Café Racer

I have always been a fan of the Café Racer style. Many motorcycle manufacturers have tried to appeal to hipster millennials by designing bikes that try to emulate the café racer look in a modern package, but they fail to capture the soul of a real café racer. The style originated in the 1960s when riders decided they wanted their bikes to go faster and handle better. Every café racer is the result of a home mechanic’s countless hours of wrenching and fabrication to create a work of art from some old junky motorcycle. I continued that tradition by finding an old Yamaha XS650, limping it home on one cylinder, and spending the better part of a year hammering away in the driveway of my apartment to create the motorcycle of my dreams.