Flat Track at Ace Cafe

The third annual Flat Track Sunday get-together at the Ace Cafe, London NW10 7UD, is coming up - Feb 24th. Sideburn will be there, selling mags and merch and playing records.
The newly formed Dirt Track Riders Association will be in attendance to advise people how to race, marshal, spectate or get involved in the UK race scene in other ways; Redmax Speedshop will be there with street trackers and the biggest selection of off-the-shelf street tracker bodywork and parts anywhere in the world, and Co-Built will be on hand with their beautiful British made chassis, exhaust and parts. Tons of interesting bikes normally turn up too. G

PS Don't know why the 'Mud Pluggers' has been added, we've packed the car park out the last two years.

Verona 2013 pt.1: Headbanger Saten

It's taken a while to sort the photos from the Motor Bike Expo 2013, Verona. Here's the start. Lots more to follow.

Italian chopper company Headbanger, produced this 'concept'. Headbanger normally make good-looking, fully EU, TUV legal chops and lowriders. This is their first non-V-twin.

It's a Honda 600, with very angular, alloy bodywork. There's a tentative price of €9000 (if there's enough interest to go into production).

Expect to see this bike all over the blogs soon (you (and they) saw it here first).

You can tell Headbanger are Italian. Instead of selling black T-shirts with skulls on them, they have burnt orange cashmere sweaters, with skulls on them. G

Aftershock 2012

Aftershock 2012 from Peter Ellery...peterellery.com on Vimeo.
A bunch of fellas down in Australia saw the fun we had at the first Dirt Quake and organised their own event: Aftershock (quake, aftershock, get it?). Looks like they had fun. G

Speed Block

Adi's XS650 coming along nicely. Will include a re-phased crank for extra vvVRRRRaaaagghHHHH-vroom-vroom. BP

Dirt Quake II

The official poster. Lots of room for sponsors on there if you want to get in touch. We'll have information about entries in March. We'll post them on the blog and facebook.
Please spread the word on your blogs, facebooks, flickr, twitter, instagrams, Pinterests, etc...
Who's coming?

Great artwork by Adi Gilbert 99 Seconds.

Scorpion Dual-Sport

Chunky dually based on a 2003 Harley-Davidson 1200 Sportster. Via Captain Simon

Too Fast To Live by Death Spray

Death Spray Custom produced a very special helmet for the cover of their 10-page section in Sideburn 12. It was photographed by Mitch Payne and has been made into a high quality, very limited edition print. Here are the details.

13 signed & numbered prints A2 size (594x420mm / 23.4x16.5in) Archival Giclée Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 320gsm Pearl paper.
100% of profits donated to Combat Stress, a charity dedicated to help veterans recover from psychological trauma received from frontline conflict. 
GBP £65 plus shipping. 

Get it at the DSC store. G
UPDATE: It's sold out. Told you it was limited. Sorry.

Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas

Russ, Beast T-shirt and Laverda.

Randy

The face of a hero. Randy Mamola. BP

1/32 Scalextric Spectators

A couple of weeks ago I went with my family to the über train-spotter Scalextric annual swapmeet at the Swindon Oasis. I was on a mission to get some parts to revive my 1980s vintage Matchbox Powertrack circuit (the first to have cars with working headlights for night-time bedroom grandprix'), but all I got was bemused raised eyebrows - wrong brand and wrong epoch evidently. My kids had a go on the latest hi-speed 18 volt multi-lane versions. My wife bought these nuclear holocaust victim bygones for our mantle piece.
Then we went for a swim in the decrepit tropical paradise lost - including bilging wave-machine. The three different high waterslides that spiral out of the main dome, are really good fun. Then we went home and drank 5 litres of mineral water to hopefully flush away the imminent onset of Legionnaires disease. Fun day out.

To combat the iffy electrical connections between track sections, I superglued them together plus a blob of solder (apart from turn 4, so we can still build more complex TT layouts).
That's a Raulowsky print on the wall too. BP

Sam Christmas PV snaps

Sam's private view evening was properly rammed, there was even a bouncer to sluicegate the swelling torrents of the usual suspects plus a hundred more. Well done Sam, great portraits. Good times. An impressive bike turn-out despite the chill. The show runs until the 3rd Feb. Go see it. BP

Café Racer Festival, Montlhéry

Our good friends at Café Racer magazine, France, are organising a festival at the amazing and historic Montlhéry banked racetrack near Paris. And there are opportunities to ride the track, if you book in advance.
More details here. G

On It

Anybody know who/what/where/ this random web-find hero is? BP
UPDATE Thanks to Alexander:

Krazy Horse

Per square mile England has more motorcycle history and opportunities than any country on earth (but Italy comes close). We don't have the wilderness of Australia, Africa or the Americas, but forced to exist cheek by jowl means we have dozens of racetracks, speedway tracks, shops, specialists and parts manufacturers in easily drivable distances.
Still, we at Sideburn look at others countries' stylish moto shops - places like Deus Ex Machina; Kiddo; Iron & Air; Officine Mermaid -  and wonder why there's nothing like this in the UK.
Well, now there is - it's in Suffolk and it's Krazy Horse's new HQ.
After years of being housed in a very characterful, but small shop in Bury St Edmunds city centre, the Krazy Horse crew, led by Paul Beamish - above, have moved to a new industrial unit a mile out of town. We visited over the Christmas holiday and it's bloody impressive.

Krazy Horse are importers for Zero choppers, the TUV and EU-approved choppers that look the business but sail through MoTs and have all the kind of papers Germans and Italians demand.

The space is packed with a 20-year history of chopper styles, show-winning bikes Krazy Horse have built.

Display bikes, the Airstream caravan and a massive workshop, with dyno and everything you could dream of, is downstairs. Parts area, clothing department and cafe is upstairs.
Liz, below, runs the clothes side. They stock Belstaff, Deus Ex Machina, Dickies, Levi's Vintage, Roland Sands Designs, Davida, Red Wing boots...
The cafe is run in conjunction with the Ace. It wasn't fully open when we visited but it is now.

 The Shinya Kimura-built Zero Junkyard Phantom is on display.

 They also sell the new S&S X Wedge-powered Morgan three-wheelers.

Krazy Horse also import Storz products.
We're hoping to have a magazine launch party at this place in the coming year.
Good luck Krazy Horse! G

Kevin Ash

We don't tend to do bad news at Sideburn, but we couldn't ignore the sad fact that one of our friends and a top motorcycle journalist, Kevin Ash has been killed on the launch of a new BMW in South Africa. We don't know any more details.
Our thoughts go out to his family. G

Sam Christmas

Londonites and globe trotters don't forget tomorrow night. BP

Motor Bike Expo, Verona

Oh, it was a quiet one.
Thanks to everyone who came by to say hello or buy something.
Big thanks to all at Mr Martini.

More photos when I get 15 minutes, but we're flat-out making Sideburn 13. G

Any Old Iron

Not available from Snap-On. Here (via DSC) the Kawasaki WSB team use a length of galvanized scaffold pole to straighten out the back-end on one of their ZXRs - an art they robbed off Skooter Farm. BP

Bargain Back Issue Combo

So, we had an idea to sell a few back issues to make room on our shelves, while getting the Sideburn logo on the chests of some of the finest human beings known to motorcycling (that's you) by offering a new combo.

The T-shirt is a Gildan ring spun, so softer than the normal Gildan Ultras we use. The shirts are all charcoal grey with a black screenprint. They're screenprinted in England.

You need to...
A) Decide size of shirt you want. They range from Small to XXL and also include a ladies medium.
We only have limited amounts. This T-Shirt and print colour combination won't be repeated.

B) Click on the drop down menu, in the Sideburn webshop; select the shirt combined with the back issue you require from a list of 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

The price is JUST £13 for T-shirt AND back issue, plus post and packing.

Good Taste

Bon Voyage

Ruby; the foie gras of motorcycle helmets. Most of the other metaphors I could use for my new Castel are erotic. BP

The Metal Way

Take perfectly decent Adi Gilbert designed Sideburn Beast T-shirt
- the lovely Davinia is wearing the Mens Small (we don't do a ladies style on this one).

Turn up soundz of choice to get you in the mood.

Proceed to kitchen, select weapon of choice - the lovely Davinia used a British Home Stores bread knife for dramatic effect, but scissors are easier. Cut off sleeves - and waist, if your navel is worthy of exhibition.

Nice butchery!

Happy banging! BP

CFH X Sideburn Sticker

Every new order from the Sideburn webshop gets a FREE sticker. It's a lucky dip of what ever our current artist in residence has come up with. They are made in a single limited batch, and when they're gone we get another artist to make a new design. This is the latest from our favorite alchemist Maxwell CFH Paternoster. Smokin'. BP

Winter Fuel

Snowy afternoon's work fueled by Kraken rum and Ribena toddy!

United State by Conrad Leach

English artist Conrad Leach is having a major show at Subvecta Motus in LA. You've probably seen his work on the web, but seeing the originals up close is a totally different experience (or at least I found it to be). Recommended if you're in the area. G

The Gift

Audio cassettes shaped my youth. Now they've been outmoded and relegated to my garden shed and only get aired on a 90s stack hi-fi I found in the rubbish. Every third tape gets a munching followed by spewing out half a plate-full of tagliatelle magnetic ribbon. Carefully re-spooled with a biro - remember doing mix-tapes when you'd turn back 1/4 turns to take up the slack between hitting PLAY-RECORD?
The shed is my escape away from worldly worries. Those old tapes are an amazing time tunnel. Today I unearthed this one of John Cale and The Velvet Underground, sent to me from the States by John Held Jnr. a famous mail artist of the day.
Me and my art college friends used to post all kinds of crap to each other. Art and omelettes. Literally. When I heard J.H.Jnr. was coming to England and visiting collage artists A1 Waste Paper (who I'd never met, but sent a ton of arty cards to), I decided it would be appropriatly whacky to mail myself.
My Tai-Chi bendyness (of the day) enabled me to be packed into quite a small wooden crate, and with the help of an assistant, it was nailed shut...BP

(turn the balance into the left speaker for just the narration and the right to trip out on the psychedelic ramble.)