called Lowside Syndicate. Barber got Sorez on board and living the life self-published in January.

To choose the photos for the book Barber sent a large collection to Sorez (based in New Jersey) who matched his poems or created original works to go with the images. "This brought me back to a simpler time," Sorez says by phone; he's been in the life over 30 years and is part of a club called "The Highway Poets." "Back then, as long as you had a motor, a frame, and wheels, you'd build [a bike] and ride it. The people were real. It brought me back to being younger."

Doug Barber Photography © 2012

Barber confesses that he is drawn to seedy subject matter, which abounds in the biker culture. The photos begin in 1972 and are predominantly taken in Baltimore, including shots of one-time owner of the Cat's Eye Pub, Kenny Orye (now deceased), and swap meets on Eastern Avenue. The images are raw, in black-and-white, sometimes grainy. There's plenty of booze, boobs, bushy beards, and lots of ink. Flipping through the book you can feel the dirt in your mouth and smell gasoline.

In a photo coupled with the verse "No Other Way," a group of bikers gather around a campfire in a muddy lot surrounded by scrubby trees. They look cold and tired and dirty. Barber looks at that and explains that it was trips like this, when he and his buddies spent days riding with no money sleeping on the side of the road, that gave his club its name.

"We went into a Harley-Davidson shop to get some coffee and the owner saw us and said, 'Here comes dirt that moves,'" Barber recalls. The club took Dirt That Moves as its name and set up a clubhouse on Falls Road near the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

Doug Barber Photography © 2012

Barber explains that bikers live life as if on steroids, doing everything from laughing to drinking in extreme. He says that the first thing club members did when they stopped riding for the day was to break out the booze, if for no other reason than to work out the aches and pains from hours of riding. That is recorded in images and words in "Name Your Poison," where a visibly blitzed couple stagger into the frame while a disembodied hand offers them a cigarette from outside the camera's lens.

Barber is adamant that he wanted to record the biker lifestyle without sensationalism. "It's not glorification and it's not judgment," he says. "This isn't a group of animals in a cage for your viewing pleasure."

A book about the motorcycle lifestyle would not be complete without touching on the mostly mutual disdain between bikers' and police officers. Barber won't deny that some of the bad reputation bikers get is legitimate. "In the '70s, half the fun was getting in a fight," he says. "But fighting was different back then. You mostly fought with your hands and the loser bought everyone beer."

He had his share of police run-ins, particularly when he'd try to take photographs when the police would stop his club, a frequent occurrence. Trying to explain the relationship between bikers and cops is complicated. Barber says that many bikers end up in trouble with the law because the system pushes them around until they lash out against it. He says the "love of a good woman" and his camera kept him from falling entirely off the outlaw precipice. "I'm not saying all cops are bad and all bikers are good," he says. "In every organization you have the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've found through life that if you treat someone with respect, that's what you'll get back."

Generally, bikers take to the road because they want to be left alone. Many of the photographs and poems in the book underscore the freedom and solitude of the lone rider as much as the brotherhood of clubs. The cover photo says it all: "Ricky," the president of Dirt That Moves, popping his sidecar up and out of the waves at Daytona Beach with the glee of a child.

It's a lifestyle that, once begun, is not a weekend hobby or something to walk away from. "I try to live my life by a code I have for myself, to be true to myself, give and get respect, and never take anything for granted, to live in the moment," Sorez says. His favorite photo (joined with the poem, "Road to Redemption") of a solitary rider looking pensively into the distance on a cold, wet winter day encompasses everything he loves about the life.

Doug Barber Photography © 2012

"This is a 24-7 lifestyle," Sorez says. "I don't just go out on a nice weekend, put on my leathers, and have a nice ride. I'm out there when it's 19 degrees out, when it's pouring out, when it's hot out. Basically out there living the life."

A photo of a man called "Righteous John," a surly looking dude holding a nub of a cigarette in his huge paw in his grease-covered shop, demonstrates what Barber wanted to capture in the book. "I knew that shops wouldn't look like this forever," he says. However, there is a photo taken more recently of a more pleasant-looking guy working on a bike in his own, modern shop. It's this demographic, in addition to the old-school brothers, who are buying up living the life, a new generation of young riders resurrecting the old ways of tinkering with their own bikes.

That's exemplified in the final photograph of the book that depicts a young boy on a big wheel surrounded by motorcycles, grinning at the camera and giving it the finger. "That kid is about 30 years old now and rides a motorcycle," Barber says. He contemplates the image and adds, wistfully, "Ah . . . another generation of degenerates."

Journey - Circa 197? - Qball's Biker Photography from Living The Life

“Journey” circa 197? from “Living The Life”, biker photography book.

It’s been said “It aint the destination, but the journey”. When it came to my old club “Dirt That Moves MC” it got even more involved than that. We couldn’t even keep it together at a cross road. Some would go right, some left, some straight ahead, while others did a 180. A couple of hundred miles could take all day and into the night. A trip to Daytona Bike Week took nine days. We had break downs within 50 miles of home, flat tires, bar stops, stripped gears, beer runs, fried wires, piss stops, more beer runs, side trips to visit old friends, broken chains, beer runs, piss stops, well you get the picture. Damn, I nearly forgot the best part, fights. It was said the only way to get us from stop fighting each other was to have an outsider step in, and get pounded. We fought over women, beer, bikes, or just being bored. We would party all night long, fall down in the dirt, get up the next morning with wicked hangovers and attitudes to match, then ride off in the wrong direction. Damn, I love my brothers and miss those aimless times.

Long May You Ride, Q-Ball

Buy the book "Living the Life"

Qball aka Doug Barber with "Journey" circa 197? From "Living The Life" biker photography book