Cleveland Bound With winter coming at us full bore, heading to next weekend’s Progressive International Motorcycle Show at Cleveland’s IX Center is a must. Stop by Cafe Racer magazine’s booth and check out a couple of the recent custom bike builds that have been featured in the mag, and sign up for a subscription and…

The death of print media may have been vastly overstated, but today, multinational media conglomerate Bonnier Corporation announced the closing of popular V-Twin magazine Hot Bike. I remember reading issues of this glossy chopper and custom magazine back in high school during the 1980s, where it provided custom motorcycle fans with a welcome and more…

Regular readers of CRM will know of our collective fondness for Kawasaki’s W650 parallel twin. Introduced into the North America market back in 1999, the W was a faithful re-interpretation of Kawasaki’s original W1 of the late 1960s. The first machine was a mind-blowing Asian interpretation of BSA’s unit construction twins of the era, only…

In a day and age when online advertising threatens to eclipse all others, we’ve decided to take a very retro turn: starting in the February/March issue of Cafe Racer, readers can place tried and true print classified ads to sell motorcycles, parts, services, or whatever’s hanging around your garage that’s outlived its use. Why launch…

Though there’s plenty to dislike about the Internet, we occasionally come across images that really knock our collective socks off. One such photo has become the permanent desktop computer backdrop as the technical expertise and sheer audacity of this British special is truly deserving of the label. From the numberplate we can tell this is…

Few submitted images for our regular “Curbside Customs” section have produced as many goofy smiles as the set of photos recently sent in by reader Chris Tope. The West Virginian has previously laid wrench to a 1967 Honda CB450- the fabled Black Bomber edition- and decided to retro fit a 1977 50cc Honda Z50. The…

A good 20 years ago when I penned stories for the now-defunct custom harley magazine IronWorks, the late editor Dennis Stemp amassed an impressive collection of motorbikes. Mostly British classics, American V-twins and the like, he also had a taste for custom cafe racers. I recovered this advertisement for a long-gone North Carolina aftermarket firm…

s Ah, it all seems so quaint just 15 years on, but I recently found a batch of photos from the early Aughts of myself test-riding a collection of fat-tire extreme sportbikes. The wild, over-the-top machines were quite the rage in the early years of the 21st Century, back before the global recession of 2008…

Few images we’ve seen have driven home the devastation of the Woolsey wildfire like this one, sent by a reader from the roadside overlook atop Mulholland Highway. The Rock Store motorcycle hangout is just a mile or so below this scorched mountainside, and has miraculously escaped the fire’s wrath. Visit their website www.rock-store.com and check…