Ben's Fave Five on Southsiders

Sideburn's BP has been asked to list his favourite five bikes for our friend's Southsiders blog. It's even more leftfield than I expected. GI

Oi Polloi

Manchester's premier men's clobber and accoutrement shop, Oi Polloi, now stocks Sideburn. They sell a load of other good stuff like Barbour, Tricker's, Fjall Raven, Victorinox knives, in fact, just about everything a fella needs (except steel shoes and full-face helmets). This is their mission statement.

'Oi Polloi was started in 2002 as a reaction to the mass of bland, uninspiring men's fashion stores lining the UK's high streets. With sports shops becoming lowest common denominator fashion shops and shoe shops becoming trainer shops, Oi Polloi decided that it was time for a change. With a vision of putting together the ultimate selection of classic, functional outerwear with innovative contemporary labels and a serious arsenal of casual footwear, Oi Polloi was born.'

58 seconds

If there is a better 58 seconds of racing on YouTube I want to see it. Stunning.
Thanks to Hannah for the link. GI

Project FT500 needs...

A small front brake reservoir from a modern MX bike. Can anyone help us out, please? We've seen one on a Kawasaki 250 that looks great, but I'm sure most of them have these type. Email dirt @ sideburnmagazine.com (take out the spaces) if we can do a deal, please.

Below are shots of the build. Carl at CFM is doing the business. It's had a new sub-frame and all the welds are smoothed in. The forks are from a TDR250 and we're having a custom front disc made and new rear shocks. And, hopefully, a Death Spray Custom paintjob. Looking good, eh?

The engine's in now.

Oregon: Where it's at

From our friend Danker in Portland, Oregon...

The Sang-Froid Riding Club is blowing-up the spring out here in the Pacific Northwest. We have a whole bunch of motorsickle stuff going on; we have our second annual Alley Sweeper 'Urban Enduro' coming up next weekend where we'll be exploring the ugly backside of gentrification as well as straight-up un-listed hobo encampments around Portland.

But the big news is SFRC is organizing and promoting a vintage dirtbike race of our own called the Old Vanport Motocross.
Vanport was once Oregon's second largest city. It was a primarily an African American Ship Builder's community from the war that was flooded out and destroyed in 1948--now Portland International Raceway is built on top of it. The race is part of a larger motorcycle extravaganza including AHRMA vintage road racing, scooter racing, stunts, trials riding etc-etc.
We're running vintage and evolution classes as well as age classes, an under 80cc class (adults only) and a run what you rode to the track license-plate and lights class. Should be sweet with most of the course over grassy natural terrain plus a couple of jumps just to keep things interesting. Should be good cheap racing and a nice contrast to high-dollar vintage racebikes flying
around the road coarse.
Thanks for doing what yer doing!
Cheers, DanKer, Sang-Froid Riding Club

Amsterdam Re-Stocked

The shelves of the American Book Center and Chopperdome are now stocked with SB#5. Not much motorcycle action on the streets, apart from the usual XT500 shitters, and shiny GS1250 BMs with nice farty exhausts ricocheting in the narrow streets.
The beautiful Guggenheim-like building (photo bottom right) is the Europarking on Marnixstraat, which was the original test venue for the Goodspeed 500 race series - as the project was sadly stillborn, their website and the original video no longer exists, but you can still see the test race on You Tube. BP

Sideburn 2: Nearly sold out

Tidying up the Sideburn warehouse this morning I noticed the recent rush on issue 2 means we're down to our last few dozen.
Sideburn 1 is long gone and we get asked for them every other day despite making it clear it's sold out. Sideburn 2 is going the same way. As we're on reserve we won't sell any quantities to dealers or distributors. Sorry fellas.
The Dave T-shirts are nearly gone in M, L and XXL too. Please check for your size and colour before ordering.
Thanks to everyone who buys from us. This blog only survives to promote the printed mag. GI

Motorcycho

Motorcycho 24 is out now.

Skulls

I must be on a bit of a death kick. In between the bikes and the booze, the drugs and the garage punk I try to squeeze in a bit of so-called high-end culture here in Rome. I was wandering around the 8th century church of Santa Prassede the other day. It's famed for its mosaics, but this couple of fellas called me over to take their photos. Not overly chatty. MP

The Go-Go Cage

Fresh from Sideburn's Wig-Out in Wigan, our houseband, The Stags play Liverpool's legendary Go-Go Cage next Saturday. Killer Diller's Johnny Alpha is DJing, Bambi LeBeau is dancing. It'll be a blinder. G