I'm not sure at what point during the ride from Oakland to the Berkley Hills that overlook the Bay I decided that I was going to get a chopper, but I know that it was sometime after watching Max Schaaf kickstart his '47 Knucklehead, and sometime before waving goodbye to Jasin Phares ashe burned out on his '60 Panhead. I'd had a bike for a couple of years, put quite a few miles on it, and was starting to think I knew a thing or two about how a bike should be ridden and what one should look like. I didn't know a goddamned thing. These guys were on a whole other level, and their machines, my God, I'd never seen anything so cool in my life.
I'd met Max through skateboarding. I make my living shooting photographs for skateboarding magazines, and Max is a professional rider. We'd gone on a tour, I'd heard he was into old Harleys, so we talked about bikes a bunch during the trip. So when I rode from Canada down to southern California with some friends, I called Max along the way and stopped by his place in Oakland. His garage was a trip in and of itself; he had so much neat stuff, it was actually kind of overwhelming. Max and Jasin took my friend Will and I on their daily ride. It was amazing, and by the time we returned to Max's I knew that I just had to get a noisy little lane-splitting machine. I had to get me a chopper!
It took a little while to set enough money aside, and I had to work overtime to rationalize the expenditure to myself, since I'm sort of the pragmatic type. I think I managed to trump myself with you only live once or some such thing.
I knew if I tried to put the thing together myself, it would probably never get done, or even if I somehow managed to cobble something together that rolled, it would be an absolute death trap. Max, meanwhile, had built two of my absolute favorite bikes in the world. So being a total greenhorn in the world of choppers (and kind of a tardmo where wrenching's concerned), there was never any question as to who I was going to ask to build me a bike. I was amazed to learn that Max had never really built a bike to sell. Well, I was more than willing to be his first customer. I spent a couple of weeks sending him dozens of Craig's List ads before he finally called me and told me that he'd found the bike. It was a good start for sure. I told him that I wanted the reliability of a cone shovel. Max is more a generator motor kind of guy, but he knew I wanted something I could ride the hell out of without a lot of hassle, so when he found a '70s Shovelhead in a Wishbone with an OEM Big Twin Springer on eBay, he recommended I put a bid in.
A few days later, I found myself to be the owner of a theoretical Shovelhead chopper from San Bernardino. The bike was sort of ugmo, dressed up in a shit-horrible tasseled seat, some teal-colored fat blobs, some weird forward controls, and 18-inch apes. The neck had been raked and the Springer had these strange rockers to extend the length a bit. After Max stripped off the billet and the bullshit parts things started to look up. We tossed a couple of ideas around, Max talked me out of a couple of dumb ideas, and we agreed that things would sort of take shape on their own. Max ordered up a bunch of stuff-new carb, new rear wheel, new parts for the Springer-and fixed a few things to keep costs down. He welded up the oil bag, laced up a new front wheel in between fabricating handlebars, mid-controls, pipes, and a fender, among countless other details. After trying every gas tank in his extensive collection, Max bought a super-neat Hodaka Wombat gas tank off eBay. Awesome as it was, it was too big, and didn't fit the bike, so he narrowed it, lowered it, filled in the tunnel, scooched up the gas cap, and welded the whole deal together. It came out better than either of us could have hoped for, and it definitely confuses onlookers, unless they take the time to read the plastic gas cap.