Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Gordon Williams, with a young Gordon, Gordon senior was a sidecar driver from the 60's/70's.Via: York Hospital Radio
Way back in 1977...
Via: Motorcycle Nut
"I had this drag bike and raced in 1977-1979 in south Texas. This motorcycle had a 6X15 car slick on the back, 1080cc SOHC Honda engine, RC Engineering valve train and cam and did the 1/4 mile in 10 seconds @130 mph. Nowadays, stock motorcycles are quicker than this."
The Art of Oscar Chichoni.
"Born in a small town in central Argentina in 1957, to a talented family of Italian origin, Oscar Chichoni started drawing at a very early age and was encouraged at home especially by his father to develop his natural aptitude. Self taught he embarked on the long and arduous learning path of classical academia studying human anatomy, resolving technical problems of representation such as the behaviour of muscles, proportion, composition, use of colour, depth and transparency combined with a detailed observation of light and nature.Footnote: New Cafe Racer Society would like to send great thanks to David who just introduced us to this amazing and innovative artist.
Aged 17 he had his first professional work published, comic strips for Record Editorial in Buenos Aires alongside the most famous comic artists of the time, like Alberto Brescia, Juan Gimenez and Juan Zanotto.
During the two years invested in fine arts at the atelier of Alvaro Izurieta, he experimented with different mediums and started developing the distinctive technique he is famous for, known worldwide through his illustrations for covers reproduced many times over, first published by Fierro magazine and Minotauro in Argentina.
During the eighties he moved to Europe and worked exclusively as illustrator of covers for books and magazines mainly for SF editions for Mondadori Editori in Italy, Metal Hurlant in France, Heavy Metal and Bantam in USA, El Pendulo, Minotauro and Nova in Spain.
His art ranks amongst the top in the genre of Science Fiction/Fantastic Realism having won the most prestigious international awards in his filed such as Mas Allá, best Argentine Science Fiction illustrator, Caran D’Ache, best illustrator at the International Exhibition of Comics, Animated Films and Illustrations at Lucca, Italy, Best Illustrator Award Barcelona, Spain, Best Cover Award Barcelona, Spain, Rotary Award for his contribution to Science Fiction, Italy; Best Illustrator of the Year XIV Eurocon (European Science Fiction Meeting); Best SF Artist of the Year, Fancon, Courmayeur, Italy; Best Fantasy Illustrator, Italcon, Republic of San Marino.
The style he is so well known for combines technique and meaning, intricate textures of dense rusting metal contrasting with the transparency of flesh; machine with live body.
His pictures require an active participation suggesting stories that engage and intrigue; like snapshots of a complex narrative the observer is compelled to guess; infinitely detailed surfaces demand a closer look, to discover colour, depth and transparency inside the many layers of texture, reminiscent of a delicate mechanism that compel the viewer to find out how it works."
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
The motorcycle in cinema-Spetters.
Pict via: seul-le-cinemaWiki:
"Spetters, a Dutch film released in 1980 directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Spetters led to many protests across the board about the caricatural manner in which Verhoeven portrayed gays, Christians, the police, the press and more. Although Verhoeven made one more film in the Netherlands, it was the response to Spetters that led to his leaving the Netherlands for the more liberal film culture of the Hollywood of that day."
Review via: Metal Asylum:
Spetters isn't exactly the kind of movie Verhoeven is known here for. It doesn't really have any special effects, and isn't all that violent. It's closest to Showgirls, but this time his goals are much clearer and he understands the characters a lot better. These characters are all rich in detail. It is action packed due to many racing scenes and very sexually frank. It also has that great Verhoeven characteristic of being able to succeed on a realistic level at the same time it's being almost outlandishly satirical.
Spetters is a brutal small town coming of age film. Its four central characters are all searching for what they want in life. They initially believe it's money and a big city, but it's all a big uncertainty. The three men, the spetters (it more or less means hotshots or grease spatterings depending upon whom you believe), are heavily involved in amateur Motorcross. Rien (Hans von Tongeren) is really good, wins all the races. He could take over his father's restaurant, but he's the local hero and actually has a chance to get out so he's not interested. Hans (Maarten Stanjer) is pretty much a loser when it comes to racing even though it's always the fault of his equipment, but the only one that isn't bothered in some way by a family member. Eef (Toon Agterberg) is a good mechanic, but he's too selfish to be relied upon and the strict religious upbringing of his father continues to screw him up. They all look up to Gerrit Witkamp (Rutger Hauer), the professional champion who lets them worship him, but would laugh at them a lot quicker than he'd help them. The final main character is Fientje (Renee Soutendijk), an attractive golddigger who all three bikers are immediately interested in when they see her selling French fries and hotdogs with a special ingredient that we later find out is really for the dogs. In spite of this lame job she shares with her homosexual brother, she is actually quite smart and feisty. She gets what she wants at the time through sex, but she never gets anywhere because she finds the wrong guys and/or has no luck. She is a person that's capable of caring, but who won't open up or stick with anyone unless they can provide for her in a big way."
Project Gutenberg: Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer, by Percy Keese Fitzhugh.
Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer
Author: Percy Keese Fitzhugh Illustrator: R. Emmett Owen. Release Date: October 8, 2006 [EBook #19495]
CHAPTER I
"FOR SERVICE AS REQUIRED"
"Swiftly and silently along the moonlit road sped the dispatch-rider. Out of the East he had come, where the battle line runs between blue mountains and the country is quiet and peaceful, and the boys in khaki long for action and think wistfully of Picardy and Flanders. He was a lucky young fellow, this dispatch-rider, and all the boys had told him so.
"We'll miss you, Thatchy," they had said.
And "Thatchy" had answered characteristically, "I'm sorry, too, kind of, in a way."
His name was not Thatchy, but they had called him so because his thick shock of light hair, which persisted in falling down over his forehead and ears, had not a little the appearance of the2 thatched roofs on the French peasant's cottages. He, with a loquacious young companion, had blown into the Toul sector from no one seemed to know exactly where, more than that he had originally been a ship's boy, had been in a German prison camp, and had escaped through Alsace and reached the American forces after a perilous journey.
Lately he had been running back and forth on his motorcycle between the lines and points south in a region which had not been defiled by the invader, but now he was going far into the West "for service as required."
That was what the slip of paper from headquarters had said, and he did not speculate as to what those services would be, but he knew that they would not be exactly holding Sunday-School picnics in the neighborhood of Montdidier. Billy Brownway, machine gunner, had assured Thatchy that undoubtedly he was wanted to represent the messenger service on the War Council at Versailles. But Thatchy did not mind that kind of talk.
West of Revigny, he crossed the old trench line, and came into the area which the Blond Beast had crossed and devastated in the first year3 of the war. Planks lay across the empty trenches and as he rode over first the French and then the enemy ditches, he looked down and could see in the moonlight some of the ghastly trophies of war. Somehow they affected him more than had the fresher results of combat which he had seen even in the quiet sector he had left.
Silently he sped along the thirty-mile stretch from Revigny to Châlons, where a little group of French children pressed about him when he paused for gasoline.
"Yankee!" they called, chattering at him and meddling with his machine.
"Le cheveu!" one brazen youngster shouted, running his hand through his own hair by way of demonstrating Thatchy's most conspicuous characteristic.
Thatchy poked him good-humoredly. "La route, est-belle bonne?" he asked.
The child nodded enthusiastically, while the others broke out laughing at Thatchy's queer French, and poured a verbal torrent at him by way of explaining that the road to the South would take him through Vertus and Montmirail, while the one to the north led to Epernay.
"I'll bump my nose into the salient if I take4 that one," he said more to himself than to them, but one little fellow, catching the word salient took a chance on nose and jumped up and down in joyous abandon, calling, "Bump le nez—le salient!" apparently in keen appreciation of the absurdity of the rider's phrase.
He rode away with a clamoring chorus behind him and he heard one brazen youngster boldly mimicking his manner of asking if the roads were good. These children lived in tumble-down houses which were all but ruins, and played in shell holes as if these cruel, ragged gaps in the earth had been made by the kind Boche for their especial entertainment.
A mile or two west of Châlons the rider crossed the historic Marne on a makeshift bridge built from the materials of a ruined house and the remnants of the former span.
On he sped, along the quiet, moonlit road, through the little village of Thibie, past many a quaint old heavily-roofed brick cottage, over the stream at Chaintrix and into Vertus, and along the straight, even stretch of road for Montmirail. Not so long ago he might have gone from Châlons in a bee-line from Montdidier, but the big, ugly salient stuck out like a huge snout now, as if5 it were sniffing in longing anticipation at that tempting morsel, Paris; so he must circle around it and then turn almost straight north.
At La Ferte, among the hills, he paused at a crossroads and, alighting from his machine, stood watching as a long, silent procession of wagons passed by in the quiet night, moving southward. He knew now what it meant to go into the West. One after another they passed in deathlike stillness, the Red Cross upon the side of each plainly visible in the moonlight. As he paused, the rider could hear the thunder of great guns in the north. Many stretchers, borne by men afoot, followed the wagons and he could hear the groans of those who tossed restlessly upon them.
"Look out for shell holes," he heard someone say. So there were Americans in the fighting, he thought.
He ran along the edge of the hills now on the fifteen-mile stretch to Meaux, where he intended to follow the road northward through Senlis and across the old trenches near Clermont. He could hear the booming all the while, but it seemed weary and spent, like a runner who has slackened his pace and begun to pant.
At Meaux he crossed the path of another silent6 cavalcade of stretchers and ambulances and wounded soldiers who were being supported as they limped along. They spoke in French and one voice came out of an ambulance, seeming hollow and far off, as though from a grave. Then came a lot of German prisoners tramping along, some sullen and some with a fine air of bravado sneering at their guards.
The rider knew where he was going and how to get there and he did not venture any inquiries either as to his way or what had been going on.
Happenings in Flanders and Picardy are known in America before they are known to the boys in Alsace. He knew there was fighting in the West and that Fritz had poked a big bulge into the French line, for his superiors had given him a road map with the bulge pencilled upon it so that he might go around it and not bump his nose into it, as he had said. But he had not expected to see such obvious signs of fighting and it made him realize that at last he was getting into the war with a vengeance.
Instead of following the road leading northwest out of Meaux, he took the one leading northeast up through Villers-Cotterets, intending to run along the edge of the forest to Campiegne7 and then verge westward to the billet villages northwest of Montdidier, where he was to report.
This route brought him within ten miles of the west arm of the salient, but the way was quiet and there was no sign of the fighting as he rode along in the woody solitude. It reminded him of his home far back in America and of the woods where he and his scout companions had camped and hiked and followed the peaceful pursuits of stalking and trailing.
He was thinking of home as he rode leisurely along the winding forest road, when suddenly he was startled by a rustling sound among the trees.
"Who goes there?" he demanded in pursuance of his general instructions for such an emergency, at the same time drawing his pistol. "Halt!"
He was the scout again now, keen, observant. But there was no answer to his challenge and he narrowed his eyes to mere slits, peering into the tree-studded solitude, waiting.
Then suddenly, close by him he heard that unmistakable sound, the clanking of a chain, and accompanying it a voice saying, "Kamerad."
Steve Gaskey's Drag Bike.
Via: Cerro Coso Colledege
“During the period between November 11, 1995 and September 28, 1996, I (Steve Gaskey ) conceived, designed, and constructed a one-passenger vehicle. My goal was to design a fully operational, two-wheel, man-powered vehicle which would travel 100 miles per hour. I imagined this vehicle as extremely lightweight, streamlined, and similar in construction to both a bicycle and a dragster.
Once the project was conceived, I was compelled to realize it. I set the goal of completing the vehicle to run at the Winter Nationals. Due to a multitude of unforeseen mechanical complications, the vehicle’s expected date of completion could not be met. I know now that the accomplishment of constructing the car had become for me the essential experience. I had already realized the most elaborate fantasy of my life. Driving the vehicle as a performance was not important after the ordeal of bringing it into existence.
The vehicle is not completely engineered: most of the parts are hand made, and many of the decisions in design and construction were based on hunches. As I worked, I kept all the sketches and drawings as a record of the progress. Displayed with the vehicle, they become documentation of the construction. The vehicle and drawings represent a vision – my fantasy as an artist of what a vehicle should be.”
Sunday, December 28, 2008
In the 60's, city of Oslo, Norway and Texaco Oil Company arranged a free scooter escort service for lost and wayward tourists. Via: deadlicious
Music: The Grateful Dead Movie.
(link)
Wiki:
The Grateful Dead Movie, released in 1977 and directed by Jerry Garcia, is a film that captures performances from the Grateful Dead's October 1974 five-night stand at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. This end-of-tour run marked the beginning of an extended hiatus for the band, with no shows planned for 1975. The movie also faithfully portrays the burgeoning Deadhead scene. The film features the "Wall of Sound" concert sound system that the Dead used for all of 1974.
At the beginning of the movie, are animated scenes of icons from Grateful Dead art such as the Chopper-riding Uncle Sam skeleton. This psychedelic inspired animation was created by Gary Gutierrez.
The Baby Lilac.
Via: Marusho Lilac
"The Baby Lilac SF3, which is a cross between a motorcycle and a scooter, is a popular 90cc model. Most of the other competitors had a 5-speed transmission. Baby Lilac had a 2-speed transmission, which is the same as the stock model. They achieved great results, finishing 8th, 12th and 15th. In addition, Team Lilac finished in 2nd place. This was the smallest and lightest among all competitors at 138kg curb weight at the Asama Race.
Shiro Ito, who was 15 years old at the time, was an unknown. He won his first race in a Lilac. The base model was a stock Lilac SY. He modified it by increasing the compression, removal of the air cleaner and fine-tuning of the suspension. As a result he was able to get more power."
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Broooaaa!!!
Comics used to promote the Spanish Harley XR1200 BBQ race series..Via: Sideburn Magazine's blog Sideblog
A short look at the history of Roland Pike.
Roland PikeRoland Pike was a very successful racer / engineer in British and Continental road racing events in the 1935-1952 period. He entered 168 racing events, scored 29 first, 38 second and 13 third places.Mainly on home-brewed pre-war 250cc Rudges he competed against “state of art” factory racers. He wasn’t afraid to race the little Rudges in 350 and 500cc events. Like one time in 1947 at Cadwell when he won a 500cc heat and finished fourth in the final.
Known for always immaculately prepared machinery, his bikes were always the first to fire when starting, and went into first corner with the rest of the field still pushing off.
During the German GP held at the Solitude rennstrecke at the 25th of July 1954 Dennis lost his life in a racing accident in the 500cc heat. In front of 400.000+ spectators Dennis blocked his front wheel in braking in the penultimate lap, slid into the side of the road and died instantly of a broken neck.
“The winner is who crosses the line first, not the one that crosses the line fastest” was his theory
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