Adam Wright's 51 Chevy

FOR SALE!



Famous Photographer Adam Wright is selling his precious 1951 Fleetline. I think he got touched by the chopper flue that's been going around. Adam's willing to part with his Chevy for some wind in the face action. He will also except interesting trades.

Contact him at adamwrightphoto@yahoo.com

Please no stalkers or creepy letters about your pet gold fish.

Check out Adam and his Chevy in action right here

Welcome home JJ

JJ aka Jeremiah Stephen Smith has moved into the final spot in Bravetown. It's pretty amazing that in a city as large as Chicago that there are only eight dudes that are into this motorbike stuff that are on the same mental wave. JJ showed up this summer via Eugene and Joe and has wormed his way into the family. When it was brought up to the members it wasn't even a question, just a natural fit. It's not about panheads, springers and straight leg frames, it's about wanting to spend time with the people that leave you craving for more. Welcome home pal.

*BT*

Kevin "Teach" Bass

Speaking of Teach..... I was just looking through some pictures from the Big Mountain Run and found this. Teach can party like no one else can. It always amazes me when I'm around him for a weekend event. Teach is always the last one to go to sleep and the first one up in the morning. I don't quite understand how he does it but I've seen it on many occasions.

Petey Paint

Petey got his paint back from our pal Kendall. RED. We just need ratchet to finish his White Shovel so we can run around town looking like a damn Bomb Pop.

An "Apple" for the Teach

I promised Teach that I would draw him this a long time ago.

Man, I didn't even have an art class in my high school when I was a kid. You had just a few choices at Marksville High School back in the 80's You could play football, join FFA, or Band. I didn't play football because it cut into my summer swimming hole time. I didn't join FFA because, well don't even really need a reason for that one. Band was completely out of the question because the only band I was interested in was blasting out of my truck cassette player. Basically - being at or around school sucked ass and I avoided it like the plague.

If one of my teachers would have been a raging gear head or a lunatic artist- and held a class teaching us students something that they had a passion for, maybe things would have been different.

Thanks, Teach for makin' school cool for some seriously fortunate and gifted students.

Burning Bondo

The idea for the panshovel is to quickly change some things around using what I already have in my stash pile and run it while I finish the Ironhead. My two major concerns before seeing the bike in person were the motor and the neck. The neck pretty looked sketchy in the photos Kory sent me. When I finally got to see the bike in person felt much better about both. The motor is a one kick affair even with the Supper B and the neck although hacked up still has a good majority of the casting there that isn't to butchered. I plan on putting it back to a stock configuration when I finnish the Ironhead... but for the time being I decided to see what was really under all that bondo...... for peace of mind.


Beautiful... ain't she?


After burning out all of the bondo with a torch..... looks like some one already took a torch to the Fat Bob mounts.


cutting out side the plates


Gnarly plates that were welded in.





I welded up the holes and even went so far as to put a little bondo back on it to make it a little prettier for this years ridding


I hit it with a quick coat of black paint to finish her off.

Scarfing Material

Who the fuck has money for restaurants all the time? This meal rules.

Chicago-Louisiana Style New England Clam Chowder n Beer.

Oh and I eat this while reading a little letter from Uncle Sam- him talkin shit, trying to remind me that they still own me after 20 years of service. The last bite I took was the best, because I washed it down with a big swig of go fuck yerself!!

In case you haven't heard- - I'm free.

Hey Check out what I did to my bike

Not a god's damn thang!

Goin Up The Country Baby

I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go
I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go
I'm going to some place where I've never been before
I'm going, I'm going where the water tastes like wine
I'm going where the water tastes like wine
We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time
I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away
I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away
All this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure can't stay
Now, Baby, pack your leaving trunk, you know we got to leave today
Just exactly where we going I can not say
But we might even leave the U.S.A.'
Cause it's a brand new game, and I want to play

Angel and Jesus

sack lunch

This front ends got a little more picnic to it. I like a good picnic.

1964 Panshovel

On my last trip out to California I ran into some friends from Milwaukee at an art show. My friend Casey is actually a designer at Harley Davidson and helped design the vary bike that Harley sent me out there to test ride. Anyway... he was with his friend Corey and we were all bullshitting about this and that. Then Corey says "I have a Panshovel I am looking to get rid of." I was like... "yeah... That would be killer but I can even begin to touch something like that right now." I told him I would let a few people know about it.
It turns out Harley Davidson treated me really well and this Panshovel wasn't so far out of reach. Corey didn't speak very highly of his panshovel. He warned me that the framed was hacked up a bit and the motor would most likely need a top end job because it would barely run. He wasn't asking a whole lot of money for it so I had him send me some pictures.

GOT DAMN..... it looked like the perfect base to build off of. My wet dream would be to have a Genni shovel but the are hard to come by so I figured I'd put a slab side cam cover on it to make it look like one.... but it was ready there.... bonus!

I finally got my dollars together and headed up to Milwaukee this weekend to see it in person. Bacon and I drove up to West Bend where it was sitting. Bacon told me not to worry if it needed to be rebuilt.... because he could have it rebuilt in a few days. That sick bastard can build these motors in his sleep... the kid has the sickness too. Anyway I traded some cash for a tittle and loaded it up.

As we got back to the shop Warren had just finished up unloading his Knucklehead purchase. We squeezed it past his pile of knucklehead parts and took a look at it. The distributor seemed fucked up so Warren tossed us one from his pile. It would started but popped, spit and farked like a mother fucker. So we checked the spark... turns out it was just a fowled out spark plug. BAM! With in thirty minutes we had her running like a top! I even took her for a quick ride down the street.







The plan is to quickly change some things around on this bike to make it look decent and finish The Locust while I ride this..... Then when the Locust is done this will get blasted apart and done up right. Nothing crazy.... just an all business machine.

For the LOVE of Choppers

Sometimes we as humans fall into obsession or should I say addiction. Maybe it is the cold winter we are forced to endure... being locked up only to dream of fresh air and warm sunshine. It seems there is a Chopper Flue going on around here. None of us really have the money to make the next step up on the motorcycle ladder but some how we make it happen by any means necessary. In the case of Cody Davidson we find that he has recently purchased a fresh Panhead motor from our friend Tattoo Ed. Cody is 21 and when I met him a few years ago his was cruising around in a 55 olds and riding a rigid Shovelhead. Last summer he was hit by some old lady while he was riding his shovel. Cody collected a good chunk of insurance change and bought himself I nice truck. Recently the sickness took over him. He felt he needed a panhead so the 55 and the truck disappeared while the 300 dollar hoopty and Panhead took there place. The things a man will do in the name of Chopper freedom........

Eugeno Marino

Eugene is stepping up in the ranks. When we met youngblood he was riding a Honda Chopper. It was his first and it taught him a few things about chop'n sickles. Last year he stepped into an american made with his garage built Ironhead. The bike fit him and his personality like a glove and we are sad to see it go. I may have gave him a lot of shit for selling it but I'm glad to see that he is once again stepping up yet another rung on the ladder. Bacon is building his 80 inch shovel motor up in Wisconsin right now while Eugene gets his straight-leg frame ready for the Cone Shovel implant. I can't want to ride next to this one.





She will be missed.

Killing Time

While the Searcher frame was off getting blasted my boredom led me to messing with some parts from the loft. I think this might be a fun set up for the ride to Born Free, Kinda has that Tennessee todd lean to it.

This went from a dead heat to dead meat for me. These youngsters are coming up, I'm passing the torch to Johnny Appleseed. It's all in the forearms.

Brat Style

Our friend Jon Arturi aka Johnny Appleseed was over in Japan visiting some friends and made time to swing by the Brat Style shop. Here's a quick recap from him.

Alright Bri guy, here's the story. Sent you a bunch of pic's. pick whatever ones you find most interesting.

Took a trip to Japan to visit my oldest best friend. Couldn't pass up a chance to visit the Bratstyle shop just north of proper Tokyo in Matsue. I've been thinking about buying stuff off of their site for a while and figured it'd be way more fun to take a handful of trains and track down the shop in person. After using my less than great Japanese to get directions from some policemen we found the shop.

The dudes that worked at the shop didn't speak any English but were super pumped that I was there. The only dude that spoke any English was the owner and after he told his guys that I was from Chicago they were even more excited. I found out that dude had owned the shop for 12 years and it showed. There were so many rad bikes parked out in front of the shop, bikes that I'd been staring at on the internet for years, and now they were in front of me. Talked to the owner about the cb550 I'm building and found out that they call those CB "Go Go's." Go is the Japanese word for 5. Pretty rad.

He said I couldn't take too many pictures inside of the shop cause he didn't want me taking pictures of customer's bikes but I did manage to take a few. After about 15 minutes of halfway understanding each other I bought some handlebar switches and a t-shirt that says "Bratstyle" and "Be first Be cool" on it. All in all it was one of the raddest things I did in Japan. They wrote down my name and where I was from so I'll definitely go back and say what's up the next time I'm in Japan.

Jon

Buddy Seats and Rain Drops

Our Buddy Dan and his ol' lady headed back from the Big Mountain Run. She is tuff as nails and will ride on the back of the Geni Shovel from one end of the country to the next.

If it ain't Long, it's Wrong

Today I decided to take a look at what was going on with the front axle on the Bakers Shaker. It seems that almost every one of these old springers needs a lot of attention before you think about riding it down the street. You'll find in most cases that over the years various owners made their quick fixes with what little tools they had. This time around I found that someone needed a front axle and used what ever appeared first in their stash pile. It looked to be an old wide glide axle that was four different diameters. It wouldn't fit through the right side rocker so they used a dremel tool to make the hole big enough for the axle to slip through. A bunch of cuss words and a few hours later I had a the rocker problem fixed and a new axle in place.

During all of this I was thinking about my visit to Sugar Bear's Shop and all the wisdom he shared with me. Big Ben, Andrea, Wil and I stopped by one night to watch movies with Sugar Bear and Fuji. It's amazing to see the amount of history hanging on the walls of his shop. The pictures begin I believe in the late 40's and span all the way up until present day. Each one is a history lesson it itself. Sugar Bear makes the best Springer front ends you can get. If my springer was a Sugar Bear, I wouldn't have to fix it because there wouldn't have been a reason for someone to butcher it up trying to fix it in the first place.

Thank you Sugar Bear and Fuji for the Pizza and history lessons.... We enjoyed it very much.



Sugar Bear Dig'n for Super B's



An Ironhead with a single loop frame. This was what Sugar Bear called the Shop Bike. It was never painted just a blaster and parts getter. Next to it is his Shovel with his first springer on it.



The Lathe that has helped create just about every springer he has ever made.






Every piece is made by Sugar Bear himself..... I believe the only thing he doesn't make are the Springs.



Shovel in wait..... he hopes to have it done for Sturgis this year.


Sugar Bear

Village of Sharon

It's winter and there ain't much to do here but watch the ice get thicker. Yesterday the sun came out and the temperature started to climb. I walked out to the mail box in a t-shirt and it felt great. Then I drove past the bank on the way to shop to grab a bike and realized it was only 33 degrees. One degree above freezing. It's amazing what 33 degree's feels like after surviving in below zero temps for so long. I pulled into the shop drive and my truck could barely make it back to the shop door because the sun had given the ice a nice resurfacing. I was itching to get the Bakers Shaker on the road for the first time but I could barely stand up on the ice let alone ride a bike with two feet of trail on it.

Today the sun went back into hiding and the freezing rain came back out. I got a call from some friends asking If I wanted to drive up to Wisconsin with them to get some beer. They were look'n for some Spotted Cow beer but they only sell it in Wisconsin, so we loaded up the car and headed for the border. It kind of took me back in time about 35 years. I remember my dad telling me stories of driving up to the Wisconsin border on the weekends to get beer. The legal age was 18 in Wisconsin and 21 in Illinois. There's not much up there, in fact from the time we left the shop drive we didn't see another town or another sole for that matter until we hit State Line Road were we found the historic Village of Sharon Wisconsin. We grabbed a few cases of Spotted Cow Beer from the store and stopped in at a little bar called Seaver's before we departed. As we walked in I noticed a sign that said Bikers Welcome and one person sitting at the bar. The lady behind the bar looked pretty disappointed to see us walking in. She wouldn't serve us draft beer because it took to long to pour and we couldn't have anything on the menu unless in was fried. After a few declined fried choices from the menu she said about all you are gonna get is fried chicken. We were all there to eat so we told her to fire up that fryer. I figured we'd get I nice big fried loogie to go with our fried chicken for as much as she loved us........ maybe that's why it tasted so damn good.

gas gas

where would you go?

America