Sk8tr Bikers

"The perfect bike is one where every part is exactly where it belongs," says Max Schaaf, a builder of skater-inspired motorcycles, reports Austin Considine in the New York Times (7/18/10). Max runs 4Q Conditioning, a custom-bike shop in Oakland, California, and is "widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in skateboarding and custom bike building." The prevailing aesthetic is "minimalism: Every visible part seems to have an equally visible function; the pieces are as gorgeous and meditative as they are spare and athletic."

In other words, they are not "chrome cruisers with stretched-out front ends and high-rise handlebars … These are sleek stripped-down machines, recalling a style, popular after World War II, in which owners chopped away excess to make their bikes leaner and faster … Typical design features of the genre include custom handlebars, fenderless front wheels, suspensions shorn of all extraneous brackets and no-frills seating for just one person."

One thing these skater-bikes have in common with other choppers is a disdain for unmodified bikes. "Stock Harleys are boring," says Lee Bender, a skater turned biker. "It’s kind of like going to Walmart and buying a skateboard," he says. Harley embraces these skaters, though, and "is using star skateboarders to promote a new variation of its Sportster model." The skaters themselves recognize "an overlap of skater and biker subcultures." As Max Schaaf puts it: "We’re just wired a certain way … For some reason the death and danger are just a part of us."