Shit’s happening fast in SoCal this year and more shit than ever. No matter what the government throws at the brothers, they’re still rockin’ the asphalt in a chopper/bagger way. When they ain’t building Choppers, they’re flying across the state on hopped-up baggers.
Take for instance a cold, damp January weekend when my grandson overslept. After tattooing into the wee hours, he suited up wearing his 5-Ball shit and hit the notorious roads out of LA after checking his traffic watch. In Los Angeles you don’t go for coffee unless you consider traffic, even in a lane splitting free state.
At 11:00 he rolled his shit-brown modified Road Glide into the Venice streets behind Bartels’ H-D. He fired the 117-inch modified beast to life and hit the streets up Marina Del Rey freeway to the notorious 405 passed LAX air terminal and into Santa Monica, one of the busiest stretches of congested freeways on the planet.
Out of Santa Monica his 131 horsepower, 129-foot- pounds of torque bagger spit up the steep winding mountain pass as if it was a drag strip. He skidded onto Highway 101 slicing across the San Fernando Valley.
Early afternoon he jammed over the wicked Grape Vine and slid into Gilroy, the smelly capital of the California Garlic Festival for a Red Bull, made a call and hit the road toward San Martin without topping off.
His plan was to hook up with Roger of Slab-Side Customs, but he couldn’t make it to town. Out of gas, Roger came to his aide, and they rode to Roger’s San Martin ranch home where they whipped into his airplane hangar packed with guy shit from hotrods to choppers and tractors.
Frankie, now the boss of Five-Ball Leathers, Hell-Raiser shows and Five-Ball Tattoos in Venice, CA set up his mobile tattooing office and went to work on Roger and his pal until 3:00 in the morning.
They crashed out. Frank was up on his glide and screamed passed the home of Custom Chrome in Morgan Hill just south of San Jose and into the historic Mission District in San Francisco. He tattooed at a shop from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. in the middle of non-stop Frisco Action.
Jesse James and Frankie had tickets to the unveiling of a New Zealand based documentary about some brothers who shipped Knuckleheads to the island and covered their experiences traversing the lush green countryside and jagged coastlines. Frank didn’t make it, he tattooed into the evening, collected his gear and rolled into the San Francisco Sunset district on the coast where houses are adorned with massive garages, now turned from boat sheds to long narrow bike shops.
The brothers barbecued burgers, hung out and crashed–big show the following day.
The next morning JoJo dropped his Dyna. An injury made him unstable, and his engine started to make a racket. Possibly a collapsed lifter, Frankie tried to check and adjust it. The lifter caught some pressure, did it’s thing then died. JoJo left his bike and they scrambled to the center of San Francisco for the Frisco Chopper show in an extravagant, old time venue. “I’d never seen so many Hells Angels together at one time,” Frankie said of over 200 members and prospects.
The show contained over 50 bikes, many ’60s and ’70s club bikes. Frank was impressed and his brothers blown away by the style and historic nature of suicide choppers, ridden hard on the slippery, steep hillsides of San Francisco. But something else sliced into the weekend activities. His brother Josh fell off a balcony in Mexico and was killed.
The memorial planned for the following day forced Frank to ride solo and quick to Lodi to pay his respects. “Rest in peace bro,” Frank said.
Due East out of San Francisco Frank jammed through the cumbersome, twisted traffic and junctions to reach California’s Central Valley. Several rumors surrounded the history of Lodi, which became a town because the Central Pacific Railroad headed their way and a couple of town leaders offered them the land to build a railroad station in the center of town.
The Mokelumne Station named after the nearby Mokelumne River leaned toward naming the town, but controversy surrounded the new town name, Lodi. It could have been named after a family who moved from Lodi, Illinois, a regular occurrence in the era of expansion.
Frank attended the heartfelt memorial for a brother lost and spent the night in a Lodi Hotel. He needed to return to his LA action of non-stop events, one coming up in March, his tattoo shop in Venice and his expanding downtown Five-Ball leather business. The next morning, he awoke to the creepy central valley fog and waited it out. As it burnt off, he peeled to meet his brothers in Merced at Interstate 5 Junction.
Nate, the big guy rode south on the 5 out of the bay area, while Brian the apparel magnet drove a truck pulling a trailer with his Chopper strapped down. Plus, JoJo’s Dyna rattled securely in the back of the truck bed.
They peeled south until they encountered Frankie on the magnificent 5 freeway, which cuts a clean almost straight swath of wide lanes through wheat fields and wineries due south into Los Angeles.
Up and over the threatening Grape Vine, passed Gorman, a truck-stop and safe-haven at the crest of the pass. Heading south the sprawling city came into view as they spotted some bikers broke-down ahead and Frankie recognized Five-Ball leathers. They pulled over. One of the brothers a miniture human-being split down the winding hillside as if he was on fire and ran into the infamous valley cross winds. The highspeed dusty gust knocked the kid and his hotrod FXR into a spinning slide off the highway into the sandy, tumbleweed strewn ditch.
Nate, Brian, JoJo and Frankie helped the best they could and made suggestions until a motorcycle rescue was hatched and they cut a dusty trail. As they reached the junction of the 405 and the 5, Frankie peeled toward the coast and toward his beautiful, recently engaged fiancée, Chanel.
She wasn’t languishing in her lovely-self but preparing for the Ventura Chopperfest coming up in a couple of weeks. But Jack Rudy passed of natural causes. Frankie was on hand to help the no-count Coroner. Frankie worked for Jack once a week and my son and Jack were close. They both attended the memorial.
Next, the David Mann Chopperfest in Ventura. Hang on!
Never a dull moment…
–Bandit
