Pregled posta

Marketing

The widespread notion of what a chopper looks like is Hollywood’s perpetuation of what was, essentially, a Southern California fashion statement made decades ago. The high tank and long-fork look got stuck in peoples’ minds thanks to a rash of wanton biker flicks from the ‘60s. Since then, however, the look of custom motorcycles has evolved from coast to coast and across the seas. Avant garde practitioners like Gard Hollinger have come up with many more interpretations of what “chopping” a motorcycle actually means. He coined the term retro-modernistic to describe his own style. Just as present-day musicians sample earlier recordings and embed snippets of tunes within contemporary compositions, Hollinger pays homage to older motorcycles by applying classical accents to radically engineered machines and using familiar parts in unfamiliar ways to emphasize their unconventional relationships with the rest of the bike. For instance, he will mount an automotive oil filter where you might expect to see a carburetor or fit a gas tank that looks like a lunch pail between a top tube and a motor mount. His goal is not to engineer machines agile enough to take on crotch rockets through twisty canyons; his bikes are made to turn heads, not corners. An art bike must still be roadworthy and reliable. “When you ride it, I want you to get a thrill,” says Hollinger, “I don’t want it to just be scary.”

I don't have a filter wrench, so I just stuck a screwdriver in and turned... all was well until I dropped the filter into the oil pan, sending used motor oil all over the floor, the bike, and me. Thank God this only has to be done every 3,000 miles.