Why do we revere things from decades past? Is it a longing for simpler machines? Clear expectations? Good guys and bad guys? Women with zaftig curves and men who did their own oil changes? I don’t know, I grew up in the days of Reagan and the PC junior and talking cars. I can’t be nostalgic about anything before 1980, and now that I think about it, I got shafted.
I was at the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show in Long Beach last weekend, where I came across this ’00-something Triumph Thruxton:
It was displayed with a matching Fender Telecaster, Bates jacket and vintage helmet. The bike was built by Sucker Punch Sally’s, a custom bike manufacturer in Arizona, and painted by Sara Ray, a SoCal-based artist with a lot of surf and hot rod history in her family (www.sararayart.com). Sara Ray is a WWII fanatic with broad vintage influences. She specializes in hot rods, pin-ups, nose art and WWII scenes, wrenches on her own classic cars, and travels to military and art museums around the world to study people and machines from the past. She doesn’t look much older than me, so she’s either a sage Gen X’er or incredibly well preserved. And I’m guessing, given her family’s heritage, she feels more of a personal connection than many people to the era she loves.
Elsewhere at the show, I met up with my friend Steve “Carpy” Carpenter and this ’71 Honda CB750 he customized for Commander Jack Shuller, currently embarked on the USS NIMITZ:
The bike is an homage to the men and women that Commander Shuller has served with, including Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 6, his former command. There are a lot of cool details, like the aircraft-style gauge faces, the ammunition cover on the engine case and – my favorite – the dog tag on the frame tube that identifies the bike. For a closer look at this and more of Carpy’s creations, check out his site: www.cb750cafe.com. Beware the bawdy British humor, I’m just warnin’ ya.
I was at the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show in Long Beach last weekend, where I came across this ’00-something Triumph Thruxton:
It was displayed with a matching Fender Telecaster, Bates jacket and vintage helmet. The bike was built by Sucker Punch Sally’s, a custom bike manufacturer in Arizona, and painted by Sara Ray, a SoCal-based artist with a lot of surf and hot rod history in her family (www.sararayart.com). Sara Ray is a WWII fanatic with broad vintage influences. She specializes in hot rods, pin-ups, nose art and WWII scenes, wrenches on her own classic cars, and travels to military and art museums around the world to study people and machines from the past. She doesn’t look much older than me, so she’s either a sage Gen X’er or incredibly well preserved. And I’m guessing, given her family’s heritage, she feels more of a personal connection than many people to the era she loves.
Elsewhere at the show, I met up with my friend Steve “Carpy” Carpenter and this ’71 Honda CB750 he customized for Commander Jack Shuller, currently embarked on the USS NIMITZ:
The bike is an homage to the men and women that Commander Shuller has served with, including Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 6, his former command. There are a lot of cool details, like the aircraft-style gauge faces, the ammunition cover on the engine case and – my favorite – the dog tag on the frame tube that identifies the bike. For a closer look at this and more of Carpy’s creations, check out his site: www.cb750cafe.com. Beware the bawdy British humor, I’m just warnin’ ya.
[Note: My Brit rocker friend customized a classic Japanese bike for a US military officer, while the American artist with the WWII obsession customized a classic Brit bike to look like a rocker’s ride. I don’t know what any of this means in the cosmic scheme of things so I’ll just throw it out there for you to ponder. It’s giving me a headache.]
Carpy’s passion comes from growing up with café racers in London. In some ways, I think his past is still very much his present. “Classic” stuff isn’t something he explores or aspires to; it’s what he was and is, and probably always will be.
What am I?
I love old stuff, but I have no personal connection to it. I love the sounds and smells of old bikes, I love the look of vintage designs, and I like to hang around people who take all day to explain how the cam chain came to be. But I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, decades that we make fun of or point to sadly. I have one story about my dad and a ’74 Mustang that means a lot to me, but other than that I’m a girl without classic cred.
Carpy told me, “You’re a spectrum of everything.” He says this is good. And that we tend to pick and choose the things from the past that we like, but if you actually time-warped back to the ’50s or ’60s, you’d be sorely disappointed. People didn’t have as much money, or nice things, or good choices…in short, you’d be miserable pretty quick. So we keep the best parts alive and enjoy the life we have now. Which doesn’t explain why things from the ’80s circle back now and then, but nobody’s perfect.
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