Leathers? Check. Cool helmet? Check. Kickstarter refusing to cooperate? Surely! Aging, as they say, is surely the ultimate humbling experience. I just left my doctor’s office where I was unhappy to learn that, after nearly four decades of kickstarting motorcycles, my right foot is throwing in the towel on such activities. That means the sizable…

OK, the first successful kick-start of a newly completed custom bike project is one of life’s great pleasures, but this photo illustrates another garage high of sorts. We’ve been working furiously on our 1967 Norton Atlas 750 project in recent weeks and we’ve made so much progress that the bike may well be on the…

Perusing images from the past couple of tripe to London’s Ace Cafe, we noticed how many riders across the Pond were building cafe racers equipped with handlebars that, well, let’s just say will please the chiropractor community. It’s rather impressive to see custom speedbikes still being built in the tradition of the early Ton-Up spirit;…

Ah, ’twas but a few days before evidence of last week’s post critiquing a new generation of cafe racer builders who favor designing rides that are basically intended to wow in custom shows instead of zoom along the roads began to roll in from readers. This is a prime example of the movement getting dangerously…

By now, the phrase jumping the shark has become common vernacular. It originated, folks say, in the wake of an old “Happy Days” TV episode where the series resident biker, Arthur Fonzarelli, jumped a Great White shark, a move so cheesy, many viewers and critics felt it forever sacrificed the integrity of the show. The…

This bloke had to feel silly in this gear! Likely the most common question leveled at us magazine makers is what’s the toughest part of our job. Well, keeping the damn enterprise solvent in this day and age of Internet-digital media is always a challenge. But the regular installments of our humor page, known to…

The Interceptor Continental GT 650 Regular readers of Cafe Racer magazine will know how fond we are of Royal Enfield’s single-cylinder Continental GT. The spritley, 535cc thumper has long held a place in our garage fleet, serving us well as a backroads scratcher par excellence and a sturdy, everyday commuter ride. The Harris Bros. designed…

Coming up in our December/January issue, we explore the always fascinating world of customized vintage Honda motorcycles.There are many theories concerning why Big red has become the default cafe bike for the 21st Century, from those who say it’s the sheer volume of machines imported by the firms during the 1970s, to the inherent build…

Like most transportation policy in this nation, decisions are made by elected officials and lobbyists without a single nod towards the concerns of us two-wheelers. Case in point- transportation providers like Uber are busy working to produce technology that would make driverless cars commonplace on our roads, but as they and several automakers do their…