Issue 11

Dick Allen Didn’t Take It With Him

Images: Bruce Parrish Collection

The origin of the custom chopper is a mysterious one, its history lost in a haze of drugs, sex and the illicit free-spirit. It’s a story that is not documented, save word of mouth and small town tales passed down from one person to the next and then ultimately, one generation to the next.  Many have claimed to be the first to do this or that and we can never be too sure about who’s telling the truth, but there is one early pioneer who can undeniably be credited for elevating it all from just a chopped-up bike to a Custom Bike – and that’s Dick Allen. 

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GARAGE 13

20 Questions: Kat Von D

Photography: Estevan Oriol 

It finally happened. Outlaw culture, and everything that goes with it, has officially gone mainstream. It’s far too easy to just plunk down enough cash to be a weekend bad-ass – a new bike, a new tattoo and a new t-shirt can all be had just by parking the mini-van at one end of a strip mall and burning up the credit card toward the other. But that’s cool – those bike shops, tattoo parlors and Hot Topic chains are expendable. They all serve an important purpose by simultaneously quenching the thirst of all those Asses who feel the need to be Bad and preserve the authentic chopper builders and tattoo artists for the folks who have and always will do it for nothing more than the damned love of it.

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Issue 14

Room 13

Steve Sellers Is Building A Place For Himself

Photography: Jay Watson 

“I spent all night doing that…” Steve Sellers is standing at the mouth of his filled, but amazingly tidy, shop in San Jose, CA. And below the modest “Sellers Equipped” shingle hanging over the roll-up door, he’s answering the silent question as I point at the seemingly endless amount of perfectly hand-twisted safety wiring present all over the front of a neat little Model A roadster. And herein lies the point of what Steve has been apparently put on this Earth to do: bring back the art of hotrodding. Over the past few decades, an entire industry – a self-sustaining economy – has circled its wagons around the culture of hotrodding. There’s just about nothing that can’t be bought and bolted onto, welded or pressed into a custom car project of any kind, shape or style. The benefits are obvious – more people with varying degrees of talent can experience what only a few could this time a century ago. But along with catalogs, shade-tree mechanic shows on TV and the glut of information online, there’s something that seems to be missing. Something that, at one time, was one of the hallmarks of the subculture. And that, friends, is the art of perfection.  

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Issue 11

Tattooed By Bert Grimm

Images: Tattoo Archive 

The Golden Age of Tattoo. Unless you’ve been living in a van down by the river (and even then, there’s a pretty good chance some scrawny, full-sleeved indie band guys would be crawling all over your pad for their next CD cover photo shoot), you can’t help but notice that the most permanent of all fads has gripped popular culture faster than the foam trucker hat movement – but without the same ease of disposal. What was once reserved for a few select subcultures is now gaining broad acceptance, appeal and – we had to say it – permanence. 

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Issue 8

Stompin’ At The Savoy

The Frantic Days of Horsepower and Black Power in San Francisco

Photography: Jay Watson

In the late Sixties and Seventies, the winds of change were blowing across America in ways that noone had ever seen. The Civil Rights Movement had lost many of its leaders, the Vietnam conflict had lost much of its support, the Sexual Revolution was in full swing and there was a general unrest among the nation’s youth. 

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Issue 17

Psychobilly Cadillac

Running A Few Errands In The Purple People Eater

Photography: Larry Mills

CAR: 1929 Ford Model A Coupe

OWNER: Marky Idzardi

BUILDER: Marky Idzardi and The Shifters C.C., Orange County, CA

In the Nineties, the sleepy hot rod world was having a hard time keeping its eyes open after having been given a glass of warm milk and the “Rhythmeen” album. Things were all denim shorts and slouchy socks. Boyds directionals and painted bumpers. Hot rods were air-conditioned, tweed-clad parking lot idlers that you happily paid twelve bucks to get through the fairgrounds gate to see and then go, “Yup, same as last year. Hey, I think I see the Bricker’s french fries trailer on the other side of that peach ’34 – no, the other peach ’34!”

Meanwhile, in Southern California, the kids were waking up, leaving the old guys to snooze, and sneaking out to the garage to wrench on the dilapidated roadsters and coupes they’d rescued. They didn’t have the cash or desire to watch their cars being built in some industrial complex shop, but they had alot of energy and interest in interpreting what those snoozing old dudes had done some fifty years prior. And they’d just started a revolution by doing it. 

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