Usually these people aren't what we'd call "informed appreciators"; so their reaction doesn't mean as much as that of our worldwide peers, whose praise/critique really counts. That's why I stress submitting quality photos so much; to the extent that we have an archived article filled with pointers as to how good bike photos may best be achieved.
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Q: Can the internet also show us flaws and misrepresentations? A bike that isn't seen in the flesh by anyone other than the owner wouldn't need to be ridden, or for that matter be "well built" to get an impact on the World Wide Web. If the photography was good (or done right) the actual bike would only need to be a façade of the real thing, possibly fooling the viewer into believing it really had substance. Bikes like these could almost be called virtual bikes, meant as nothing more than an image to be placed on the internet, without having any true substance in reality. Could it ever make sense to give credence and "accolades" to a shoddily-made bike that only looks good as an image on a computer screen?  Does it matter if some bikes have no real substance, as long as they look good on the Net and inspire real builders to do better in their own work?
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A: That's a very timely question, John, since lately the "outing" of deceptively Photoshopped images has been a hot topic in the media. CBS' using Photoshop to slim down and beautify Katy Couric in an in-house publication made some waves, but the ethics are less violated than if it had been presented as a hard news photo. This was the case a bit earlier when an international news agency, Reuters, distributed a photo from Lebanon, which was so blatantly Photoshopped as to have been obviously produced as deceptive  propaganda, rather than the news photo it purported to be.

Unless it's done for purposes of fraud, such as removing flaws from a photo of something you're selling on eBay, for example, some touching-up is usually considered ethically valid. I have Photoshop, of course, and am fairly proficient at its use, but I commonly only use it on Gallery photos to improve the quality of the photo, not the bike itself. I've been known to remove a cigarette butt from the pavement adjacent to a bike's tire, for example, just because it would be a distraction to leave it in an otherwise good photo of a bike. Once, I touched-up some duct tape visible on the upholstery of an otherwise finished bike, by a serious builder, but I normally wouldn't bother to do that, because where do you stop, once you've started bending reality? That's why I stress sending in the best possible photos of bikes, because I won't fix them up for you. We have a policy of running our photos at the highest resolution and size a computer monitor can make use of, but even at that level, a lot of minor flaws are practically invisible.

To answer your question, John, it does matter if someone is doing shoddy work, but gets by because of the limitation of screen resolution to show flaws, or the builder's ability to retouch them out. But, that's why we push people to actually ride their bikes in public or enter them in shows. I can't say that nobody's ever submitted a photo to the Gallery with flaws digitally removed from the bike; but I'd certainly have caught one with radical "corrections".  At the moment, at least, that kind of fakery is not something we need worry about. Most people who are too lazy to do immaculate work on the actual bike are also too lazy to do digital retouching on their photos.

A: Do I? Hah! Stop me if you can!
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Yeah, I did some pretty crappy work when I was a kid, too. But I had aspirations to do better, and I worked at it. Now I'm capable of doing terrific work, so that's what I do. That's what Kustom is all about, isn't it? It's about people who have no particular "design credentials" training themselves to design and execute beautiful functional machines or whatever. Kustom is the ultimate in "low-brow/outsider" art, and I'm proud to have the chops down to call myself a decent Kustomizer. 
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If somebody deliberately sets out to build something uncreative, ugly and stupid, they aren't a kustom person, they're something else. I don't even care enough to think of a label to describe them, aside from maybe "loser" or "poser". Unless they do it as an "ironic statement", of course, and then I'd think of them as a "smacked ass", as they say in Philadelphia.
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That's my take on the term "Rat Bike" in its original usage. Like so many other recent moronic aspects creeping into our "movement" it comes from the motorcycle world. My first encounter with the concept was a couple of years ago at a site called Rat Bike Zone. In that context it's merely playing with the Mad Max fantasy theme as an excuse for avoiding craft discipline and the accompanying labor. What devotees of this school of "styling" don't recognize is that those fantasy movie vehicles were built by serious craftsmen like us, and were deliberately, at great expense, made to look like they were thrown together by neanderthals, just because of the visual theme of the films.
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For maybe the past year, the term has been cropping up frequently in regard to our sort of bicycles. Judging from the context of the mentions, there seem to be diverse definitions for the term. The most annoying and fallacious is that there are two kinds of Kustom bikes: "Show Bikes" and "Rat Bikes".  That one really pisses me off, as it insults genuine Kustom bikes built to be actually ridden on the street. That's exactly what we're about, isn't it? Or have we learned nothing from LRB history? Just because it isn't a dedicated  "Show Queen" doesn't mean we don't care about construction quality and beauty; and nobody'd better call one of mine an 'effin' "Rat Bike".
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If somebody wants to label those two types separately it should be "Street Kustoms" and "Show Kustoms". Just because someone chooses matte black for the paint or powder coat finish on their street bike doesn't mean that they've built a Rat Bike. This is especially so if they've done a nice job, followed by the application of some tasty pinstriping and other detailing on it, as exemplified by a Kustom Cruiser that joined our Gallery last issue. I told the builder (Troy Howell) that his bike was much too nice to be called a Rat Bike, but if that's what he wanted to call the thing I wasn't going to censor him- but the BR&K Gallery doesn't exist for the showcasing of actual Rat Bikes.
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What constitutes a "Rat Bike", in the original usage of the term, is if they applied flat black to the thing just because sloppy workmanship, if there was any actual work involved, doesn't show quite so obviously under that sort of finish, unlike gloss black, in which every blemish is accentuated. As far as I'm concerned, if you just spray some flat-black onto a thing because you're too damned lazy to scrape the decals off, you haven't built a bike, you've just whipped up a poser fashion accessory, and you should go somewhere else if you're looking for your kind of "movement". That isn't "kustom", by anyone's definition.
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We have a fair amount of pretty crude bikes made by kids in our Gallery, and as far as I can recall, none of them have labeled their work a "Rat Bike"; that's because they did their best and are proud of the accomplishment. It's only lazy poser adults who engage in that "ratbike" sophistry, as a pretext for not doing their best, or even their "so-so".  A real kustom bike, even for the street, is to a Rat Bike, as a bespoke suit is to a Wal-Mart Halloween costume.
know that striping was done with a special dagger brush, so I just used the little camel-hair brush I had for model painting, and Testors model enamel; and laboriously painted the striping on, without much line width variation, but following the Von Dutch style as much as possible.
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I rode that bike for several more years, and put a lot of miles on it; since we lived outside of town at that time, and that's the only way I could get around to see my friends, or hit the drugstore to check out the new hot rod magazines. I used it to regularly visit every auto junkyard within a ten-mile radius, in my search for the elusive "Deuce" roadster I wanted to base my future street rod on, but never found. I built up a terrific set of leg muscles, though, and I still have them. Of course, the rest of my body's gone to hell.
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Q: I had been thinking that someone like yourself (growing up in the 1950's) with "Hot Rod" and custom car magazines laying around the house must have got it in his head to make a hot rod "kustom" bicycle! That first kustom bike of yours is a good example of how kids got them made back then! Do you remember seeing other bicycles made in the 1950's that would have fit the bill as a true kustom bicycle, in the "George Barris Kustom" sense? Around what year do you think the first true kustom bicycles were consciously made?

A: I don't remember seeing any other kustom bikes around that time, even in the magazines. And my part of Kentucky didn't have car shows then. It may not even have them now, come to think of it. Louisville had an annual car show, but that was hundreds of miles away. I never attended it, so I can't say that there were or weren't kustom bikes displayed there. I would say that, as in your case, John, that car shows would have been the place for early kustom bike sightings. It's safe to assume that there are probably photos in shoeboxes out there in people's basements and attics.
I suppose I'm most proud of our role in retrieving George Barris' bicycle work for posterity. Hardly anyone until recently knew what those bikes represented, and there's no telling how many of his bikes have been saved from landfills or the parts donor pile just because someone was able to Google "Iverson bicycle" and find our database on the subject, and information on the legendary person behind it. We just got in a new set of photos of another, much better preserved, example of his "Adult Dragstripper" for our Barris bike archives, because someone about to put it on eBay Googled "Iverson Dragstripper" and found us.
Q: Or too scared! A Critical Mass Ride in New York is a guaranteed bust by the Authorities! They really have a "hate on" for organized pedal power, and treat it like it was an international criminal conspiracy! You have a point about how age relates to activism. Many North American kustomizers are on the plus side of 30, 40, and even 50! And are probably less inclined to be active in these causes.
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A: The situation in NYC is truly ridiculous; and the recent restrictions are not only draconian, but have been ruled unconstitutional when brought before judges. But the city's Republican Mayor and his Police Chief keep trying. Here's a link to the recent situation here. They've even been trying to criminalize groups of two or more activist pedestrians now! That was just tossed out by the courts.
CLocster, Germany
A: I think of traditional balloon and middleweight 24"-frame-based adult kustom bikes as "Pony Cruisers", and the form has a lot going for it, especially in the cramped urban cycling environment. They're almost as agile as 20" musclebikes, and don't take up much more room. My recent work has been mostly in the 26" long-wheelbase form, but my "Killer Swan" of a few years ago is a radically-styled Street Kustom based on a 24" girl's balloon frame. I built it for my daughter as a high-school graduation gift, and she's still turning heads in a "glamorous" way with it, although she's taller than I am now.
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My new personal city ride is a 7-foot-long chopper. While this is a foot shorter than Kandiru, my suburban ride in Baton Rouge, it's still pretty cumbersome for a bike requiring street access by elevator. Once I've grown tired of the hassle of wrestling with that scale, I have a 24" prewar frame waiting for the Kustom Cruiser treatment. Just adding rear dropout extensions and a 26" or longer fork allows this size frame to work with "adult-scale" wheels and tires, and it can be done entirely without welding, which is a big plus in an urban environment.
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Q: City living presents its own set of problems for the kustom bicycle builder, I live on the second floor of an old warehouse, and have to take my bikes down a winding flight of stairs to get them outside! The stairs were put in when the old freight elevator died, a sad day!
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Jim, tell us more about the kind of problems you have experienced, being a bicycle kustomizer in New York City, one of the largest and craziest urban environments in the world? It must present its own unique set of difficulties? What are you up against there?
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A: Lack of workspace has always been the worst problem. I'm basically a country boy, and I've always built things, following my father's example. When I was a kid, I had total access to my father's shop, I had a barn to store parts and raw materials, and I had my own shop building, an old wagon shed across the road, to use for building bikes and other vehicle projects.
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When I came to Manhattan in the late '70s, my having the ability to actually make things became an important part of the package I could offer to clients. It gave me an edge over most of my freelance Art Director competition. Anybody can think up crazy things, but it takes a rare set of skills to actually realize them and put them in front of a camera. By being able to do that part myself, I was able to take on projects that would have been too impractical or expensive for most of my competition to tackle, so I got the business.
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Q: Was it hard finding a suitable space when you first arrived in New York?
Schwinn Manta Ray
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Q:  Jim, "BikeRod&Kustom" has given the bike world a clear perspective on what creative cycling is all about. In the ten years before its inception in 1998 the world of kustom bike building was fragmented, the west coast lowriders being a visible (but insulated) example of what was going on at the time.

What were you hoping to accomplish with the creation of BR&K? The Internet was just beginning to make its mark in 1998, and was still a mystery to most people. Did you have any idea of just how influential the Internet would become, and how this influence would forever change the face of the kustom bicycle movement?
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A: As early as 1995, I could easily see that the web had tremendous potential as a worldwide grassroots information-sharing medium, from my experience as US Correspondent for the BugattiWeb, a networked entity of Bugatti fanciers and students formed by people in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and the UK. Suddenly having a circle of friends and acquaintances all around the globe sharing a common interest in a fairly esoteric subject was quite an eye-opener for me.
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I kept running searches for a similar web entity to do with my sort of bicycle activity, with very little luck. At the time, the only extant alterna-bike presences were CHVNK 666 and a couple of lowrider bike sites, none of which were really my kind of thing. They were interesting,
and I could relate to them somewhat, but the CHVNK aesthetic was just too "ratty", and the ultimate LRB aesthetic was way too baroque and non-functional, even then.

.When I was considerably younger and growing up in rural Kentucky, I took it for granted that I was some kind of mutant; but by the mid-nineties I was reasonably sure that I couldn't possibly be the only guy in the world who was applying the hot rod and kustom aesthetic to bicycles; so I decided to start a site for myself and like-minded people who weren't content with merely buying and riding factory bikes, or meticulously restoring old ones. I assumed that my peers would discover the site, eventually.
Since my adolescence coincided with the birth and proliferation of the original hot rod and kustom car magazines, I wanted to recapture the spirit and excitement of that media, which had blown me away and literally changed my life back then. So, in addition to a Gallery, I wanted to concentrate on generating hot rod magazine-style content in a print-periodical-style form. Since I'd worked as a magazine designer and art director with earlier experience as a journalist, it was hardly a stretch for me.
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Q: So, the possibilities of the Internet became real and tangible for you? Even though the majority of the population wasn't hooked into it yet, you obviously understood its potential as a powerful communication tool.
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The kustom car magazines that people grew up with certainly set the mood for the future, true! But very few people ever entertained the idea they might be able to produce an actual magazine of their own.  In the 1990's methods used to transmit information were undergoing revolutionary change, and you saw the potential! The web gave you an opening, a voice!
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A: There's an old saying from the '60s about the media: "The power of the press belongs to the guy wealthy enough to own one". Even then, there were alternative media based upon cheap offset printing and Xerox; I explored them both, at the time. But the end product was less visually sophisticated and consequently considered "bush league" by most people. Publications done this way became known as 'Zines, to differentiate them from "Real Magazines".
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Easier-to-use, relatively-powerful home computers and the web, especially by the mid-'90s, made it possible for almost anyone with a personal computer to become a "publisher"- on the web, anyway, with a product as seemingly sophisticated as that of the "major players". And why not; after all, since the early-'90s, the major players were working with the same tools as the bush leaguers?  As publishing on the web was practically free at that time, I was good to go, with an "E-Zine".
Granted, at that time a lot of the people who had been actually doing our thing, like you, John, or who would be inclined to, were they only aware of the concept, like most of our current readership, hadn't become wired-up and computer-literate yet, so it was slow going at first. I really had to search hard to find practitioners and examples of their work for the first few issues. But it soon became easier as the word spread.
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Fred Hajny 1998:
McFall
Cruiser
Q: During the late 90's I only had access to the Internet by going to the local University library.  My Internet searches for creative cycling eventually brought me to "BikeRod&Kustom". I think I may have found it through a link on a non-kustom bicycle site.
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A: Fortunately, by being the only site dealing with our subject at that time, BR&K was a natural for inclusion in the links sections of all sorts of "straight" bike sites, after I'd sent them our URL. We certainly weren't competing with them, so we were treated as an interesting and amusing novelty site to share. Like an insidious virus, we caught on with a great many victims that way. Soon, lots of people in the "Roadie", MTB, BMX, and Classic-Restoration demographics felt the urge to try their hands at this offbeat and creative sub-set of cycling culture, because we made it look like gratifying fun. It seems to have caught on, eh?

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Q: "Caught on" isn't the half of it, you're right!  It's been truly amazing to see how kustom cycling has gone from "novelty" to "serious business" in the last few years. In the 1960s and '70s it was primarily a fun activity for children and teenagers; but things have really changed, haven't they? Do you have any theories on why kustom cycling in the "Internet age" is primarily an adult activity? What do you think the reasons are, and, how might this trend affect the future of the movement?
A: I think there are many small reasons for the shift in the age range of kustom bike practitioners in this cycle, rather than one large one.
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For one thing, kids today don't have as much free time as they used to. Their day-to-day lives are much more tightly scheduled than when I was a kid, and probably when you were, as well. Now they have all sorts of semi-compulsory "enrichment" activities, which didn't really exist in the past, for most kids. In theory, this makes them more well-rounded individuals, but it doesn't leave much room for the sort of maniacal specialization in one activity bike kustomization requires. When I was a kid, warm weather meant that you and your friends were out on your bikes or working on them when you weren't- period. There was nothing much else to do, and there were a maximum of three channels on TV, assuming your Mom would let you stay indoors to watch it in nice weather. And she usually didn't, because fresh air and sunshine were considered healthy for you back then. Also, the mass perception that there was a pedophile predator lurking around every neighborhood hadn't become so pervasive at that time.
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Q: It's not like when we were young is it? Seems like many children never play in the sunshine anymore! Cycling is an outdoor activity reserved for outdoor children! A rare breed these days in North America!

In today's two-income households you would think there would be more "fun" money available (for things like kustom bike stuff), but that probably isn't true either! What do you think, Jim, is money (the lack of it) a factor that keeps kids out of kustom biking?

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A: Expense is a big factor. It's true that kids have much higher discretionary "income" to spend now, but everything they buy costs more money than it did back in the day, and there is so much more expensive stuff out there that their peers expect them to own. I doubt that any pair of sneakers I ever wore as a kid cost more than $3.99, but that wouldn't pay for new laces for the hi-tech-style footwear today's kids are conditioned to desire through TV advertising. And hundred-dollar sneakers are just the most obvious example of a
pervasive trend. When you factor in that bike parts, especially kustom-styled ones, have also become relatively more pricey than they were during the '60s and '70s, it's not surprising that only a small minority of kids choose to buy them, rather than other, more culturally-mandated expensive goods.

The earlier "golden age" of bike kustomization was driven by cheap prices, because the "youth bike" market was traditionally viewed by marketers as a part of the toy business. Back in the day, toys were considerably cheaper than adult goods; today there's hardly any difference, except in the pricing of the basic bike. A cheap kid's bike costs about half what a cheap adult bike costs. But, from that point on, there's not much of a price differential for the parts and accessories.
I was in college when the earlier "golden age" was going on, and I owned cheap old cars and motorcycles most of that time. But I was unable to resist the availability of cheap kustom-style bike parts in all the stores, even those in small towns like mine. So I built up a kustom musclebike one summer in the late '60s, just for the hell of it, based on an old sidewalk bike my brother Dave outgrew, which was still in our barn. I can't imagine a kid back then being able to resist the allure of all those mix-and-match bolt-on goodies, especially since a bike was so much more central a part of leisure activities for most suburban and rural kids.
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Even a total frame-up build was cheaper back then, since the donor frames were so common, and usually free. BroDave's old kiddy sidewalk bike had the identical 20" cantilever frame Schwinn based their Stingrays and Krates upon. And in the '80s when the lowrider bike kids were starting their movement, common trash bikes were often superficially-worn-out Stingrays and Krates.
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Q: Yes, after all the baby boomers (born between 1945 and 1962) came of age their old bikes wound up in the garbage! You and I are part of this demographic, and (as a group) we still carry a big stick! I was born in 1960, the year (I'm told) that had the highest number of births.

There were a lot of kids and bikes around during this boomer time.  I for one took advantage of the situation, and grabbed every thrown-out frame, sissy bar, handlebar or any other bike part I could get my hands on! I wasn't alone in treasure hunting either; lots of kids were doing the same thing! I knew guys who had virtually filled their parents garages with bikes and parts they had found on trash day!  Any bike part you needed could be had for free at the curbside, generally. Good stuff too!

A: Actually, John, I'm not a baby-boomer. I was born in 1944, which makes me a "war baby".  In the year of my birth, the most popular joke in Japan was a riddle: "What's the difference between an American baby and a bowling ball? Try tossing a bowling ball with your bayonet!"
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It was a world of peril for an American baby back then, John; and me with no defensive weapon except what I could carry in my diapers. Maybe that's why I still tend to fling crap around?
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Q: You're doing a very good job of it right now! Those last few lines of yours left nothing to the imagination! Since you've brought up the subject of crap, damn! Maybe it's a subject best left for another day.
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A: Speaking of crap, in a consumption-driven economy, there'll always be lots of trash bikes available, and I also gathered some great trash bikes and parts back in the day, but probably not as much as you accumulated, since I was out in the sticks.
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Today's trash bike frames are mostly pseudo-BMX and MTB, which lack the intrinsic curvilinear elegance of the previous generations of trash bikes. They just don't lend themselves very well to kustomization. They're still very useful for chopping up for bits and pieces, of course; but today's kids don't have access to the relatively sophisticated "Dad's Tools" most of my generation of kids had available, because do-it-yourselfer Dads aren't nearly as common as they used to be. Come to think of it, Dads of any kind aren't as common around the house as they used to be, in today's higher percentage of single-parent households. Typically, "Mom's Tools" fit comfortably in a kitchen cabinet drawer, and probably so do Dad's, if his "single-guy crib" even has a kitchen.
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I'd briefly hoped that the mass-produced "factory chopper" trend would lead to a new resurgence of kid kustomizers; but market trends today, thanks to modern media, have the life span of fruit flies. Back in that previous "golden age", every bike manufacturer jumped on that trend and rode it until the tires fell off- approximately ten years. This go-round, though, there wasn't time enough for that to happen, before marketers gave up on it. And most of the "me too" chopper bicycle production resulting from the start of the trend went directly to the Odd-Lot closeout stores from the importers' warehouses. Where they were bought up by adults like us, for use as raw material for our builds. By the time what's left over ends up in our trash, you could maybe make a really sturdy bong out of it, presuming you had the tools.
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Q: The new Stingray craze sure didn't last long did it? A lot of people thought that it was the end of the world when the factories stopped producing their kiddy choppers! But, when the smoke cleared, everyone could see that the movement had just carried on!
Half the problem was that young bike owners preferred the ride of a rusty BMX bike, to the "boat anchor" performance of a factory chopper. BikeRod&Kustom works at promoting the scene as a creative outlet for young people, not always an easy thing to do, but still, I think it's an uphill battle worth pursuing.

A: An important driving concept behind the founding of BR&K was to give "messing around with bikes and making them look really cool" a veneer of hipness and glamour necessary for any trend to take hold with kids and the media (pretty much the same mentality now). Unfortunately, within the current media zeitgeist concerning cycling, glamour is the strict provenance of the "sporting" aspects of cycling, and cutting-edge hipness is confined to the "X-games" subset of that aspect. And what do the bikes used in those activities look like?
I'd love to think otherwise, but it seems highly unlikely to me that there'll ever be a reprise of the mass youth bike kustom culture you grew up within, John; there are just too many factors working against it. That said, though, there will always be a certain percentage of mutant youth who fall into messing around with bikes the way we did, whether it's fashionable or not. Every once in a while, I get in a photo from some kid who found a bike in the trash and started messing around with it. As long as there's a BR&K, that kid will be able to see his work in our Gallery, and impress his friends with his "fame".

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Q: One curious thing I've noticed lately is that the scene has attracted more participants with strong political beliefs. Pedal power generally is drawing in more people who possess strong activist leanings (Critical Mass). Many European kustomizers especially seem to identify with the "Anti-War" and "Anti Big-Oil" movements.
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Increasingly (in some circles) kustom bicycle ownership is becoming a strong outward sign of very deep political views! I wonder what it is about the look and history of kustom bikes that makes them attractive for this purpose? "The Kustom bicycle as a political statement!" This is quite a development, if it's true! Any thoughts, Jim?
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A: After a certain age (usually around 18) people who are active cyclists tend to be more intelligent than the common herd of humanity; and our kind of cyclists tend to be more individualistic and creative than the cycling community in general. It takes a certain personality type to dare to scrape off the corporate decals and create a bicycle in their own style.
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This type of person will tend to not worship at the common altar, and be much more skeptical of "received wisdom" from the establishment. They have no illusions about the motivations of global corporations and their lap-dog politicians, and tend toward a more "progressive" viewpoint.
That said, even our kind of "alterna-cyclists", after a certain age (about 25, usually) have stopped equating climbing onto a bike saddle for a Critical Mass Ride with strapping on an AK47 for some "direct political action against the hegemony of oppression" or whatever.   People older than that, while they may totally agree with those sentiments and attitudes, tend to be too busy or lazy to actually "take it to the streets". Even on their kustom bikes.
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Q: Uniformity is a word that very much equates to what was happening in the late 90's just before the days of BR&K. The lowrider movement then (as it is now) was not really about style experimentation! It was about achieving a preordained look, with variance from basic styling rules being frowned upon. The forks were all the same, the frames were invariably Schwinn Stingray, and seats were all basically one shape too! The look was predetermined, and the attitude could be bought off a store shelf! Paint and the type of plating were up to the owner, but the basic look did not evolve or change very much at all.
"Kustom Cruisers" of the 90's (on the other hand) had it a little better! Cruisers didn't start off with the heavy rule limitations that seemed to be keeping the lowriders in a tight styling "box". Even though most of the early cruisers were based around standard cantilever frames, lack of rules soon brought a push to experimentation. Jim, what are your memories of how the Kustom Cruiser scene evolved?
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A: Even before BR&K started up, the "California Beach Cruiser" scene was an important West Coast trend, and was responsible for the term "Cruiser" becoming part of our lexicon. It had everything going on which is happening now; including work being done by
some of the surviving names from the golden age of hot rodding and kustom car building. That's when Moon started offering its classic spun-aluminum discs for 26" bicycle wheels. We adopted the term Kustom Cruiser when the style spread to places lacking beaches.
In our early Kustom Cruiser days, we had very few choices available in non-standard bike components, especially wheels. In consequence, almost every halfway-serious kustom cruiser wore 144-spoke lowrider wheels, as that was the only alternative. Throw in ape or half-moon bars, Schwinn-style springer fork, and a saddle from Brooks or the lowrider bike parts catalog, and you'd end up with something differing only in paint, graphics, and minor detailing from almost every other example of the breed. That almost everybody's favorite basis was the 26" Schwinn cantilever frame made this even more so.
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Larry Fator's 1970s Beach Cruiser,
Tank by Jocko Johnson
Thanks to the influence of people like Brad Graham, Mike Watson, and other radical reworkers of the bike frame showing the way with their tallbikes and even crazier creations, advanced kustomizers took their next step, by taking up hacksaws and torches and using them to create some seriously modified Kustom Cruisers. Stretching, exemplified by Ken Russell's work, was an obvious thing to do, and resulted in a whole new theme to explore. The GT/Dyno Roadster followed this new trend, and the factory stretch cruiser resulted. People who'd been building up Kustom Cruisers but weren't yet ready to tackle radical frame reworking jumped at the opportunity to work with the new Cruiser proportion. This was the turning point, and that's when kustom bikes became much less uniform, for a while, at least.
Q: Cruisers have incredible potential, I personally feel we are on the edge of a new era for this type of bicycle, and with it will come some radical experimentation! We have already caught a glimpse of this happening in some of the new "Latin Cruisers" seen in California. These bikes seem to take some of their styling cues from the lowrider movement; but with less of the clutter and tackiness. They are probably being built by former lowrider builders looking for a little
more styling freedom, and some new territory to conquer! I'm expecting Latin cruisers to go the limit with frame design, and bodywork.

.A: One of our earliest Contributing Editors, Larry Lujan, was pretty much the founding father of that school. He was a serious lowrider bike builder in his youth; but when he became older, with kids of his own, he saw that the LRB movement was sinking into non-functional and expensive irrelevance. So he began evangelicizing for street-worthy kustom-style bicycle building to the kids, based on the more practical 26" Cruiser platform. The current leading LC practitioners, in many instances, are LA neighborhood kids he personally mentored in the late '90s.
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Ken Russell
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Larry Lujan and son.
Q: Jim, you've had quite a bit of experience with your own breed of kustom cruisers in the last few years. What are your personal thoughts about where this new cruiser scene might be going? Can function play as much a part as the form will, and where should we expect to see the first glimpse of something big starting to happen?
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A: Function has always been a big aspect of cruisers. While they aren't as spectacular as other types emerging since our beginnings,
they have a lot going for them in relation to practicality. They don't take up a lot of space, and riding one is fairly straightforward, with nothing too weird about their operation. It's difficult to make one really stand out, in a tasteful way, though, due to the limitations of surface area. "Tank paneling" is a good way of adding more "canvas" for creative graphics, so you can expect to see more of that being done. Larry Lujan was doing that a long time ago. I also think there's a lot of potential for downsizing the cruiser somewhat, by basing kustoms on the 24"-sized frame.
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Traditionally, John, there was a broader range of bike sizes commonly available. Little kids started with 20"-tire based street bikes, progressed to the 24" size in adolescence, then graduated to 26" in their teens. During your youth, the 20" size pretty much wiped out the 24" size, since the musclebike-style seating and handlebar configuration allowed larger riders to use the dinky 20" frames.
Q: Yes, it was "Schwinn" that hopped on the corporate bandwagon with that in mid 1963! They had heard about an emerging trend for bikes that was started by some California kids, back in around 1961 or so! These kids had been kustomizing old 20-inch framed bikes by bolting on aftermarket "Solo Polo" seats, and "high rise" handlebars!  Schwinn realized there might be sales potential for this new look and style, and so, introduced its own factory version as part of the '63 mid-year lineup. This was of course the bike they called the "Stingray"! They took a chance that the kids in California were on to something, and the rest is history.
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One of the first ratty choppers that I made back in 1972-73 was built around an ancient Schwinn with 24x2.125 tires on it! Even then I thought that the 24-inch tire size was perfect! I even found some old English motorcycle fenders in the trash that mated up to them perfectly.
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A: I've always liked the 24" balloon and middleweight frames because of their compact size- about the scale of a small-displacement motorcycle. By using some of the more recently developed tricks and components, it's possible for a full-scale rider to use this size frame in a very sophisticated-looking way, without the "circus bear" image the smaller 20"-tired musclebike or chopper conveys. Speaking of which, that clownish image was responsible for the 24" Schwinn Manta Ray's introduction, back in the day.
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Schwinn Manta Ray
Q: The only thing that I really liked from the early 70's Schwinn "Manta Ray" was the seat, which was shaped like no other banana seat before or since! I bought one of these seats brand new in 1973, and it eventually wound up on my first show bike. The 24-inch "Manta Ray" went looking for an older audience in the early 70's, but it didn't find one. Today things have come full circle, and the 24-inch size is right at home again!
A: I think of traditional balloon and middleweight 24"-frame-based adult kustom bikes as "Pony Cruisers", and the form has a lot going for it, especially in the cramped urban cycling environment. They're almost as agile as 20" musclebikes, and don't take up much more room. My recent work has been mostly in the 26" long-wheelbase form, but my "Killer Swan" of a few years ago is a radically-styled Street Kustom based on a 24" girl's balloon frame. I built it for my daughter as a high-school graduation gift, and she's still turning heads in a "glamorous" way with it, although she's taller than I am now.
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My new personal city ride is a 7-foot-long chopper. While this is a foot shorter than Kandiru, my suburban ride in Baton Rouge, it's still pretty cumbersome for a bike requiring street access by elevator. Once I've grown tired of the hassle of wrestling with that scale, I have a 24" prewar frame waiting for the Kustom Cruiser treatment. Just adding rear dropout extensions and a 26" or longer fork allows this size frame to work with "adult-scale" wheels and tires, and it can be done entirely without welding, which is a big plus in an urban environment.
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Q: City living presents its own set of problems for the kustom bicycle builder, I live on the second floor of an old warehouse, and have to take my bikes down a winding flight of stairs to get them outside! The stairs were put in when the old freight elevator died, a sad day!
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Jim, tell us more about the kind of problems you have experienced, being a bicycle kustomizer in New York City, one of the largest and craziest urban environments in the world? It must present its own unique set of difficulties? What are you up against there?
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A: Lack of workspace has always been the worst problem. I'm basically a country boy, and I've always built things, following my father's example. When I was a kid, I had total access to my father's shop, I had a barn to store parts and raw materials, and I had my own shop building, an old wagon shed across the road, to use for building bikes and other vehicle projects.
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When I came to Manhattan in the late '70s, my having the ability to actually make things became an important part of the package I could offer to clients. It gave me an edge over most of my freelance Art Director competition. Anybody can think up crazy things, but it takes a rare set of skills to actually realize them and put them in front of a camera. By being able to do that part myself, I was able to take on projects that would have been too impractical or expensive for most of my competition to tackle, so I got the business.
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Q: Was it hard finding a suitable space when you first arrived in New York?
CLocster, Germany
The Euro kustom bikers tend to be younger than their North American brethren, so they're more likely to be out visibly struggling on behalf of righteous causes. And, as I noticed when I was that age and doing the same sort of thing, it's a great way to meet interesting babes.
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These are gross generalizations on my part, of course.  In actuality, the kustom bike community has a heavy percentage of conformist thinkers within its membership, and lots of them totally buy into whatever propaganda "the evil power structure" feeds them.
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Our conformists aren't generally perceived that way by most people since those who go in for kustom bike creation are a fairly small minority spread out pretty thinly within the general populace, so we all appear to be wild individualists within that context. Anyone who studies the BR&K Gallery closely, however, will soon notice a sizeable amount of "uniformity".
Q: Or too scared! A Critical Mass Ride in New York is a guaranteed bust by the Authorities! They really have a "hate on" for organized pedal power, and treat it like it was an international criminal conspiracy! You have a point about how age relates to activism. Many North American kustomizers are on the plus side of 30, 40, and even 50! And are probably less inclined to be active in these causes.
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A: The situation in NYC is truly ridiculous; and the recent restrictions are not only draconian, but have been ruled unconstitutional when brought before judges. But the city's Republican Mayor and his Police Chief keep trying. Here's a link to the recent situation here. They've even been trying to criminalize groups of two or more activist pedestrians now! That was just tossed out by the courts.
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Critical Mass, NYC
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A: No, in 1978, that part was easy, because NYC was at its lowest and scariest point then. Remember John Carpenter's "Escape From New York (1981)"? I got off the train from Philadelphia, bought a copy of the Village Voice, read through the classifieds, found something that seemed right, called up about it, met the agent there, and took it. The whole process took about an hour and a half, and I was back on the train to Philly. It was just a cavernous empty space with conduit dangling from the ceiling, debris and dumpsters all around; but I knew I could make it work.

It was a loft space in what had originally been a department store in Manhattan's "Ladies' Mile" shopping district in the early part of the 20th century. Later, when the posh shopping district had moved farther uptown, the building had been filled with garment business subcontractors: cutting rooms, sewing floors, etc. Basically it
was sweatshops. When I moved in, our building was mostly being colonized by photographers; with a few commercial artists like me thrown into the mix. It was relatively cheap for NYC, since the Broadway/Union Square area was considered very dangerous then; but it was still twice as expensive as I was used to paying in Philadelphia. If I'd had the money or nerve at that point, I could have taken several thousand square feet on my floor. But since the cost was such a jump, and I was coming in cold on mostly borrowed money, I just took a 10-year lease on a thousand square feet at $500 a month, with built-in rent escalations for the first five years.
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It was just my wife and I living and working here in the beginning, with a third of our space partitioned off as a separate studio/shop. I was able to function pretty well in that much space, and built some fairly mammoth projects in it. Brother Dave joined me in the early '80s, once I had serious workflow going on. That's when we became "Wizard Brothers". We had a lot of fun, and he stuck around for a couple of years, before heading back south. His family hated the city, and refused to live here.
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Q: What kind of work were you doing, in those first years of living in New York?
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A: I started out here writing and producing freelance editorial humor packages for magazines like National Lampoon and Penthouse, with a lot of photographs of constructed things featured in the articles. I built up a pretty hot portfolio fairly quickly. Soon, though, I developed a reputation outside the publication milieu for being able to design and make almost anything; so people began calling me just for the construction aspects. We started doing a lot of perfect "hero" close-up product replicas for advertising agencies, and props and F/X for films and commercials. About then, I hooked up with Walter Williams to do the sets and props for all the Mr. Bill Show
projects, since I'd already been involved with Saturday Night Live, on the original SNL Book, and had set up the deal for the first Mr. Bill Show book, using my contacts with the show and a Philadelphia publisher with whom I had history.
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Q: living in a busy loft studio is not for everybody. Given the nature of your work, did you encounter any problems?
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A: With time, our place started filling up with even more tools and raw materials, including my bike parts pile- "The crap checked in, but it didn't check out". Then our daughter was born in 1985. In the city, you can't add on to the house in a situation like that, and it was way too expensive to move to a bigger place by that time; so I had to build the equivalent of a small cottage at one end of the studio for her, where my spray booth had been. And the place continued to get even more cramped from that point on. I had to become very creative at finding space to work in.
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At one point in the late '80s, I was offered a project  to design and construct a traveling trade show display for Certain-Teed Fiberglass Co. consisting of an 8 by 16 foot acrylic and fiberglass three-level race track about 8 feet tall, with big radio-controlled fiberglass-shelled armadillos racing on it. The photographer down the hall I used on most of my magazine projects told me he was going to the Caribbean for a couple of weeks; I instantly asked "Can I borrow your studio while you're gone?" I had a platoon of people working in there around the clock, until the minute Carl got back.
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Q: Even with the obvious constraints of a limited sized workspace, it comes through (quite clearly) that you have the ability to get the job done, whatever the circumstance! Hopefully the situation has become a little better as time has gone on?
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A: It's even worse now that my daughter's 21, and sharing the studio with me. I did the final assembly and finishing on my latest bike late at night, in another friend's studio on this floor; and I had to take everything up to the roof for painting. All that's why most of my later construction projects, including bikes, have been done in other parts of the country, in Louisiana, Pennsylvania or California; it's just too much hassle to do it here, making it simpler to fly somewhere else, do the construction there, and ship the finished thing to wherever it's needed.

For Penthouse Forum
Photography: Carl Waltzer
National Lampoon
Mr.Bill In Space, Avon Books
Q: Most people under the same conditions would have probably said, "Enough is enough"! But I sense you have one of those rare personal drives that allows you to persevere, even under the most difficult of circumstances! I don't doubt that you've always had this trait!
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A: Growing up in Kentucky certainly makes you tough- if you survive your childhood. Knowing that I can go for days without sleep and cope with almost any horrible situation likely to crop up has given me a certain amount of confidence that I can pull off almost any task. I plan ahead as well as I possibly can, and don't fall to pieces when something happens to screw up the plan.
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Q: You also had the good luck to grow up around a talented father, who probably saw a bit of himself in you; a man who must have given you practical "hands-on" encouragement during your early formative years.

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A: I mostly learned by example, from watching him do amazing things with his hands, eyes, and brain. It was like watching God at work. His "encouragement" took the form of never putting a padlock on his tool chest, even when I abused or misplaced his tools. Most of the active encouragement I got was in the fine arts area. He'd always been a good painter and "drawer", but never had the chance to develop that avocation with training and education, due to the depression, followed by the war. So when I showed signs of an aptitude for art, my parents spent
money they probably couldn't always comfortably afford on art supplies and tools for that sort of activity. But, my real pleasure has always been in building things, so in addition to my college major in Art, I also took a minor in Industrial Arts.
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Q: This early encouragement of your creative side, combined with growing feelings of kinship to the developing hot rod culture and its founding fathers, appear to be the main ingredients that formed your youthful identification (and interest) for all things kustom!
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Jim, what can we learn today from the classic work of the great kustomizers like "George Barris" and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth?  I'm singling out these two builders, not only because of their skills and influence, but also for the fact that they both have early connections to the kustomizing of bicycles! Barris fabricated true kustom bicycles at least as far back as 1965, and Roth was the first person I know of to actively promote the idea of kids making "chopper" bicycles, publishing an article on the subject in his "Choppers" magazine way back in 1968! Both "Barris" and "Roth" were serious guys, who didn't make junk!
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A: Both those guys were like Gods to me.
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George Barris reminded me of my father, who'd worked at Ford's Willow Rouge plant after the war, as a "body leader". That was the most "artistic" and admired blue-collar job in the factory back then. He applied stick solder to welded body panel joins, using a torch, and swept it into a smooth compound surface with a paddle. I learned about his job status later, from someone who'd worked in Detroit during the same time period; my father never bragged about that, or anything else. Barris, though,  was very proud of having that particular skill, in

addition to his creative, photographic and entrepreneurial attributes. As with my father's creations, I didn't always agree with everything Barris did, but I respected the hell out of the craftsmanship and attention to detail with which he did it.
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Ed Roth, on the other hand, was like an older and incredibly hip cousin or something. I really wanted to be that guy! I slavishly imitated his T-shirt style, and studied his approach to fiberglass composite body sculpting very closely.  I was astounded at the forms he was able to realize with just plaster, resin, and glass cloth, and how sloppy the process was at the beginning. Considering his age, he was pretty wild and immature. Since I was just a kid, I could certainly relate to that; and that he was able to accomplish amazingly beautiful things in spite of that crazy kid-like approach to his work gave me hope for myself. He had a very ad hoc, zen-like approach to design I also tend to follow. It's no accident that I use a lot of composite design elements in my bikes.
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I've never seen a Roth bicycle, or the article you cite; but I'd like to. I've always been absolutely certain that most of the Kustom Gods started out by messing around with bicycles. It's just too bad most of them never seem to have photographed the results. I can also relate to that, because I never photographed any of mine, either, even into my twenties, when I was a capable photographer with serious equipment. I only began shooting them after starting BR&K.
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What I've learned from studying Barris and Roth's careers is the ideal of combining Roth's out-of-the-envelope creative craziness and showmanship with Barris' solid professionalism in a crazy business. That's a killer combo, and I'm still working toward fully realizing it.
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Brain and
Barris
Q: Like Roth and Barris, you have used automotive and industrial construction methods to achieve sculptural forms in your work (the early hot rod and kustom car influence clearly showing through). It also shows in one fundamental way how your work is different from most other builders active in the last few years. Your bikes show a much broader core of influences, most noticeable in the non-motorcycle based styling elements seen on some of your creations.

.Your work shows a desire to find a unique place in the world of kustom street machines, and is not too derivative of any one style. In essence you are a true kustomizer, drawing
from a broad base of inspirations to find your own personal aesthetic. For many young builders today it is the style of the chopper motorcycle that is looked to for inspiration. I think this is fine, but I do get concerned when motorcycle design is looked to for all the answers. Especially when there are so many unexplored possibilities in unique (non-derivative) kustom bicycle design.

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A: Well, I can't really say that being influenced by the styling of classic kustom and hot rod cars is any healthier than being influenced by motorcycle styling. But at least my bikes don't try to look exactly like cars; which seems to be the goal, regarding motorcycles, which many current chopper bicycle builders seem to aim for. I suppose my approach to bicycle styling is similar to Arlen Ness' in relation to motorcycles. He's more influenced by car styling than he is by traditional motorcycle styling.
I got that Harley bug out of my system in the '60s, when I owned one. I see no need to duplicate the motorcycle-riding experience without benefit of a big-ass engine to haul the thing around. I build my bikes to be actually ridden. They may superficially look heavy and impractical, but I exercise considerable weight/strength discipline from the very beginning of the design process, to counteract the weight of the pure styling elements I add to the basic platform. Even the styling elements are pretty low-mass, since I use aircraft-type foam composite construction techniques, in addition to the lightweight and
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rigid aircraft tubing I use for the frames. My design goal is to not exceed the mass of a classic Schwinn Phantom, which is about as massive as is practical for a functional bicycle, in my opinion.
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Q: I would like to hear more about what you think of 3-wheeled bikes, a form that I consider as under-represented in the world of kustom bicycles. You and your brother Dave have already built multi-wheeled "kustoms". What are your thoughts on the possibilities and limitations associated with building this kind of machine? What potential does the 3-wheeled platform offer to the progressive kustom builder?
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A: The trike form is begging for development by our kind of designers. I can't say that Dave and I have really exploited the form properly, as yet. 2Much!!!, for example, weighs way "too much" for true functionality. When geared up, it's too heavy; and when geared down, it's too slow. Its frame was made by butchering and combining steel bike frame sections, with added steel exhaust-pipe material; this isn't the way to make a functional human-power road vehicle. Our pure-style parts are pretty light, but the basic infrastructure has a lot of mass to it.
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Dave and I have been offered a commission to build a bike capable of hauling a bag of golf clubs. I'm thinking of a streamlined sidecar for hauling the clubs, a dog, or whatever. Sidecars are another arrangement of 3 wheels begging for kustom exploitation.
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I'd like to experiment with using carbon fiber-over-foam monocoque techniques, and dispensing with the metal framework entirely, for an envelope-bodied trike having human-power drive augmented by electric propulsion. There are pure engineer and industrial-designer types who've worked in this vein (Twike, for example), but the classic kustom style has yet to be applied to state-of-the-art vehicle technology.

.I can easily envision a human-powered "C-Cab Trike" with "School of Roth" styling done in extremely light but rigid

composites. The aero aspects of a "C-Cab" would suck, of course, but streamlining isn't super-critical at street cruising speeds.
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Another design I'd like to play with is a vehicle something like the TRON Lightcycle. I got the idea after seeing one of Mike Watson's lowracers that had large-diameter skinny wheels with the rider recumbent between them, with a fore and aft structural member passing above him. It didn't look much like a Lightcycle except for the rider position, but that was enough for me to start thinking about what a swoopy weatherproof shell based on that posture and frame layout would look like, with the trike configuration improving the layout's efficiency. I suppose that would be the "Barris Cinematic Kustom" approach, and carbon over foam with spandex for extra swoop is perfect for that sort of form, too.
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Our friend Sic Nick is developing serious trike components, which are just begging to be used in kustom-style trikes. But, doing so successfully calls for dealing with the form in a realistic and performance-oriented way, not by attempting to duplicate a Harley "ice cream trike" or whatever. Going that route will only result in something even less functional than the two-wheeled version of the same approach. I must admit, though, that even an ice cream trike replica would probably weigh less than "2Much!!!"
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Q: I agree; form has been lacking in the bodywork of many trike projects I've seen! 3 wheelers have the unique ability to take those full bodies you mentioned, and I would like to see some bold experimentation in the near future where the driver could be fully enclosed, and protected from the elements!


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You also mentioned electric-assist motors; recently I had the great pleasure of trying out a bike with a rear hub motor installed on it! I must say that the extra help it gave to pedaling was quite intoxicating; and even though the bike I rode on was a low-powered example, it was still fantastic! What about the future use of these alternative power sources on kustom bikes? So little has been said about this subject, what promise might electric power hold, for our heavier pedal-powered creations?
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A: I like the motorhub concept, because of its efficiency and "stealthiness". As compact Lithium Ion power packs become more affordable, there's huge potential for very simple and non-obtrusive motorization schemes. Most internal combustion-enhanced bikes are banned from bike paths, for example, but electric enhancement commonly isn't, especially if it's invisible.

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None of our knees are getting any younger, so there'll be a point at which a lot of us will start considering the working of electric propulsion into our kustom bikes. I'm practically there already. I've taken the possible addition of a streamlined removable battery pod beneath the frame of my new machine into account from the start of the bike's design. Once you have the battery pack worked out, you're pretty much there, aside from bolting on the motorized wheel. So, I gave myself that option from the get-go.
Q: I want to get back to your history and involvement with the kustom scene, going right back to the beginning. How were you first exposed to the movement in your early youth? Would you say that your growing up in the "golden age of kustomizing" and reading about guys like George Barris strongly influenced your future development and choice of vocation? And if so, how has this kustom sensibility manifested itself in your life and work?
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A: The magazines were how I got hooked into kustom culture. My part of Kentucky wasn't exactly a hotbed of that movement. A lot of people did mild kustomizing on their cars, but there wasn't any serious hot rod building around there until late in the '60s. TV is where we saw high-level street rods, like Norm Grabowski's wild and seminal T-bucket roadster which had a regular role in "77 Sunset Strip" as "Kookie's car". And the movies, of course, were where we saw a lot of the really nice examples.
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When I was 15, I acquired my first car- a '47 Chevy I bought for $35. I didn't have my driver's license then, so I just worked on it in our driveway. I shaved all the chrome off it and had it in primer, the usual thing back then, until you mowed enough lawns to buy and apply real paint. I swapped it for something else, just before I was scheduled to buy the Moon discs for it, which usually followed the primer. I also built some fairly serious, super-detailed scale model rods and kustoms back then. Attention to detail and glorification of the nuts and bolts has always been something important in kustom work, and I apply that sort of thinking to everything I do.

Q: Have you figured out just how, and why, the "bicycle" became your main kustomizing interest?
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A: Well, lately bikes have been all I've had room to work on, and I appreciate the elegance of building efficient micro-power vehicles. But I still
love the smell of gasoline, given the opportunity. A short time before I moved here from Philadelphia, I acquired a '57 Chevy Bel Air Convertible I had high hopes for; but even there it was almost impossible to work on cars, since I lived in the center of the city, and had to keep the car in a different neighborhood. I'd planned to give that car the real kustom treatment, but relocating to NYC totally ruled that out. Even back then, garage space rental in Manhattan cost more than my Philadelphia apartment was at the time, and I was about to double that expense. So the Chevy stayed behind, and I haven't owned a car since then. But, bike-building is practical, even here.
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Q: Jim, what does "kustom" mean to you? Is it mostly about an automotive look or style, or is "kustom" more about a general attitude, even to things outside of the automotive realm? What is your personal take on this?
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A: To me, kustom means anything you personalize with high craft to suit your own taste. I've modified every car, motorcycle, or bicycle I've ever owned, including an Alfa Romeo Roadster, but I've also kustomized my clothing, my computers and almost anything else. I designed and built everything within the outside walls of our place, including partitioning, cabinetry, and all sorts of built-in storage. It's like the living space of a kustom-styled yacht, almost. Someone with sufficient style discernment could probably tell that it was designed by the same person who made the bicycles parked by its front door. It's dead easy to see that the bikes were designed by the same guy, because they share so many features and details, in spite of being very different types of bike. And they share hardware detailing with the style of the place. I love chrome finishing washers, combined with bare aluminum, and they find a lot of use on both the bikes and the interior trim here.
The kustom way of dealing with the world has been a big part of my editorial artwork also, now that I think of it. I did a "kustomizing kit" for a Nathan's Hot Dog once, and I use hot rod visual-texture elements whenever possible- all those metallic fins and ribs are just so beautiful, its pure art deco.
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Q: Jim, what do you think about the kustom bicycle movement's becoming an international phenomena?  Europe especially has embraced the scene to a degree that I think surprised a lot
of people. Do you see any fundamental differences in the way fabricators outside of North America approach Kustom Bicycle style? And in your estimation, is a separate "Euro Style" developing?  How far along has the rest of the world progressed, and could there come a day when North America ceases to be the dominant force in the kustom bicycle scene?
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A: I don't see a difference to the same extent as existed between "Euro Lowrider Bikes" and the North American (Chicano) style. There were some strong cultural variations at work there, at a certain creative level. At the mass level, the less creative practitioners are more universal, in that they all just buy the stuff from the same catalogs.
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At an earlier stage of Kustom Bike development there were more pronounced differences because of the lack of available basis frames and components over there. Now that Europe and North America have pretty much the same pool of frames and parts to draw upon, the differences are fewer. And at the high end of creativity, the differences are pretty much down to individuals' frame styles, no matter where they happen to be located.

.Q: Luckily, we are in a pre-competitive stage of the new kustom bicycle movement. What are your feelings about the
possibility that we're moving towards a path of unbridled money spending, and ruthless show competition? Do you think that we could find ourselves in the same predicament that the "Lowrider Bike" movement eventually found itself in? What can we learn from the "LRB" movement's embrace of "all out" show competition? Will growing competitiveness within the Kustom Bicycle scene eventually breed monsters?
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A: We'll eventually get to the point, when we have an actual show circuit devoted only to Kustom Bikes, where big-bucks machines dominate certain classes; but that happens with any field of creativity geared around a dedicated show circuit. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in itself, as long as it doesn't totally displace the building of practical street machines. But that's really unlikely to happen, as showing the things on the street is a large part of the gratification of building them, for most people. By the time we have a dedicated show circuit, there should be "Street" classes, in which money spent doesn't matter as much, and a certain amount of realistic wear and tear doesn't count against the machine's score.
That's why I've always pushed for compulsory participation in a bike parade for show eligibility. The parade promotes the show to the media and public, and ensures that entrants to the show are street-functional. Those who choose not to participate in the parade would just be in the "Show Kustom" class, and only compete with others in that category. If the basic machine type is barely functional to begin with, as in the case of Lowrider Bikes, it's much easier for the movement to slip into "Show Queen" dominance. But having separate "Show" and "Go" classes prevents dominance by "Pure Show". We need lots of different classes, to give everyone a chance to play on an even field.
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Q: We've seen a few "fast buck" artists try and exploit the scene. Is the movement also attracting a few "quick fame" hunters?  Are certain people getting into the Kustom Bicycle scene for reasons other than a love for the style?  If so, who are they, and what might their motivations be to work with bicycles, and not motorcycles or cars?
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A: I suppose that there are people out there who perceive Kustom Bike creation as a "smaller pond" without an existing "superstar" class already in place, and it's certainly cheaper to build a bicycle than something which starts out with an expensive tricked-out engine as the ticket of admission to playing the game; but ultimately the creativity and quality of the work are what counts, not the motivation behind the choice of game to play. Time will weed out those who think Kustom Bike creation is an easier way to gain fame than playing in the Kustom car or motorcycle leagues. In this, as in the other areas of Kustom creation, action talks, bullshit walks, and there's no such thing as "easier fame". I can't say that I'm terribly concerned about people's motivations, in the long run, as long as their bike creations aren't "full-scale 3D sketches" which only look good in photos on websites. Having had all the fame I've wanted for myself in the past, without deriving a whole lot of pleasure from it, I greatly prefer making other people famous, assuming they're deserving of it, of course.
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Q: I guess as long as the bikes look great and are fabricated to a high standard of quality, what does it matter if the builder wants a little attention? Maybe a better standard bike is being made because of it!
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I see a lot more interest in the learning of basic skills, like welding and bodywork. Seems like a positive sign that builders want to upgrade the quality of their finished bikes! This and the use of better quality construction materials helps boost the reputation of kustom bicycles as quality pieces of street art!  In general what do you think about the design, quality, and execution of the bikes we see nowadays? What should people be thinking of in this regard?

Photo: John Youens
A: Our construction and finish standards have continued climbing since the very beginning. No one wants to do less well than on his previous project, or someone else's, so the ante is raised every time. This is perfectly natural for serious people. People whose standards don't rise with time are not serious about what they're doing; they're just posing. A superficially-cool-looking bike made using trashy materials with sloppy craftsmanship isn't a vehicle, it's a costume accessory.
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Q: For a while there, Jim, many bicycle builders were closely following the chopper motorcycle TV shows. Do you think that the introduction of these programs strongly influenced builders to move away from the "cruiser" style, and more towards a chopper bicycle style? What are your general feelings about how television has influenced the kustom bicycle scene? Has it been a positive influence overall?

A: The cruiser format is fairly limiting, as there are only so many ways of
working within that pattern. So naturally we like alternating with a more open style of bike architecture. Choppers have been a viable alternative for our builders for a very long time, even when the result wasn't necessarily called a  "chopper". Usually, when someone develops a new skill set, such as welding, they want to experiment with wilder applications. Choppers are potentially wilder and less restrictive a form than cruisers, so experimenting within that style is a natural and healthy progression. While there's a certain amount of sameness to a lot of people's chopper forms, the variations in design detail still provide a lot of interest to the afficionado.
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Regarding the influence of those motorcycle chopper-oriented TV shows, I'll restate that our type of bike activity has traditionally drawn its participants from the more intelligent and creative strata of people inclined toward cycling. This is not the type of "monkey see, monkey do" person who gets into it purely as the result of exposure to "American Chopper" or some other "pseudo-reality" show of that ilk. The people who've got into this thing we do just because of a TV show about motorcycle building haven't done a thing to raise our collective IQ- au contraire, actually; and the influence has literally hurt the work of some who were building great bikes before they got sucked into watching those shows and buying into that kind of overpriced "scooter trash" aesthetic. Now they're building kitsch.
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Please don't ask me to explain my tortuous mental connection, but a lot of the TV-influenced "chopper bicycles" I see being built today remind me of those cheesy Halloween costumes which have an actual picture of the character represented, printed on the torso area; they seem kind of retarded, if worn by someone older than six or seven.

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That said, though, if the urge to build derivative and hardly-functional bicycles is the worst thing anyone's picked up from watching contemporary TV, they're still not doing too badly. Take the MTV variety of "reality shows", please! I'm totally thrilled that my daughter never got into watching the moronic crap MTV shows on a regular basis.
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Q: The Kustom bicycle movement has had quite a few ups and downs in the last 45 years! Most people are surprised when I tell them it's that old!  One of the great things about BikeRod&Kustom" has been its interest in showing the historical side of the movement. Finding information on the early years continues to be quite difficult, as you know!  Has it made you proud that BR&K has been somewhat successful in filling the missing gaps in kustom bicycle history? Providing information that really cannot be found anywhere else! How important do you think it is for the movement to have a strong sense of its own history?
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A: Documenting and recovering our history is a function BR&K has assumed pretty much by default. I can't say that it was high on the original list of priorities. But anyone who's serious about an activity is usually interested in its history and lore, so any time we have a chance to share some bit of unearthed historical knowledge with our readers, we do so, and save it in our archives. If somebody had seriously undertaken the historian's task at the beginning of
what we now call "Kustom Biking", it would be a lot less difficult to find the information now. We need more people like you, John, who saved stuff. So, we're doing the best we can to make up for the gaps in our collective knowledge. Art History is an important component of an artist's education, and Military History is a vital element in the training of an officer. The same applies to what we do, even though we may think we're starting afresh every time we light up the torch.
I suppose I'm most proud of our role in retrieving George Barris' bicycle work for posterity. Hardly anyone until recently knew what those bikes represented, and there's no telling how many of his bikes have been saved from landfills or the parts donor pile just because someone was able to Google "Iverson bicycle" and find our database on the subject, and information on the legendary person behind it. We just got in a new set of photos of another, much better preserved, example of his "Adult Dragstripper" for our Barris bike archives, because someone about to put it on eBay Googled "Iverson Dragstripper" and found us.
We've certainly given eBay sellers of the Barris bikes a way of realizing better prices when they sell them- they just cite a link to our information on the bike's historical cachet..But, it's always great to run into photos and information on any early practitioner's work, whether famous for anything else or not. The information and documentation are out there, at least for a while, and whether they turn up in BR&K, a flea market, or a landfill is mostly a matter of luck. But the odds of a relevant photo's turning up on the web are greatly increased simply because BR&K is out there for people to find and to add their own little pieces to the puzzle.

Q: Jim, what about your own history as a bicycle kustomizer? You were about 16 years old when the earliest examples of kustom bicycles (I know of) started to be created; do you remember that very first bike you made with a kustom influence? And how has your interest in kustom bicycles continued to develop over the years?

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A: I think I was about 13 when I did my first bike kustomizing, which would have been about 1958 or '59. I got the inspiration to do it because our local Western Auto store started carrying Von Dutch pinstripe decals. Sometimes availability determines action. My bike was a 26" Western Flyer cantilever-frame middleweight, the cheap one- without the tank and all. I took the bike apart, cleaned the frame and fenders then sprayed them with fire engine red spray-can enamel. I didn't know much about primer then, not to mention wet sanding, so it wasn't a great paint job. The bike's original paint job- metallic red with white trim wasn't in bad shape, so my parents didn't understand why I felt the need to paint it.
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Q: Did you do anything else to set the bike apart?
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A: I added some pinstriping of my own in a couple of places. At the time, I didn't
know that striping was done with a special dagger brush, so I just used the little camel-hair brush I had for model painting, and Testors model enamel; and laboriously painted the striping on, without much line width variation, but following the Von Dutch style as much as possible.
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I rode that bike for several more years, and put a lot of miles on it; since we lived outside of town at that time, and that's the only way I could get around to see my friends, or hit the drugstore to check out the new hot rod magazines. I used it to regularly visit every auto junkyard within a ten-mile radius, in my search for the elusive "Deuce" roadster I wanted to base my future street rod on, but never found. I built up a terrific set of leg muscles, though, and I still have them. Of course, the rest of my body's gone to hell.
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Q: I had been thinking that someone like yourself (growing up in the 1950's) with "Hot Rod" and custom car magazines laying around the house must have got it in his head to make a hot rod "kustom" bicycle! That first kustom bike of yours is a good example of how kids got them made back then! Do you remember seeing other bicycles made in the 1950's that would have fit the bill as a true kustom bicycle, in the "George Barris Kustom" sense? Around what year do you think the first true kustom bicycles were consciously made?

A: I don't remember seeing any other kustom bikes around that time, even in the magazines. And my part of Kentucky didn't have car shows then. It may not even have them now, come to think of it. Louisville had an annual car show, but that was hundreds of miles away. I never attended it, so I can't say that there were or weren't kustom bikes displayed there. I would say that, as in your case, John, that car shows would have been the place for early kustom bike sightings. It's safe to assume that there are probably photos in shoeboxes out there in people's basements and attics.
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Q: You grew up at a time when kustom cars really started making the national scene in a big way! Seems only natural that the bicycles used during that time also got the creative treatment! With all the information we have now it seems beyond a doubt that the kustom bicycle movement truly began in the late 1950's! A time when young people in every State and Province were getting their first exposure to the new kustom attitude; by way of magazines, media, and things like kustom car shows (a fairly new phenomena at the time)! Jim, you're a good example of what a young 1950's bike kustomizer was all about!
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The kustom car magazines from the early 60's are probably the best bet for us to find those elusive early photos of kustom bikes! Recently I dug up a couple of bike photos in some car magazines I picked up at an estate auction! For me it's magic to find a shot of a kustom bicycle shown in a California car show back in 1962! It's like finding a "Gold Nugget"!
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A: Of course, I didn't see every magazine that came out back then. Even in those days, there were quite a few magazines on the subject. But "Hot Rod" and "Rod and Custom", my regular publication buys, didn't have anything I noticed at the time, or at least remember having noticed. And I don't remember there being any motorcycle magazines at the time, either, unless our local drugstore just didn't carry them.
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Q: Did you ever entertain the thought of making "BikeRod&Kustom" a print publication? With the demise of "Lowrider Bicycle" magazine" and the emergence of some limited-run European publications focusing on the kustom bike scene, might the idea be something that you would now consider?  What would be the challenges of putting out a print publication, and what would have to happen inside the movement and related industries to make it a viable option? Would you even want to do it?
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A: Actually, John, I considered a print-publication version of BR&K from the very beginning. After all, that's the kind of work I've always preferred. I love the smell of fresh paper and printing ink. The delicate fragrance of a warm computer just can't compare. However, several vital criteria have to be met for a print publication to survive. There has to be a certain predictable number of people in the potential readership base for money people to be interested in backing it. Newsstand and subscription sales don't pay the bills for producing publications, but they represent the audience size for advertisers, and that determines how much advertising space in the publication is worth.
Magazine clippings from The Brain Archives
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At this point, I don't think we have enough potential advertisers to make a print publication a viable commercial possibility anyway. If there are a sufficient number of potential advertisers at this moment, they certainly aren't lining up to buy advertising in BR&K; so they might as well not exist, as far as real publishers are concerned. BR&K is "the canary in the coal mine" inasmuch as it's an indicator for people interested in the potential profitability of this market. If a cheap-ass webzine can't show a profit, a paperzine certainly can't either. As much as I bitch and moan about the current cost of putting out BR&K, it's chump change compared to what it would cost to put it out on paper. Paper doesn't grow on trees, ya know!
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You may rest assured that Lowrider Bicycle magazine would still be on the stands if its readership and advertising base numbers were still viable. A newsstand publication needs circulation numbers in six figures to thrive, and it needs an adequate pool of advertisers interested in reaching its audience to pay the bills. Obviously, LRB didn't have that kind of numbers any more, and BR&K hasn't reached them yet.
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If, after only a year or so, Hot Rod magazine had been as unprofitable as BR&K is now, after eight years of existence, Robert Peterson would have folded it and concentrated on his other publications, such as Guns&Ammo. Now there's a popular subject! I don't know why our "movement" is still so marginal after this long a time, when more expensive activities and hobbies seem to be thriving and supporting their own print media, but that's the stats. What I can't figure out is how the Harley Davidson market can support as many magazines as it does!
Q: Maybe the time for a print publication will still come! The current bike scene is evolving though. In places like Amsterdam, where large numbers of kustom bike builders have massed together to take their creations to the streets, with North America and the rest of Europe doing likewise!  It really is unprecedented! The kustom bike scene is fast becoming a recognizable subculture (even "lifestyle" for some), and it's starting to get noticed by the general population! Just how important do you think the "social" aspect is to the kustom bicycle movement today? .
A: It does need to become even more "social" to attain visibility. To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie: one person on a "different bike" tends to be labeled "weirdo". Two is some sort of conspiracy; but a bunch of them riding and socializing together constitutes a "movement". That's when you have people wanting to join up. 
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Q: Is today's kustom bicycle movement still about fun and creativity for the individual, or, is it becoming more aligned with "group" identification, and "group" ideals?
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A: We're still a bunch of creative "lone gunmen" at heart. True creativity isn't a group effort, it's something done by individual "weirdoes". Ideally, the individuals occasionally coalesce into a group. In this context, they show each other their work, swap ideas, and impress/outrage the yokels. This coalescence is very important if we want to promote major events, since one person just can't do it alone.
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That said, we need much more in the way of new Kustom Bike-related businesses and support services, and we need higher local density of participants, pretty much everywhere. "Local critical mass" is actually more important than the "global critical mass" we have now, for long-term growth, since it's local occurrences the average person witnesses, and ideally wants to get into. I recently watched a DVD of the S.Florida Freakbike Militia's  Pirate Nite cruise, and was really impressed by their turnout. That's not a tightly-structured organization, but their events are a really good way of spreading our "movement", because they look like fun to the many people exposed to the spectacle of dozens of really cool bikes sweeping past on a city street. When we have events of that type happening in many cities, our "movement" will have truly arrived, with or without benefit of a TV show on the subject.
Q: How about we get your thoughts on "regression"- or the "back to the crude basics" department. When I was a kid of 12 the first bikes I made were pretty rough. With no help and only basic tools I made some pretty ratty bikes. Today it seems there is interest amongst a few builders to make cycles called "Rat bikes".  What do you make of this trend, does it help or hinder the movement's desire to become more credible? Can these bikes even be considered as part of the movement? I guess it depends on a person's opinion on what the purpose of the kustom bicycle movement is, and what it is striving for. Do you have an opinion on this topic Jim?
A: Do I? Hah! Stop me if you can!
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Yeah, I did some pretty crappy work when I was a kid, too. But I had aspirations to do better, and I worked at it. Now I'm capable of doing terrific work, so that's what I do. That's what Kustom is all about, isn't it? It's about people who have no particular "design credentials" training themselves to design and execute beautiful functional machines or whatever. Kustom is the ultimate in "low-brow/outsider" art, and I'm proud to have the chops down to call myself a decent Kustomizer. 
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If somebody deliberately sets out to build something uncreative, ugly and stupid, they aren't a kustom person, they're something else. I don't even care enough to think of a label to describe them, aside from maybe "loser" or "poser". Unless they do it as an "ironic statement", of course, and then I'd think of them as a "smacked ass", as they say in Philadelphia.
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That's my take on the term "Rat Bike" in its original usage. Like so many other recent moronic aspects creeping into our "movement" it comes from the motorcycle world. My first encounter with the concept was a couple of years ago at a site called Rat Bike Zone. In that context it's merely playing with the Mad Max fantasy theme as an excuse for avoiding craft discipline and the accompanying labor. What devotees of this school of "styling" don't recognize is that those fantasy movie vehicles were built by serious craftsmen like us, and were deliberately, at great expense, made to look like they were thrown together by neanderthals, just because of the visual theme of the films.
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For maybe the past year, the term has been cropping up frequently in regard to our sort of bicycles. Judging from the context of the mentions, there seem to be diverse definitions for the term. The most annoying and fallacious is that there are two kinds of Kustom bikes: "Show Bikes" and "Rat Bikes".  That one really pisses me off, as it insults genuine Kustom bikes built to be actually ridden on the street. That's exactly what we're about, isn't it? Or have we learned nothing from LRB history? Just because it isn't a dedicated  "Show Queen" doesn't mean we don't care about construction quality and beauty; and nobody'd better call one of mine an 'effin' "Rat Bike".
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If somebody wants to label those two types separately it should be "Street Kustoms" and "Show Kustoms". Just because someone chooses matte black for the paint or powder coat finish on their street bike doesn't mean that they've built a Rat Bike. This is especially so if they've done a nice job, followed by the application of some tasty pinstriping and other detailing on it, as exemplified by a Kustom Cruiser that joined our Gallery last issue. I told the builder (Troy Howell) that his bike was much too nice to be called a Rat Bike, but if that's what he wanted to call the thing I wasn't going to censor him- but the BR&K Gallery doesn't exist for the showcasing of actual Rat Bikes.
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What constitutes a "Rat Bike", in the original usage of the term, is if they applied flat black to the thing just because sloppy workmanship, if there was any actual work involved, doesn't show quite so obviously under that sort of finish, unlike gloss black, in which every blemish is accentuated. As far as I'm concerned, if you just spray some flat-black onto a thing because you're too damned lazy to scrape the decals off, you haven't built a bike, you've just whipped up a poser fashion accessory, and you should go somewhere else if you're looking for your kind of "movement". That isn't "kustom", by anyone's definition.
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We have a fair amount of pretty crude bikes made by kids in our Gallery, and as far as I can recall, none of them have labeled their work a "Rat Bike"; that's because they did their best and are proud of the accomplishment. It's only lazy poser adults who engage in that "ratbike" sophistry, as a pretext for not doing their best, or even their "so-so".  A real kustom bike, even for the street, is to a Rat Bike, as a bespoke suit is to a Wal-Mart Halloween costume.
Q: Given that the movement is very much tied into the internet I can't help but think about how much importance the photo image has become to what we do! The kustom bike scene is global, and our ability to actually see the many bikes we view on the internet is probably not going to happen in real life.
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A: You're right on there, John. In the same way, back in the day, that I only saw great rods and customs when they appeared in magazines, TV, or movies, most informed people who appreciate our kind of bikes will only see most of them as photos in BR&K or elsewhere on the web. For most of us who don't take our builds to shows, the people who actually see our bikes "in the flesh" are our neighbors and family members.
Usually these people aren't what we'd call "informed appreciators"; so their reaction doesn't mean as much as that of our worldwide peers, whose praise/critique really counts. That's why I stress submitting quality photos so much; to the extent that we have an archived article filled with pointers as to how good bike photos may best be achieved.
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Q: Can the internet also show us flaws and misrepresentations? A bike that isn't seen in the flesh by anyone other than the owner wouldn't need to be ridden, or for that matter be "well built" to get an impact on the World Wide Web. If the photography was good (or done right) the actual bike would only need to be a façade of the real thing, possibly fooling the viewer into believing it really had substance. Bikes like these could almost be called virtual bikes, meant as nothing more than an image to be placed on the internet, without having any true substance in reality. Could it ever make sense to give credence and "accolades" to a shoddily-made bike that only looks good as an image on a computer screen?  Does it matter if some bikes have no real substance, as long as they look good on the Net and inspire real builders to do better in their own work?
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A: That's a very timely question, John, since lately the "outing" of deceptively Photoshopped images has been a hot topic in the media. CBS' using Photoshop to slim down and beautify Katy Couric in an in-house publication made some waves, but the ethics are less violated than if it had been presented as a hard news photo. This was the case a bit earlier when an international news agency, Reuters, distributed a photo from Lebanon, which was so blatantly Photoshopped as to have been obviously produced as deceptive  propaganda, rather than the news photo it purported to be.

Unless it's done for purposes of fraud, such as removing flaws from a photo of something you're selling on eBay, for example, some touching-up is usually considered ethically valid. I have Photoshop, of course, and am fairly proficient at its use, but I commonly only use it on Gallery photos to improve the quality of the photo, not the bike itself. I've been known to remove a cigarette butt from the pavement adjacent to a bike's tire, for example, just because it would be a distraction to leave it in an otherwise good photo of a bike. Once, I touched-up some duct tape visible on the upholstery of an otherwise finished bike, by a serious builder, but I normally wouldn't bother to do that, because where do you stop, once you've started bending reality? That's why I stress sending in the best possible photos of bikes, because I won't fix them up for you. We have a policy of running our photos at the highest resolution and size a computer monitor can make use of, but even at that level, a lot of minor flaws are practically invisible.

To answer your question, John, it does matter if someone is doing shoddy work, but gets by because of the limitation of screen resolution to show flaws, or the builder's ability to retouch them out. But, that's why we push people to actually ride their bikes in public or enter them in shows. I can't say that nobody's ever submitted a photo to the Gallery with flaws digitally removed from the bike; but I'd certainly have caught one with radical "corrections".  At the moment, at least, that kind of fakery is not something we need worry about. Most people who are too lazy to do immaculate work on the actual bike are also too lazy to do digital retouching on their photos.

Q: The photos I like the most are the ones of bikes actually being ridden at cruises. Getting bikes out on the street and using them is great fun, and a great opportunity to show others (through photos) that the bikes are meant for show and "go". Riding has got to be the ultimate pleasure of what we do, seeing the faces of surprised onlookers and hearing their comments is always amusing! I'd like to see more activity shots of people taking part in events and cruises. What do you think about the importance of having good photographic skills, is this something that everyone involved in the kustom bike scene should think about? Especially since a photo image on the internet can speak a thousand words? Good photos can make all the difference in some cases, don't you think?
A: As I've also said before, I like to see photos of the bikes being actually ridden, and I also like to show photos of the bikes as objects d' art. Both are very useful for appreciation.  In either case, photographic quality is of vital importance. Nobody wants to waste time looking at bad photographs, no matter how great the bike may be. If you don't have the skills or equipment to take a decent photo, I always recommend getting someone else to shoot it for you. A good photographer can show a bike adequately, even if it's not an ideal subject. Most people are unused to thinking of all the considerations involved in taking a good photograph of a bike, unless they've read our article on the subject, and actually followed the recommendations in it. Unfortunately, many don't bother, which is why you don't see their bikes in BR&K. I'm actually a pretty decent photographer, and have done it professionally in the past. But, when it comes to photographing my own bikes, I usually get someone else to do it for me. Someone who shoots on a regular basis, has the right equipment, and is accustomed to taking the time to get the lighting right has a tremendous edge over someone like me, who isn't set up to do the job really well.
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Since photographs are so important, I usually recommend that people paint their bikes in colors that show up well in photographs, since that's usually how a kustom bike's informed audience sees it. Black is especially problematic; but almost any color, except maybe yellow, can look very murky unless the exposure and lighting are good. While a good photographer can photograph a black, or any other colored object, very well, most amateur photographers are unaware of what it takes to do the job. And even if they were, they wouldn't bother to go to the trouble to set up the extra lighting and "bounce reflectors" needed to show a black or very dark-colored bike adequately. A year or two ago, someone sent in a photo of an interesting bike, except the frame was painted black and he'd posed the bike in front of a giant shrubbery with lots of deep (black) shadows. Black against deep shadow blends right in, of course. But, the photo wasn't so horrible in Gallery size that I wasn't willing to post it, so I did. After the issue came out, though, the guy E-mailed me asking me what had happened to his submission. The thumbnail photo of his bike was right there on our cover page, but the bike was so degraded by the combination of its color and the background choice that even its own builder couldn't recognize it when he saw it in that size.
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Q: This reminds me of an article I read in a hot rod magazine many years ago, about getting your car into a magazine. The writer showed examples of what editors looked for when choosing featured cars.  The main point was that a car in a photo needed to be seen; and the greater the visual impact the better! "Black paint" was the main thing the writer told readers to avoid. Visual impact being especially enhanced by bright colors and well-done paint schemes. The internet is very much about digital photographic communication, and it's a big part of what the scene is all about. People interested in getting maximum visual impact on the web are definitely advised to think about painting their bikes in something other than black, and the brighter the color the better!
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A: Yep, you've got to pay attention to what actually works, not what you'd like to work. I've got no personal bias against black, to the contrary, actually. My personal wardrobe has been almost solid black for decades; it's almost a running joke with my friends. Johnny Cash copped my style, man! But I don't let that clothing preference get in the way of choosing colors for bike projects.
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Back in the day, we painted our rods and kustoms-in-progress with primer, and drove them around that way for months, or even years, while we saved up money for an actual paint job. But we didn't photograph them that way and send the results off to magazines, expecting to see them in print. People who think a matte finish is "old school hot rod" have obviously never actually looked inside an old hot rod magazine. Those machines were totally slick; and machines that never achieved publication-worthy slickness were built by 'effin' losers who never managed to scrape the bucks together for a serious paint job. I include myself in that vast horde, by the way. At least I've managed to build some really slick bicycles since then, thank God.
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I read a funny story recently in a car magazine. At one point, Barris had such a backlog of people wanting his kustom paint jobs that he started recommending that after he'd put the car into primer, it be "aged and shrunk" for quite a while before the owner brought it back for the final finish. This helped prevent jobs piling up. Hearing about this was great for all those California guys who had their cars in primer already; so they could tell people that they were "waiting for the final stage of the Barris paint job". Some of them are still waiting, I'm sure.
Kandiru Faired Cruiser
2Much!!! Trike
IBRKA Dragster
Moon Trike
Foam/Spandex Tank Panels
Dave Wilson's Woody
Killer Swan
Q: The future Jim! What does the future hold? The kustom bicycle movement is currently growing like it never has before, with older practitioners who seem to be in it for the long haul! How will we grow with this activity of ours, we're aging and the future is seldom clear? What promise does the kustom idea hold for bike builders in the uncertain times to come?

A: One thing we can be sure of is that kustom culture isn't going away. It was here before BR&K started, and it will continue whether we choose to continue or not. But, as long as we're at it, we might as well advance it to the best of our
abilities. We're not here to temporarily drape ourselves in the kustom cachet for cheesy motives, we're here to increase it, because it's a good thing for our planet. And, speaking personally, it's more fun than most other things we could be doing with our time.
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Our genie will not be going back into the bottle. As a creative medium, the bicycle is just too affordable and manageable, compared to the other kustom vehicle forms. Nothing else allows being a "serial kustomizer" without having millions of bucks, or doing it as a commercial activity.

Q: Jim, how is it going to be for you? Jim Wilson and "BikeRod&Kustom" have grown together as inseparable! How long can you (or do you want to) keep the kustom candles burning with your creation? Will BR&K become a "video only" form of communication in the coming future? Will it be moving images that dominate? What does the future hold Jim, for you, "BikeRod&Kustom", and the evolution of creative pedal power?
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A: Yeah, video would be nice. The affordable-priced technology's here and the "podcasting" outlets and technology are also here. I've been working in film and video since the early '70s. Now all we need is coherent and organized video content. But since I'm still having trouble getting people to send in decent-quality still photos with descriptive filenames, I'm not holding my breath for anything more complicated in the near future.
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We also have the problem that most of the process of building kustom bikes is boring as hell to do or watch. So is the same for building cars or motorcycles, which is why you have all the "soap-opera" dramatic elements worked into "reality" shows on those subjects. Most of the effective video-friendly aspects we have which wouldn't require artificial hyping are show and cruise documentation. That would be great, and I hope we can eventually get that going. Cruise videos, from a production standpoint, are basically music videos with some interview and reaction elements. But somebody's got to shoot all the raw footage, and then it all has to be edited so it works together in an entertaining way. Our particular kind of cycling doesn't have much of that sort of talent base in place yet; but it's probably just a matter of time until the right sort of people drift into our gravity field. After all, our bikes are a lot more interesting than the stuff you see in a typical road race broadcast or Critical Mass documentary, aren't they?
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As far as my personal involvement goes, I've been scouting for my replacement from the time of our first issue. Any time I run into someone who's involved in our activity and seems to sport a modicum of communication skills, such as yourself, I give them the recruitment pitch. A publication of any kind needs different voices to be interesting. As BR&K isn't my personal web page, I want many voices involved, even voices I don't particularly like. Having many voices certainly makes BR&K more interesting for me to read, which is why I started it in the first place.
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If I found someone who was interested in being Editor-In-Chief, I'd probably hand the job over instantly. That would give me more time to build my own bikes and document the projects for BR&K. Unfortunately, there's so much time, work and expense involved in my Editor gig, that someone would have to be as crazy as I am to take on the job; and there's not one of those born every minute.
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I almost walked away from it a few months ago. After I signed up for a year with a new host, the BR&K computer went down, taking everything to do with BR&K with it- the software for making the pages, all the existing page archives and associated files, all photo content for the next issue, etc. This was before the pages had been moved to the new host, of course. The old host makes it almost impossible to move sites from their clutches. If I could have got the host's software to work with the new computer immediately, I could have at least downloaded all the files to my own computer from their server, which would have given me an option. But, that couldn't happen in time. I actually only got the software to finally work so I could log on a mere couple of weeks ago. So, to save the BR&K archives from vanishing forever, I had to renew for another year with the horribly-expensive old host, in addition to paying for a year with the new host. On top of paying for a new computer, of course. I was very tempted to just kiss the thing goodbye. It's been a tough six months, John.
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Fortunately, with time, there are more people contributing; so eventually I'll have replaced myself anyway. Some people only manage one piece, while others, such as you, John, continue to crank out the material. Either is fine with me, but cranking out good stuff is obviously a highly-prized attribute around here. Thanks, Dude!
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Q: Believe me Jim, it's my pleasure!  I hope to contribute even more interesting material as time goes on. I like to think there are still a few surprises left in my bag of tricks!  "BikeRod&Kustom" performs a very important role inside the movement with its continuity and serious editorial perspective! It is "the" journal of the kustom bicycle scene, and it's something I want to continue being part of!  Jim, I want to thank you, and congratulate you, on the achievements you've accomplished in the world of creative cycling!  Your success in making "BikeRod&Kustom" the kind of place enthusiasts keep coming back to (year after year) is something you can feel very proud about! Keep up the great work Jim!  Even though the movement has made great strides in the last 45 years it still needs input from individuals like yourself, to help push things to an even higher level! I hope you can stick around for while yet Jim, there's still one helluva lot
of work to be done!
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A: Well, John, I'll stick with it as long as I see that there's continued hope for the "movement". Unfortunately, it takes more than one person to do almost anything involving a movement or anything else. It's very unhealthy for any movement to have only one person publishing a 'Zine, paper or otherwise, and one serious businessman with a healthy company offering parts, etc. Fortunately, we finally have a rapidly growing core of extremely capable creators/builders, but that's about the only aspect in which we have the start of the basic numbers a movement requires to thrive. There are still serious challenges ahead of us.
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It's been very interesting, John, being the target of one of our interviews for a change, rather than the shooter. I hope I've learned something from the experience. But I sincerely doubt it. After all, if I were smart I'd be doing something profitable, eh?



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