For us, October 21, 2007 was a mutt bred from happiness, choppers, raw sex, and a touch of frantic. Yaniv Evan summed three of those up as he rode down one of the busiest city streets in America doing something any cop in the world would've busted him for in the proverbial instant. A hot blonde named Frankie watched from the side; she took care of the fourth.
Rewind a week. Billy Bartels was recently crowned Street Chopper's latest boss gorilla, and like any good spider monkey, I was running around doing what the big ape told me, lest he rip off one of my arms. My phone rang and Mighty Kong issued a bit of a challenge: "We need a shop where we can shoot at least one bike feature and the Valentine's buyer's guide. Oh, and it has to be a cool shop. Something with character." Lucky for me, I didn't have to search my little brain too long. The older I get, the more it wants to be left alone. Nowadays it's like a rusty steel trap some crazy mountain man left out in the snow too long.
Two weeks prior, Scott Jones called me. I'd shot a Sportster of his at the Long Beach show the year before, and he'd recently started work at Powerplant Choppers on Melrose Avenue up in Hollywood. He wanted me to check with the chopper rags and see if any of them wanted to do a feature on the place. Fourteen days still falls within what my gray matter calls recent, so yeah, I had a shop that fit the boss's bill perfectly. A week and a few calls later, we were down at Powerplant for a day of shooting, with the deadline reaper off to one side for extra tension. We had one day to shoot and one to write up the guide if we were going to get it to market on time.
Billy and I hit the shop at nine, Toph joining us shortly thereafter. It's tucked into a row of other shops, with an unobtrusive sign by the front door. It also shares some of its space with Johnson Motors. Powerplant's owner, Yaniv "Yuni" Evan, was running late and hadn't arrived yet, so the three of us took our own tour of the joint while we waited. Head back down the narrow hallway from the front to the shop proper and you'll find yourself surrounded by cool old parts, equally ancient hot rod memorabilia, and several project bikes in different states of undress. Most were Harley-based, but there were a couple of old Triumph customs in the works as well.
A shop can say more about its owner than their bikes; in Yuni's case it said, "ongoing childhood." The two main rooms melded hot rods and choppers with skateboarding, sport fishing, and Star Wars toys. Most of the dcor was straightforward bike building-lifts, welding gear, old frames, and various parts waiting for a new home on some new chopper. He had old motors going into new scoots in various stages of completion, but when we looked at the walls, that's when things got weird. The custom-painted skateboard was understandable, and sure, who wouldn't want a ginormous stuffed swordfish on their wall? But even I gave up my Star Wars toys eventually; Yaniv's hung from Powerplant's ceiling in a couple of places.
A little while later Yaniv drove up, and when I asked him about Powerplant, it all crystallized. He's on the young side for a bike builder; early thirties-ish, and he got into hot rod cars as a kid by building model kits. Yaniv did his share of skateboarding as a youngin' and he upgraded to a '66 Chevelle as soon as he was old enough to drive, then started hanging with actual hot rodders and customized the car while checking out the California rockabilly scene. "I'd hang out at Brun's Custom City in Chatsworth," he told us. "I would clean up Jim Brun's shop and they let me learn on their lathe and welder in exchange while I worked my day job."