140 141 3 DAYS ACE TEKS : HARVARD | PHOTO : HARVARD FREE FOR ALL K esempatan untuk mem-publish tulisan ini datang kepada kami secara tidak terduga. Berawal dari DM yang masuk dari sang penulis (yang lebih memilih identitasnya disamarkan) dan bertanya apakah kami tertarik untuk mencetak cerita tentang perjalanannya menghadiri Brooklyn Invitational Custom Motorcycle Show bersama sahabatnya, yang kebetulan bernama Matt Davis, co-founder of Dice Magazine and avid kustom kulture enthusiast. Melalui proses panjang, termasuk meminta izin kepada janda mendiang Matt Davis, akhirnya cerita ini bisa di-publish kepada publik untuk pertama kalinya di Outcult Magazine. So, buckle up and enjoy the ride! “Some things are created for grand spectacle and many eyes. Some things are for private consumption. Their place does not denote their value, though the quiet get more leniency, for sure. This is just a travelogue tarted up for shits and giggles. Nothing more. I promised it to someone the way painters promise their friends portraits. And maybe that’s what it is: the old Nights Watch terribly told. Don’t over think it. Find some fun people who’ll laugh at the verbosity, share the enclosed cheer, and read this for me. Silently sharing pages or drunk and aloud to a room full of reprobates - that’s up to you....” 142 143 142 You, my jaded aficionados of motorcycle pulp... You will, of course, be prepared for the clichés: that certain model motorcycle as MacGuffin, the exalted search for meaning in a rarified object, the seeker’s pathos on display. These are tales better suited for barroom gadflies and the porcelain throne: moments where the meta - phors are easy to feel. Sometimes it’s just a story. I went to the Brooklyn Invitational, a motorcycle show held annually in September. It always featured some of the year’s best bikes in a New York art gallery setting. The plan was to drink too much beer, tell tall tales to old friends and stare at pretty machines. And I would. I didn’t understand that this moment — this small slice of time some fall weekend at the start of a bland new centu- ry — would be a high water mark of sorts for the dirtbag non-conformists’ Americana. Our run would shortly be co-opted. Our argument for life behind handlebars rebrand- ed fodder for a new generation of sloganeering. Soon there would be corporate sponsored sock parties and caffeinated carbonates, and just like that something sweet and sincere that seemed like it would outlast a thousand suns would be gone. All it takes is a golden ring and once you get that tinny tone stuck in your head, it gets harder to “Go, Go, Go!” And harder still to stay on the level. However, staying perfectly level wasn’t ever part of my agen- da. Thursday night promised a party on the edge of East New York at a bar called Lone Wolf. Friends flying in from Lon - don would meet me there. Friday’s plans included an after- noon barbecue followed by a showing of the documentary 6Over at a theatre in Brooklyn with a Dice Magazine issue release party after that. That’s where I’d meet my other bud - dies coming up from Boston. Saturday was the Bike Show proper. I had my battle plan but New York is a million ideas at war, defiantly American in all its self-erasing extravagance so the trick would be sticking to the program. The weekend curtains lift on a soft Thursday evening in September. I’m leaned up against the leg of an elevated train track under the oily glass sparkle of this ceaseless city, looking over the motorcycles parked out in front of the bar, possibly too stoned to mingle. I’d left Boston late in the after - noon and took my time getting there. I’m not the best conver - sationalist sober, but high as balls, I’m a man of few words. Staring at a line of bikes anywhere else in the world might seem strange for a week night. On this half of block though, I was only met with nods and smiles. I still hadn’t seen anyone I knew and I was getting thirsty. Lone Wolf had low lights across the black bartop and metal on the stereo. I had a shot-and-a- beer, then another shot- and-a-beer. There’s no smoking in bars in New York, and bartenders tend to get angry when you try, even when you’re tipping well. So I smoked two cigarettes back at my spot by the curb, and burped my way through the rotgut and lager, then I went back in and put the whole process on repeat. It took a few cycles before the intended effect was achieved. I turned to maintaining, sipping cervazas, trying to look cas - ually at home; my friends arrived at some point after mid - night. Staring down into my drink, I didn’t see them come in. I just felt the hand on my shoulder and the embrace. Some friends you see twice a year, but you’d drive four hundred miles to meet up — maybe only for dinner. It didn’t matter. Matt and I had been collecting miles for years and I knew if we were in the same timezone and I was up for it, there’d be adventure. I was supposed to deliver a stepside GMC Matt had bought online — this beautiful powder blue behemoth timewarp from 1974 with perfect rose and white pinstripping, a CB on the console, and an 8 track in the dash. He’d called from his Mediterranean hideout on Majorrca to see if I’d pick this truck up for him in New Hampshire. Of course I said yes. Of course, I agreed to drive it down to the Invitational. Unfor - tunately, the truck had different ideas. It quit running about fourmiles down the road, leaving me stranded. So there’d be no truck delivery this weekend. That escapade would have to wait. Brave faces aside, these two kids were beat. Matt and Conrad were mainstays of what I’ll call the lowbrow studio set: two- wheel bon vivant ronin wandering the world in the service of the goodtimes. Matt published “Dice Magazine” out of LA and London. Conrad, the guitarist in Matt’s old band Mag- num 500, was also a painter of some renown. No matter how seasoned, the intercontinental shuffle can crush — the body will stay standing until given a chance to shut down. Matt looked like he was on the edge of fading. Shot-and-a- beer seemed like the fastest way to recover. Matt laughed at the idea at first, shook at the taste of the tequila, and hugged me out of the beer. Conrad just nodded along — he’d done London to Tokyo one too many times to hesi - tate.“The Art of Letting Yourself Go” isn’t published online. It isn’t found in the archives of old magazines like Matt’s, ei - ther. It is bar-top history. Poets and painters, and singers and masons, they pass it down: a learned lifestyle handbook for the lost and holy, a catechism for the free. Most of the world pays us no mind. They never even see our kind coming, yet in our own strung- out divinity, we are why revolutions work. The three of us did the shot-and-a-beer for a bit and caught- up on where life was taking us and the bikes that were taking us there. I still wouldn’t let Matt apologize for the erstwhile truck purchase. He felt sincerely bad, too — right up until I got to the point in the story where the guy on the ’48 Chief returned to Matt’s broken down truck with road beers and sandwiches while I waited on AAA. It was the kind of fun you can’t pay for, and I was glad to do it. Through those few rounds of reminiscence, Lone Wolf be- gan to wind down around us. People began packing it in, rip- ping off on choppers and customs or climbing into the back of pickuptrucks/overstuffed minivans/lucky call cabs, and setting off into the night. After last call, we followed them out and hit the road toward Greenpoint. 144 145 First stop was A Bar for noodles and Tecante. Matt knew the owner — a Beemer sidehack racing monkey with a gold tooth named Jess. Matt was supposed to have met her at Lone Wolf, a bar she also owned, but he’d been late so we’d meet her at A Bar. True to its name, the bar had no signage. A galvanized metal door was enough to announce its presence. At the end of the long, thin slate counter was another set of turntables spinning doom. All along the wall opposite the bar were straight leg ta- bles and chairs. The floor was brown tile; the walls, white. Matt and Conrad went for seats in the corner where Jess was holding court. I wasn’t going to walk by a bar without stopping for a drink. There, over a slow pint of brown ale, I met Magnus, the mad genius behind LeBeef Kustoms, who’d come from Sweden to see the show. We talked bikes at the bar for an hour or two like we’d come to town to see each other, looking at pho- tos of his flatheads on his phone, building imaginary machines over fingers of Jameson. Bearings are important to check and Magnus was the saintliest North Star I’d see that night. I never ended up in Jess’s corner which was probably rude. I drink too much to be judged and Matt didn’t mention anything when he stopped by the bar to see what the plans were. Before I retired for the night, I had my mind set on a spot of breakfast which both Conrad and Matt thought sounded splendid. And with that we were off. I gave Magnus a warm goodbye before we left and promised to catch up tomorrow. He smiled gently, and agreed we would. In Manhattan, We found an all-night diner by the flat they were crashing, feasted on sunrise eggs and corn beef hash, and made plans to meet in the morning. I took a cab to my room at the Harvard Club. To say the man behind the desk was not expecting me would be generous. It’s not a place reprobates pour in way after hours. I handed him my membership card and went over the arrangements I had made for my late arrival. He spent some time in his terminal verifying my story and then led me through the club and up to my room. The sleep came so easy, I hardly saw the ceiling. There’s a steady roar to the hangover in a city without any silence. The shower helped a little, the 15 block walk to meet Matt and Conrad helped more. Those two were cheerier than two men should be after all that travel and revery. We would head to Brooklyn, see a few of Matt’s friends in the neighbour- hood, and check in on the show prep. Works Engineering was a restoration shop/motorcycle co-op up the street from Root Brooklyn, where the Invitational was being held. It specialized in the city bike: Japanese, British, or German — stripped down and thinned out, set up for hard charging and the quick dodge city traffic required. In the back of the motorcycle shop, up a mad series of ramps and through a warren of passageways littered with bike parts, was nestled the studio of painter Ray Abeyta. We’d met years before, and I always got a kick out of the kind of anarchy he brought out in the world. Ray held the title of old-world lothar- io close to his heart, rode a classic red Triumph custom, and made massive subversively baroque paintings in a Spanish post-colonial style. His studio was overrun by every grand idea and tiny joy he could conjure. There were half-finished paint - ings up on the easel next to boxes of engine blocks, stained pal- ettes stacked on gas tanks, tubes of paint and a world of brush- es on the tables surrounded by racing literature and treatises on 19th century transcendentalism. Up on the wall throughout the studio hung his work in grand scale — enormous canvas statements, classic forms and antiquated language bent back- wards, the conquistador and his whale - a fury of old ideas in new light. Conrad and Ray rapped for a while by the easel as I wandered back and forth. I wanted to ask a lot of questions, standing there, in the middle of that studio, surrounded by such a sheer volume of work, the mass of genius in color but I didn’t have the words. What ex - actly were those questions? They seemed to start in one place and end somewhere else by the time I’d finish forming them. I’d got my masters in art, but that isn’t mastery. Ray’s ideas were soundproof. Questions here might be profane. Best just to let it all in. I promised myself on the next visit I’d take more than mental notes. In less than two years, Ray would be dead and all those ques - tions I couldn’t form would go unanswered. I don’t like to think on that moment more than that. The Root Brooklyn galleries were only a block from Works Engineering. Ray went with us to give the show bikes the arm- crossed once-over while a crew of familiar faces finished set - ting up. The open space was filled by two-wheeled sculpture, curated portraits for a city hungry for new danger, the artists playing with chance, chewing on the unapologetic noise and the un- expected quiet in their work. Stripped of opulence, the show’s premise wasn’t terribly nuanced. These were bikes to leave a man beautiful and poor. Machines of libertine misadventure: T-bone’s feathered Ode to a Grecian Ewe, Lerner’s twincam swingarm mashup, the Seigl roadster, the Ed Norton, the knuckles, the hints of chrome on the Keihl’s bike, the street style Chvrch of funktified fenders and up-and-out girders, the blue sunrise, the class green-and-white post-war tracker, and the raised flames of black and gold. This kind of craftsman - ship rewarded a fourth and fifth look to catch all the worked bits, the little tricks, the slight-of-hand in bent metal and paint. For a while, I just circled the room, almost embarrassed at how much I loved these mere machines. 146 147 Gentry found me in the main gallery. He’d been directing the delivery of a pallet of beer when he saw our little pack roll in - there are some things that need finishing before one can so - cialize. Gentry had ridden the Gypsy Run with me and Matt a few years back. Miles make fast friends. We did a piece together for Matt’s magazine soon after and when Ace and I were in Brook - lyn last year, we’d crashed with him. It’s hard to describe your sweet friends, to tip your cap to the ones you know are pulling for you — he and Matt were that. Gentry was making moves. I could see the hard choices on his face. I was proud of him. People don’t generally follow through — they never become their idea of themselves. And they won’t ever admit to giving up. Gentry would throttle through. Matt met us by the loading dock door. We had a barbeque to attend - Conrad’s friend Paul was having an open house . That was the next stop. Gentry still had to finish up, so his plan was to meet us at the theatre. Ray was outside Root chatting with outlaw bodhisattva Tom Fugle and checking out the evo chopper Tom rode from Iowa. We stopped there to say hi and let Ray know where we were headed. I got a big hug from Tom, probably because I was standing next to Matt. I quite liked the sound of Tom’s voice. It’s an odd thing to re - member or comment on but it wasn’t low or heavy like I’d expected. It was this innocent, uniquely American accent — slightly high and chewed on — joyous and unassuming in the cadence despite the obvious gravity of what was said. The sound of him at his booth, meeting new people and hawking his wares, was a real salve for the soul. Ray stayed behind with Tom while Matt and Conrad and I set off across Greenpoint to Paul’s shop. I would’t see either Ray or Tom again after that weekend, so I like to remember them there, next to Tom’s show bike, both almost bursting at the seams with life, still leathered with its wear — anachronistic anti-heroes from another era, talking trade as we faded away. The walk was a good break for the senses. We pit-stopped on the way for two quick cups of coffee and some well-spaced chatter. I needed the pause. Timeouts come infrequently in this city. I listened a little and said less, staring into my coffee, taking in the rest. Paul’s place was a single story multi-bay garage with a work- shop in back. This was no simple hot rod or bike shop, it was a workshop and in it, Paul crafted all manner of things — leath - erwork, pictures, knives, choppers, cars — with art in the de - tail. It was a maze of workstations, and projects, and stashes of parts — huge chaotic piles of materials built up around these immaculate workstations full of tooling and embossed with light. If I could have found a spot, I might have moved in. At the front of the shop was a table with lunch laid out — from salads and chips to burgers and brisket, it was fuel for the night ahead. Magnus was by the cooler with his friend Rakel, who, by way of introduction, handed me an icy beer. Rakel, this enigmatic architect/designer/entrepreneur/model/genius, flew in from Iceland just for the show. Encyclopedic with her passions, she seemed to love her motorcycles most of all. I should have been more intimidated but I had a beer, an affable Viking and I had details on the show bikes I’d seen. I didn’t have to take it apart first with these two. I could just dig right in. There’s a comfort that comes with not having to explain yourself. I do not want to discount the role the city had to play — the t-shirt temperatures, the last hint of a soft sunny summer haze, the way New York City’s early autumn afternoon set a stage — almost made love the place. It still smelled like a urinal in Pandemonium so I don’t want to go getting ahead of myself, but if I was going to fall for that city, this would have been the weekend. I liked it there, on that curb, with those two outside Paul Cox Industries, drinking—in with cappuccino- fueled fo - cus all the dialed-in, machine age fantasticness parked in and around the shop. Sooner than I expected, Matt tapped me on the shoulder softly and said it was time to go. Magnus and I were just getting lost in the rigid gold knuckle show bike that had only recently rolled in — this thinned-out and high as hell gold knucklehead destroyer — but I wasn’t missing a minute of Matt’s movie for the world. I hadn’t had a chance to finish my beer, which was probably a good thing, or taken a piss, which was definitely not. The day was getting away from me. The walk was twenty blocks, but while I’d been slowly sipping cerveza with Magnus, Matt had been finding friends for the trip. After a quick goodbye to Magnus and Rakel, we were off again, now some hilarious tribe of misfit motorcycle pilgrims, earnest and reprobatious — Conrad, the post punk pop art painter with a penchant for horizontal and vertical twins, Rob and Keith, two Belgian denim wizards from EatDust, Josh Kurpi- us, a midwestern photographer from the Life Magazine school andMax, the west coast kick—flip impresario. They would fill the walk with stories of the wild and impossible kind set to the soundtrack of Matt’s shoulder shaking laughter. Nice part was, I wasn’t the only one who needed to piss, and Max had keys to an apartment on the way — an apartment where he was supposed to have stayed. He got into town last night buthadn’t been there yet. “It wasn’t that bad,” Max stepped with a bounce, a mix of mad sea captain and Mr Smith Goes Skateboarding. “I was way later than we planned for, let me say that.” There was a nonchalance to the small time tragedy that made for good story, “and I didn’t have keys to the apartment yet, and I couldn’t get in touch with anyone.” He slept next to his bike behind a hedgerow in the park down the street from the apartment he was locked out of. “It was cold as fuck. No joke.” Max’s crash pad was a half block detour. We took turns waiting for the bathroom in the sparsely furnished living room with reclaimed lumber walls. No one had much to say at first, but the sound of Conrad’s piss 148 149 on the bowl in the bathroom made me and Max snicker. After a little prodding from his friends at EatDust, Josh started in on his own awkward struggles with the previous evening’s sleeping arrangements. “I was at the bar. I met her at the bar.” I missed most of the first part because I was after Conrad in the cloakroom. I know Keith and Rob knew some of the details, because once Josh started, they wouldn’t let him stop. I caught enough of the slow drawled prologue to know to be quick and after about a half gallon of free time, I made it back for the ver - itable climax in our shooter’s tale — post meet/cute when the sinners have their say. “But under the pillow,” He shifted his eyes slow like he was checking for traffic before he crossed. “There’s a condom and it’d been used. Recently.” The look he gave, the sheer delight in the small smile, the respect and almost reverence in his pause. The hunter had become the hunted. “But did you stay, Josh?” Keith asked. He didn’t wait for an an- swer though. None of us did. We had a theatre to get to and Josh could shrug off the question as we all headed back to the street. In our way, each of us in that patchwork troop of Matt’s, shared a reverence for these strange machine cyphers — wayfarers of mechanical veneration at speed and at rest. Bikes remind us that freedom requires a certain amount of fear; It is good to be afraid. Every time we straddle them: immunizing danger. Maybe we’re all just chasing that agitation, that constant trepi- dation— believers in the fear like predators that pray. Fear lets us experience ourselves, our recklessness and grotesqueries, honestly. Despite the different walks and corners of life we came from, we shared that simple truth: The motorcycle brought us here. Our walk from Max’s spot, through the cascading rectangles of the city’s old industry, was quieter — a septet out for a Brook - lyn-at-sunset stroll, the quick banter and long silence of easy company on the move. The raillery was definitely lighter, the pace livelier — movie time was fast approaching, and we had ground to cover. The cinema was Reagan-era art deco refined for the dark. I traded Matt for Gentry in the entrance way and had a cocktail at the bar. Matt had a movie to start. I had a thirst to quench. That little bit after the gin is still a blur. I do remember catch - ing up with everyone’s favorite Jersey boy, Walter, the Gypsy Run pietist behind Kickstart Cycles. And that there were no drinks allowed in the theater because I had to pound that last one I ordered. I don’t remember who I sat with. I do know I was in the back. Adorable is not a term often applied to mutants outside of their natural habitat but these steppenwolf in their theatre, loud and uninhibited among their own, in hugs and kisses and hilarious roars, made an unexpected gentleness seem infectious. When the lights flashed, there was a scramble for seats and an echo of apologies as the aisles emptied. And when the lights went down, so did the sounds of the theatre crowd. The next two hours of homage to the man inside the machine were cathartic — celluloid acceptance for the long road trav - elled, a celebration of life in American metal. Matt and Dean had done it right. 6 Over was a start. Dice was now telling sto- ries on the big screen. We all gathered afterward in the lobby for another cocktail before the walk over to the party that fol- lowed. Iprobably had two. Trouble usually starts as fun. In an old bowling alley bar called “Gutter,” Dice Magazine hosted a pre—Invitational issue re - lease party. It was already over-capacity when the theatre crowd arrived. The street out front buzzed in electric city air, the shadows cast grays and blues, the flannel shoulders and sharp outlines of figures on the go, the endless cluster of bikes drifting off to darkness in both directions. I’d smoked a ciga - rette outside the bar with Conrad, waiting forMatt. By the time he arrived, the line for beer was out the door. The sheer mob of humanity had him a little stunned. I gave him a squeeze and told him how much I dug the movie. Then I went for the line. Those two had magazine shit to do, a table to set up, and merch to fold. These people were here for them. I’d only be good at getting in the way. Conrad, in the end, wasn’t needed, either. The Dice work had been done while we’d all been off galavanting. Matt had a twin - kle of magic like that, the goodness to make the world better as a sheer matter of will, because his people deserved it. At some point, the party people in line realized they could have huge pitchers of draft for the same wait time as two cans. I didn’t even buy the first one. It was handed my way. I waited for Conrad to hunt down his own pitcher before heading outside where there were fewer people and more bikes. On the sidewalk, Conrad introduced me to Andy from Pangea Speed. Andy was right about most of it and his Eighties-de- co-punk motorcycles said as much. Andy didn’t wring himself out on life’s baser delights, his reference was too sincere to blur. I appreciated people like him: people that made me think the good guys would win. The Turbo Evo Bosozuko didn’t hurt his argument either. This is what I had come for. I drank pitchers of beer for hours on end, and became best buds with new acquaintances—all of us damn sure that the world could be saved by the right as- semblage of motorcycle parts. Hope draws us out. Soon, more friends would arrive from Boston. All I had to do was keep my - self together until they did. It had all gone rather fuzzy before the first fist flew. It didn’t involve me. I was far enough away. I hadn’t noticed the muscles in white, I was looking past him up the street. I heard the fist land first, like a crack of wood. But that skinny kid took it, I will say that. Hardly a flinch. If Walter hadn’t stepped between them though — and he did and right quick — that skinny kid wasn’t staying upright. Keino, who’d built that coffin-tanked panhead Gentry rode on the Gypsy, almost got himself killed trying to help Walter break up the fight. I remember thinking I was going to have to take a beating for Keino. The big guy had already thrown. He had no reason to stop now. All I had to do was just say nothing, stop any late entrants from joining-in, and keep an eye on Walter (who really didn’t need my help after all.) Whatever black magic that gentle Jersey dev- il conjured, it worked. The pugilist settled down, that punk scrub rubbed his face, and Walter kept the peace. Still, you don’t want to be on the sidewalk where fists have been thrown, especially after shit has cooled down. That’s usually when the cops with the questions show up, or when skinny kids get themselves guns. Either way, drinking-by-the- curb time was over. On my way back into the bar, I found my buddies from Boston in line for beer without even looking for them. They’d just arrived and hadn’t even thought to find me yet. Maybe I owed Walter that bit of providence too. Steven McDonough, no White Knight in the House of Color for sure, was the perfect foil to the sidewalk fracas I just sash - ayed. With a booth in the back of Gutter, over a slow pint among old friends from home, I could catch my breath. Steve had rid - den his deer-slaying Beemer down for the show with Mark on the six-speed FXE Shovel. Mark was an interesting cat, one of those city kids who learned early on that if you spoke first with your Les Paul, your mouth didn’t get you in nearly as much trouble. This wasn’t a party for pounding-from-the- pitcher anymore. Steve stole some glasses from an abandoned wait-station, and I handled the heady pours. I drift too frequently into hyperbole, and speak in absolutes about things that are mostly gray. Steve was like Matt and Mag- nus — he didn’t just love motorcycles, he lived them. There wasn’t a part of his life motorcycles didn’t populate. Everything — music, liquor, or film — was distilled by him in the same way; in how he chose the anachronisms, and went with the non-conforming option; always making the argument for the unseen, the forgotten, the neglected or never found; the strug - gles he was willing to face to ride that bike and, by extension, to live his life the way his gods had intended. If Jack Kirby had drawn a motorcycle hero, he’d have drawn Steve McDonough. Over the second pitcher, Mark mentioned, in the most Boston casual of ways, that the two of them hadn’t eaten since a high- way rest stop in Connecticut. “I’m fucking starving.” was how he put it. Mark didn’t couch things. There was too much wrong with the world to waste his time lying about what he needed. “I’m not putting beers away on an empty stomach.” He took a big sip to disprove the point while I feigned looking around for signs of food service. This place might serve food regularly, but not tonight — this was a private party with the emphasis on riot control. “I gotta ride tomorrow after the show. I want to enjoy the show.” Some places, like Boston and New York, you have to shout to be heard. A sense of humor helps — if you don’t make 150 151 us, there’d be no containing the preciousness. I’d had enough to drink to enjoy myself regardless. The walk was hardly that — I’d barely processed passing the police by the time Steve was holding the restaurant door open for me. The details of the place give way to an overwhelming sense of ennui. Sure, it was a gentrified urban Olive Garden for the slow-food forum reader, but I was done with the insults to au - thenticity quite quickly. You really can’t tell the joy someone gets from what they make by merely looking at them. Real joy has a subtlety that’s hard to quantify but obvious in its outcomes. Steven ordered mussels and a round of tawny as a way of introduction to the bartender. I moseyed up to a stool and almost missed it. The long day was playing catch-up with my reflexes. I saved it though, and if you weren’t watching you wouldn’t have noticed. Leg on the ground, ass on the stool, el- bow on the poured concrete bar, I was stable, and with a glass of port to sip, I could listen while Steve and Mark talked off the energy of their ride and the ruckus of Gutter. That was the first I heard of Mark having a problem with his bike. There was an issue leaving the house that Mark had pegged to a dead battery. Since his driveway was a hill, a jump- start was easy. No problems on the road to speak of, either, and when they stopped for gas, it fired right back up. He just didn’t trust the battery, but he could check that before laying down tonight. I thought if he had a problem, we could probably stop by Works Performance and see if they could be of some help. Mark liked knowing there was a bike shop near the show. We all hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. The food arrived and with it, another round of ten-year Taylor. I got lost for a little bit in the dish. Seafood has its rituals, and seacoast kids like us knew them well. There was good drunk fun in a messy meal — you sort of can’t stay self-conscious — you could try, but it’s best to just give yourself over to the rush, savor the smells, and find the calm in the ceremony of the dish, in the twisting open of the shells, the crack of the garlic and the squish of the basted bivalves between your teeth, the victory lap of the fat and fluffy crostini run through the steaming wine-based broth and left it to soak on the edge of the enamel cookware. I cleansed my mouth with port between bites. It was exactly the kind of night cap vibe I needed. A sense of self-loathing might have set in had I not had the fortified wine for strength. I’d judged this place without giving it a shot, written off its ear - nestness as fraudulent and been shown, in a slurry of seafood and soup, the absolute error of my ways. So I drank port wine, ate mussels, and sopped broth until I was good and stuffed and the world has lost its sense of balance. Steve drove, I know that. I don’t recall collecting the car, but it was only around the corner. I’d drunk myself out of any other option and was crashing with them at a hotel in Long Island City. It wouldn’t matter to me. I commandeered a corner of a bed while they checked on the bike, closed my eyes without a word, and woke up with my boots still on and thirsty as hell. The sunlight around the window shade said it was morning, but the hotel room was empty. Steve and Mark were already downstairs in the parking lot. I could hear them faintly from the bed. I thought it was later than I wanted; it was earlier than it should have been. Five minutes in the bathroom, and I was on my way to find them. The bike hadn’t started last night. Steve and Mark had decided to wait until they had some daylight to start diagnosing. Old bikes will fight you. Make your original paint shovelhead into an overdrive six speed that doesn’t leak, and the electrics will fuck with you. Mark, quixotically kneeling by his bike in a Quality Inn parking lot on the edge of Queens, was exploring that maxim this morning. Simple hope was a bad battery. He’d had an inkling though. It’d been too easy to this point. fun of yourself first, one of your friends might beat you to it. Mark wasn’t done. “Are there any places to eat around here?” Steve never looked up from his glass. “Tons.” I hadn’t had a bite since the barbecue. Some dinner would be nice. Matt would be here till closing. I could catch up with him and Conrad tomorrow. “Alright then,” I was up out of the booth before they answered and finished my beer on my feet.“To dinner.” Though the drink line had dwindled down to inside the door, and you could move about without much pushing, the bar was still a stop past full. I couldn’t even make out the Dice table in the far corner over the crowd, though I did wave on my way out — in that general direction, to no one in particular. Outside, the cops had indeed come and were out front on the sidewalk talking to each other and their radios. The herd of parked bikes had thinned and that was probably the cops ulti- mate intent — the rabble now just a handful of smokers rush - ing through risky goodbyes. Thankfully, this neighborhood was full of food. All we had to do was find it. That didn’t take Steven very long. He’d spotted a place on the way in, if we didn’t mind seafood. It was maybe a two block walk from the bar. This was Brooklyn, he did warn 152 153 After about another five minutes of fighting, Mark was done trying to fix it here with the wrenches from his roll. We’d give the Harley a push start and try to get the bike to Works Engi- neering to see if Mark could use their tools, get some help, or at least get a charge on his battery. It was early. I was hardly awake. I don’t remember how they talked me into pushing, but I ended up with both hands on the sissy bar, sprinting Mark across the parking lot. Running that hungover, that early in the morning will distract you. I should have known we had plenty of speed for spark, but Mark didn’t give any heads up before he dumped the clutch. There was just this explosion of sound as the engine engaged and a sudden resistance of the tire skip-skidding with me trailing behind at a full sprint arms extended. I almost fell over. I might have even taken the bike down with me if that engine had stalled out. But that shovel- head fired, and, throttle open, pulled the bike right out of my grip — leaving me to gather myself, unbalanced and sweaty, in oily exhaust and a dry morning’s yen. Mark circled the lot and pulled back up to the big Beemer to warm up while Steve got ready to ride. Maybe after the push- start fiasco, I should have rethought driving, but it all went fine. Mark’s bike didn’t sputter, and I found a parking spot on a side street between Works and the show. I would have cracked the window and taken a nap there in the front seat, but there was a bike to fix, and I was still thirsty. We waited out front on the sidewalk while Mark went inside to ask about some help. Steve and I saw people we knew from Providence and said “Hello.” Matt Davis’s buddy Jess — who owned the bar I’d met Magnus in earlier this long weekend — had her BMW racing sidecar-rig parked out in front of Works. Unsurprisingly, oppositional was Steven’s favorite en- gine configuration, and this little boxer, stripped of everything that didn’t help it go faster, this was his speed of rock’n’roll: the clip-ons between the trees for bars; the gas and oil under the flat pan seat and no tank on the backbone, the aerodynamics a hand-formed fairing on the tube-framed sidecar off to the right, slung low and flat. Steve wasn’t a man for dancing in pub - lic, but this bike had him soft-shoeing on the sidewalk. The street was already busy with bike people. While Steve circled that German side-hack for a sixth or sev- enth time, I scanned the scene cropping up around us, the single bikes pulling up outside Works, the ragtag gathering of misfits,hours early for the show, urban campers and couch crashers without a place to spend the day. Their bikes were city bikes: restorations and customs of European and Asian ancestry. I’m not above a certain affectation — a near perfect sandcast four will get my attention; ride it hard down an un - lined city street before 11am and you might even get a round of applause. It was enough to distract Steve from Jess’s Beemer, if only for a bit. Mark appeared just as that Honda turned out of sight. This would be a while. The folks at Works were more than willing to help. Battery on the charger and multi meter in hand, Mark had a morning of chasing gremlins ahead of himself. Steve stayed with Mark. They’d meet me later at the show. I was going to go find Matt, Conrad, and a beer. I needed that beer. I’d needed one on the nightstand. I still took my time and some photos on the short walk. I didn’t want to seem desper - ate, but the sour stomach, throbbing head, and pretty constant chills were gonna make it a challenge not to seem just a little desperate. I walked slower. As I got closer, the British bikes be - came fewer and older, the Japanese almost disappeared, and the Milwaukee Twin ubiquitous. Cone or genny shovel, knuck- le and pan, rigid chopper or swingarm custom, Harley was the bike of choice on the Root Gallery block. If I focused hard enough, the shit feeling would fade, and I could be as I wanted to be: snapping photos and sharing smiles, seeing bikes and their riders — the early risers and organizers scurrying through last-second preparations before they opened. The show didn’t have to be perfect. It just had to be great. We’d asked for this. We’d been building toward it, this new context for old ideas - a chance to see Americanism in and un- der the bright lights - a moment to let the gallery setting refine the context and let the Artists be heard. There was something aspirational in our reverence; if we acted like them — acted like they did when they saw the things they canonized — may - be they’d see what we saw: the hope, the willingness to dream in spite of the danger, the audacity to demand the world lis- ten to the art in our artifice. Maybe they could love this all the same way, too. Venerate the bike and save each other from ir- relevance. That’s what this show was: a Salon des Refusés in polished aluminum and chrome, a chance for the rejected to shine another day. Root, the show’s urban art gallery Greenpoint host, was formed by converting four former factory rooms: a main gallery where the bikes were displayed, a performance space with photogra- phy on the walls, a vendor space where Matt, and a dozen others, had a table, and an entranceway antechamber where they handed out bracelets and served up beer: Asahi extra dry from Japan, an odd beer choice, but one I was willing to double down on before I went looking for Matt in the vendor space. Matt, of course, was already set up. Half the tables in the room were still against the wall, and Matt was finished — the black banner with the red Dice logo hung neatly off the front of the table; the t-shirts to left, folded in mounds by size and laid out by motif and price; the magazine back issues stood in towers of ten-by-ten along the right edge of table; patches and stickers in tight piles across the front. I didn’t even ask how. At the first and only Dice party in Boston, I discovered one of Matt’s trade secrets: pack nothing you can’t sell. He traveled with barely enough to keep himself clothed and packed his luggage with magazines and magazine paraphernalia. He lived off what he sold from his bag — a 21st century Tom Sawyer riding double lined tarmac tracks across America right on the very edge with only a sack of self-belief at