Back Street Heroes September 2023

Hello all, and welcome to this, the new issue – the four-hundred-and-seventy-third since Messrs Myatt and Macfarlane got together all those years ago. It’s August (I know it says September on the cover – your guess’s as good as mine as to why magazines’re listed a month late), and this issue comes out, as all issues do, on the first Thursday of the month which, for August, is the third day of the month. I wondered if anything auspicious’d happened on 3 August, and it turns out that, in 8AD (or CE or whatever we’re s’posed to call it these days), the Roman emperor Tiberius’ army defeated the Dalmatians at the battle of Bathinus (not really surprising that, is it? Heavily-armed Roman legionaries against playful spotty dogs…); in 1704 we…

2023 is the 120th year since William (Harley) and Arthur and Walter (Davidson) got together as Harley-Davidson – a fair achievement when you think about it as there aren’t that many companies with a more than 100-year history. Coca Cola, UPS, Boeing and Kellogg’s are amongst the most famous, while Royal Enfield, founded 1901, are the only bike manufacturer that’s older (Indian, although also founded in 1901, had a 46-year gap in production from 1953 to 1999). It’s definitely something that’s worth celebrating and, as anyone who’s been to, or seen coverage of, any of the previous big gigs they’ve done’ll know they do these things rather well. They had massive get-togethers in Tokyo, Sydney, Barcelona, Hamburg and Toronto, plus the great-grandaddy of them all in Milwaukee, for the 100th…

There’re many examples of this, of course, and one of the most famous, coined by no less a personage than Jonathan Swift, writer of Gulliver’s Travels, is ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’, meaning being unable to turn something ugly or inferior into something attractive or of value. The thing is, as with most things related to received wisdom, it’s not actually true – something that’s been evidenced in this ’ere magazine many, many times over the years; bikers, BSH bikers in particular, have been turning ugly or inferior things into attractive, valuable things for, just about, ever. Take the motorcycle you see here in front of you as an example; Jim Hill’s absolutely corking 5TA Triumph. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling…

Add in it was the first weekend where folk could get sunburnt, too, and soon almost everyone was surprised by how many folk turned up, many arriving well before official opening time. Being that it was also national mills weekend, for me there was also the draw of a historic windmill nearby (which I pencilled into my itinerary). A great venue in the depths of the Surrey hills, the Dog & Duck on Prince of Wales Road, in Outwood, near Redhill, had a family area with a pirate ship from which the team directed music and events (sadly, none of them dressed as pirates, although Dorset did bring their own stripy trousers) – a nice touch as it gave families visiting for kids play/Sunday lunch a chance to look round…

After much badgering eventually I watched the Biker Build-Off series on TV and was hooked, most notably on the bikes of Billy Lane and Indian Larry whose attitude towards life and the whole chopper scene, especially the zen approach of Larry, struck a chord so deep it still resonates to this day. Fast forward to 2017, and times’d changed. I was riding choppers now (bought ones), and made my first visit to The Trip Out (after reading about it in BSH), and decided I was going to attempt my first build. First though, I had to learn to weld… I signed up to a welding course, and got my Level I and II TIG, bought a jig from eBay, got the Ron Covell ‘How to Build a Chopper Chassis’, and…

With Doris, my faithful steed, feeling poorly, I adapted the 180-mile plus plans for the day, and headed locally to Redhill and the Garland Bike show, on my new scooter (named Po because she’s red with a cute bum, like the Tellytubby*). Holding a bike show at the Garland pub may seem an odd location, right on the edge of town, with a limited car park, but it works and’s now in its fourth year. The wide pavement opposite is the perfect parking space for visiting bikes, while the pub’s land itself was just for the show bikes. For many local clubs it was the perfect mid-stop on a May Day Run, and bikes came and went all day. The pub’s also like a TARDIS – it looks small from…