Interview– Paul d’Orleans

This episode is about the feeling of being alive, and the flow of time, style, and sensuality. Looking back at the ways we've moved means looking back at what matters.

Paul d'Orleans is an exceptional traveler and guide along these paths. As an artist, author, entrepreneur, rider, motorcycle historian, and curator, he has found ways to connect and inspire us, way-making towards greater potential and understanding, saving exceptional stories and images from being forgotten. His work and the work of his team at The Vintagent and the Motor/Cycle Arts Foundation are treasures towards forever motoring.

Transcript:

Paul d'Orleans Forever

[00:00:00] Hello everyone. Have you ever read the Vintage in? It's likely that if you love motorcycles or motoring in general, you've probably read something from Paul De Orleans who is our guest today. I'm so excited to have Paul on the show. We had such a nice conversation. Uh, actually nice is not the right word.

It was graceful, motivating. It was an emotional conversation in some ways, or at least we talked about subjects that I've thought about a lot since, uh, which makes sense because Paul de Orleans is not someone who is easily forgotten. He has a deep knowledge of motorcycles and art, and he really comes at life itself in a very particular way, and you really sense that in his work and his riding.

But also just in his presence and his style and the way that he and his [00:01:00] wife Susan go through life together. It really all feels like a cumulative artwork. He's very individual, but he's also someone who brings community together. The vintage, the blog I just mentioned is a community space for motorcycling, but also for art and design and film.

It's just a space that didn't exist before. He created it over 15 years ago, and now of course it gets thousands and thousands of views every day, and it opens all these new paths and relationships, and it also collects stories that are so important people that we might not know about or that would just be forgotten otherwise.

Paul also does this with his photographies and his celebration of film. He's a curator too. On top of all that. For various museums, but we've talked a lot on this show about electric revolutionaries, which he curated at the Peterson Museum in la, and it displayed the work of many of our past guests and upcoming guests such as JT Nesbitt of Curtis Motorcycles, or Hugo [00:02:00] Eckles and X P Zero.

But Paul's also done a few other amazing exhibits, which we talk about here too. To be honest, it's really hard to give a quick summary of Paul because he's an artist. He's an art historian, he's a curator, he's an author. He's written some books that actually have changed the narrative about motorcycling, a bit like Cafe Racer and Op, where he showed that this, uh, cafe style that we often associate with, for example, London in a particular time period, actually started in many places at many times in the twenties and thirties, and you can follow it across geographies and across time periods.

So yeah, gosh, there's so much. There's art, there's history, there's life. We talk about success and failure. And what it all means when our lives are so entangled with our passions, we talk about eroticism and eros and this image of the woman on the motorcycle and of women and men, and these traditional roles and images we have of them in terms of motoring and [00:03:00] motorcycles, and ask if we might rethink some of those roles.

So yeah, we explore this and these different ideas about what a ride is and what a rider is now that bikes are changing and there's this whole electric experience, uh, how this might change too and evolve into something even better than we've imagined thus far, while also still respecting this beautiful history of motorcycling that we talk about here too.

Because Paul, of course, has spent a lot of his life documenting that he's also been a judge for some of the most prestigious and internationally renowned motorcycle events in the world. He's on MotorTrend tv. He's worked on some books with Gein that you've likely seen The Ride, for example, or the current, just amazing visual books.

The current was one of the first books about electric bikes to come out and it was based on his thread. He had started, uh, on the vintage in about electric transportation, which was one of the very earliest threads. So we [00:04:00] talk about how he wrote about this change that was gonna come in motoring and is now upon us and about electric and what it means, and some of the pushback that he's gotten by writing about that.

Also, some of the inevitabilities of what we have to face for the future and also the beauty and the positive side of it all. What's possible, this whole other potential that's possible before us. Now we also talk about his friend Richard Vincent, who was a great motorcycle racer, surfer pilot photographer, another renaissance man who found an ecological way to hill from war and he had just passed away when.

Paul and I talked, so we do mention him and this movie that Paul had been making about him is and is still making about him and how it connects to these themes. Uh, we talk about motorcycles almost like time capsules of movement, especially two wheeled movement and the styles that come out of that and the connections we find between the way we feel and the way we move [00:05:00] through the world and how that connects to the vehicles that we want to move us and what kind of future we want to move towards.

So, Paul's thought a lot about this and written a lot about it, and he's a connector, he's a community builder. He's, um, really articulate and about riding about what moves us in the world, be that motorcycles or otherwise. We talked for many hours. I, of course edit it down to about half, but I did leave the conversation in its natural flowing state because I wanna let these conversations go where they will, whether they're short or long, it actually goes very fast.

I do wanna mention an inventor named Samuel Obagi from Ghana. Another project that Paul works on is the Motorcycle Arts Foundation, which he started with his team, and they promote and support new forms of education and invention in vehicle culture. This is another really important part of Paul's work, which he didn't have much time to get into, but one inventor that he's working with is Samuel, and he's a young man from Ghana [00:06:00] who actually found a way to build solar powered scooters just from scrap.

He's a really smart guy and doing amazing things, and I'm gonna link to him in the show notes since we didn't get to talk too much about him, but I hope. We'll do another show and talk more about him or maybe even talk to him. Also, I wanna mention we couldn't remember, there's a film we talk about a surreal motorized experience of s The name of that film is Impatience and I'll also link to it in the show notes.

Also, we have a new Instagram account, so please if you, uh, wanna go and have a look at it or help me out, it's at Forever Motoring Pod, uh, forever. M o t o r i n g p o D. So I'd love to see you there and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's go.

Hey Paul, welcome to Forever Motoring. It's so nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you too. Happy to be here. So this is a podcast about what moves us and the ways we move. So tell me about a time in your life when you [00:07:00] remember being moved. Well, um, two weeks ago I did a nine day tour of Italy as guests of.

Vitelli family. Uh, uh, Claudia Vitelli is a friend of ours in New York City who rides and her father's a collector in Tori Torino, and they offered to organize a nine day ride down Italy from Torino to their house in Lowry, southeast of Naples in the mountains. And it was all on vintage bikes. So bunch of V seven four to mark one lemons.

I, I was riding a R 90 S B M W with my wife Susan on the back, and it was fantastic. We spent the night in various amazing towns near Chicora and the Amalfi Coast, but I think my favorite was a little town called Orvieto in Tuscany. It's a medieval walled city. And the cathedral there was outrageous. I studied architecture and architectural history and art, a lot of art [00:08:00] history.

So I'm familiar with a lot of the more famous buildings in Italy, but I wasn't familiar with this church. The level of. Decoration was amazing. There was something about the murals and some of the paintings. I was really, really moved, really inspired by this location. It was like, I need to come back here.

We only had a day in this place and only a morning, uh, at the cathedral 'cause we were moving on later in the day. And, um, I just wanted to hang out and study the artwork. And, uh, you know, I started out, uh, at university as a, as a painter, and I do art and illustration like pretty regularly, but not as a profession.

And it made me want to like, go back to my paintbrushes and make something extraordinary like the preco and the paintings that I saw in this church. Just amazing. And actually my inspiration was to do something related to motorcycling. Like, uh, instead of horses, you'd have people on a motorcycle. [00:09:00] So, and it's heric kind of imagery.

So people are, but uh, Anyway, so yeah, that was the last time I was really, frankly moved already. Has a lot of themes I wanna talk to you about in there, so that's great. But so did you rode there and came to the space and the space itself was just kind of overwhelming with the beau? Well, Claudia and Gaana had never organized like a multi-day ride with multiple people.

We had with us, um, Dave Roper, who was like the first American to win the Isle of TT and Kenny Cummings, who was an American Formula seven 50 champion. So it was a small group of very experienced writers and uh, it's like a celebrity group there, it kind of, and mm-hmm. And was still like herding cats, you know, every day.

And you know, just things happen on the road. I think, uh, I think that morning I got a flat tire. Yeah. Uh, on the B M W and we, it was like mayday weekend and amazingly through connections in Naples, we were able to find a tire shop that would open up, I. [00:10:00] Had the right tire, boom, we were out, or the right inner tube and boom, we were out of there, uh, in an hour and spent that time eating like fresh local mozzarella balls, like whole.

Oh, pretty outrageous. So the food was inspiring too. So anyway, it was a long day. We didn't arrive at Orvieto until like 10 o'clock at night after traversing some really, uh, narrow roads and probably 10 miles of pretty bad roads. We arrive at this walled city and it's incredible. We go for a very late dinner, which is fine, inevitably, you know, and extraordinary food.

And uh, and then the next morning it's like, okay, we gotta get to the cathedral. So it was just that morning we were leaving at like 11:00 AM We only had 150 miles to ride. But you are in Europe, 150 miles is the day ride in Europe. Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. 'cause you can't go that fast. And we were all on back roads, so, Uh, uh, and there are places to stop.

So you said, so you said you studied architecture. What, [00:11:00] take, take me back a little bit to your, when you were first going to school and what you had, what were your dreams? I had a, I have a rambling mind. Uh, at thirst, well, I started, uh, doing meditation when I was, you know, like 12. Learned kind of like an official technique when I was like 15.

So I was very much into, uh, consciousness and kind of the study of consciousness. And you see Santa Cruz, uh, had a history of consciousness department and I knew one of the people who was a grad student, a, a PhD student there. And, um, uh, so I applied as a biophysics major. 'cause I was really interested in the kind of like, what are the origins of consciousness, what's the synaptic origins, the spark between a thought and its neurological core.

So I started doing all the science. Classes, you know, that you have to chemistry and biology and, but I was also really interested in organic food [00:12:00] and agriculture. And Santa Cruz also had the first university research organic farm. And so that first year I volunteered on the farm and was studying agro ecology along with this other science, with some real founders of the field, kind of to blow, you know, with all that science and stuff to blow off steam.

In my spring semester I took a drawing class. I'd never taken an art class before. In fact, in high school, the only class, the only two classes I got anything less than an A in was art and creative writing. I got BS in both those classes, which is hilarious. That became, of course, my career. I had this epiphany that, uh, no, actually I'm an artist.

Um, doesn't, didn't preclude the, um, I'd say more intellectual pursuits, but it was like that was the core of my passion. So actually I carried on studying art history and there was an incredible architectural historian at uc, Santa Cruz, named Rainer Banham, who had been friends with everybody. He was friends with Corbusier, he was friends with Frank Lloyd Wright.

He [00:13:00] was friends with, you know, Ansel Adams. Uh, fascinating guide, taught by anecdote, mostly talking about Corbusier and his constructions in Europe. And so I took a class from him literally every semester afterwards because he became kind of a mentor and there was actually an official design program at U C S C.

So I was enrolled in the design program while doing the art and studying all this other stuff at, or ecology. So I studied a lot of other things and after university I made my living for 25 years as a decorative painter and a muralist with a serious motorcycle problem. What does it mean exactly?

Decorative painter. Did people commission you to do things? Yeah, basically I, uh, I had a kit of colors and I taught myself how to do it. Anything you could do with paint. So if someone wanted a wall to look like marble or wood, I figured out how to do it. But there I became more specialized in color work, like choosing specific colors for spaces and then [00:14:00] creating techniques that were like typically multiple layers of glaces or washes.

And so that's what I became known for. Like really specific environments where the walls just kind of glowed in a way that you could not define what makes me wanna see. See one, I guess you have to be in, in the presence of it, rather than see it. You have photographs. Okay. Hard to photo. No, no, no. It's really hard to get the sense of how you capture light on a wall.

Yeah. I guess you have to be in the space in a way. Kinda like if you've just seen pictures of the cathedral you went to, it's a little different than walking into it. Or if you see a photo of a rough superior versus, you know, watching it and hearing it and smelling it and seeing the valves move and you know, it's like, yes, absolutely.

Sensory experience. So, uh, it sounds like you were already really interested in everything, sort of trying to figure out the world in a way. I guess you kind of do that now on the blog. You touch a little bit of every, all these so-called disciplines, but you just were [00:15:00] curious, curious, would you say? Yeah.

Okay. And was the motorcycling part of that part? Uh, yeah. I became really curious about motorcycles. I had learned to ride when I was 15. I hated high school and I lived in a, my father was a professor at the Univers University in Stockton, university of Pacific, and uh, which was a really dangerous city at the, yeah, late seventies murder capital of the U s A.

And, uh, so I wanted to graduate a year early from, from high school, and I found out if I took just two night classes at the local community college, I could in fact graduate early. So I didn't wanna take the bus, I didn't wanna ride my bicycle at night, so I bought a little Honda Express and. So I knew how to run, started out for practical reasons, totally practical and didn't really fall in love with motorcycling, although I enjoyed it.

Mm-hmm. Uh, after university, um, I had a friend who was a journeyman printer and I was very [00:16:00] involved in kind of anarchist politics and a big anarchist scene, like a punk rock anarchist scene. And, uh, my friend Jim Gilman was a journeyman printer. And, uh, I can get, uh, an old used Multilith printer from my work for free, and if we could set it up, we could print multicolored posters and books and things like that.

And so that's what we did. We set up in my mother's, uh, garage, hilarious. And we're printing like books of poetry by the likes of Peter Plate, uh, or a lot of event posters of things. And Jim rode like at 1955 B M W R 50. He'd found under a staircase, and I was just entranced by this funky old motorcycle he rode.

And, um, fairly shortly after I bought my own B M w I bought an R 75 slash five, and then I bought an R 26, a single cylinder B m w. And [00:17:00] he, Jim, Jim was super conflicted as a person who felt like he was too attached to motorcycles. And he had collected every issue of classic bike and classic motorcycle, which in 1984 was not much.

It's like two milk crates. Uh, and he gave them all to me. He says, you know what, I, this is too much. My obsession, too much. Uh, so it was like handing me a bag of heroin, a spoon and a needle, you know, like, oh my God. Was it that immediate, was it just like an addiction from the beginning? Yeah, totally. And so I, I just read all those magazines from cover to cover and became really curious about bikes.

I would get on my little motorcycle. Um, I left my little single cylinder. B m w was so fun to ride around town. Um, and I would ride to every used bookstore in San Francisco and buy any motorcycle books they had. Oh, wow. And like, pretty soon, even, even in the mid eighties, I had like hundreds of books, you know, general anthologies [00:18:00] or more specific, or mark histories or whatever, stories travel and, uh, so that began my self-education, uh, motorcycle history.

It's interesting. It seems like it was really related to the, the writing and the reading already. It sounds like part of what really stimulated you and got you addicted was also reading about it in the stories or learning the history. Is that, does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. I was super intrigued by the design and kind of what, like the context around like what was, what was the context in these motorcycles?

Like who rode them, who developed them, what were the subcultures associated with them? I got really interested in kind of the. Rocker subculture, the fifties and sixties in England. Oh. And kind of dug in on that. What were the bikes they rode? So I started riding like a Norton Atlas that was a cafe racer at, um, really got into fast vintage motorcycling.

And I had friends, we had like a, started like a [00:19:00] motorcycle club called The Road Road Holders in the eighties. Oh, nice. Mm-hmm. Which actually included a fellow named Rob Tlu, uh, Robin tlu, who, uh, was getting his degree in physics at U C A Berkeley at the time, and went on to win Daytona four times on motorcycles of his own construction.

And then after he got his doctorate in, in fluid dynamics, went on to design chassis for first the Victory Motorcycle, and then he got hired at Renault Formula One and designed their racing chassis and won the two World Championships. And then he went to Mercedes. Formula one and won them two world championships.

And I actually wrote a big article about him in Cycle World. You can look it up. I, Dr. Rockie. And uh, anyway, he was one of my great friends and we're still in touch. A fellow Renaissance man. Yeah, it's like everybody in that group had at least a bachelor's degree. 'cause that's just who we were. This is the people in San Francisco.

[00:20:00] It's like we were doing various things, DJs or I had this painting business and other people did other things. And we coalesced around a common interest in actually riding old motorcycles, which at the time they seemed old, but nowadays they seem really fricking old. You know? Now they're 50 years old, but then they were only like 10 years old, you know?

Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah. Different. But it seems like it was already a whole integrated lifestyle. I guess a little bit like the cafe racer myth, which you would later write about. So was this during when you were studying art history? After university, but yes, I learned. Okay. For for sure. Yeah. It's kind of curious.

There was this post hunk rock, uh, uh, I say quite global, but there was a movement before the internet. You know, people in London and in Berlin and in Paris and in New York and San Francisco were simultaneously kind of rediscovering this [00:21:00] kind of rocker subculture and were really into cafe racers and into the look and the vibe.

And we had no idea each other existed. Like I had the road holders in Paris, there was the Triton Club to Paris in London. There was the mean fuckers motorcycle club. Uh, actually Triton clubs still exists. The mean fuckers still exist. A lot of very well known people are members. They were all kind. This was in the eighties or the nineties or?

Yeah, this was in the eighties. Eighties. Wow. Okay. And they were all kind of, you know, they weren't strict clubs, you know, we weren't like mm-hmm. There were no meetings or anything like that, we would just go for rides. And that was true across the board. Or if there was a meeting, it was just like a gathering at a pub or something.

Mm-hmm. So it's kind of fascinating, this kind of, it, it spontaneous sort of zeitgeisty moment where people were interested in the clothing, the subculture, the bikes, and kind of reliving it. That was really the, the core of me writing about, let's say my first book about Cafe Racers, which was [00:22:00] called Cafe Racers.

Mm-hmm. And in 2014, I included that experience and then I kind of repeated it, uh, more recently in 2020, did a ton up. Also included that kind of global zeitgeisty moment that actually had a pretty resounding impact because a lot of the people who were into that movement in the eighties went on to impact, let's say fashion or impact, you know, let's say writing like myself.

Who went on to start blogs and things a little bit later, or were involved with big shows and things like that. So it was kind of a, a seminal moment. This kind of post-punk rock moment, I would say we were punk slash rockers. Yeah, I like this idea of these things starting in different places around the world, but with, with a common thing.

I mean, it happens a lot, right? Even with like scientific inventions or something where it seems like there's something [00:23:00] happening and different people are picking it up in different places. And then like you were saying, it does end up sort of changing the trajectory of social and maybe even economic things in a much bigger sense.

But at course back then, I guess you were just sort of living it. Yeah. So how did you end up actually becoming yourself? I mean, you're often called a motorcycle historian, and actually I was gonna bring up the Cafe Racer book and Ton Up and the writing you've done, because you kind of opened a different way of thinking about the Cafe Racer.

Not only. A typical London Ace Cafe, uh, English rocker version. But you actually showed, similar to the way you're saying it happened in the eighties, that there was something already happening maybe in the twenties. I think you talk about a few examples. The thirties. Yeah. Like there, this was actually more of a pattern that just got named different things.

So I guess I'd like to know how you ended up really becoming a historian and actually discovering this new narrative, historical narrative. Yeah, I mean, [00:24:00] there were people who, uh, had hinted, there was a book called Cafe Racers by Mike Clay that was published I think in the late eighties or early nineties.

And he mentioned he had a chapter on, uh, the Promenade Percys, which was in England. Uh, let's say. Those were the Cafe Racers of the thirties. And I actually, I dug in a lot harder on that subject for Ton Up and or through, thank God for, you know, these days Google and or web searches. I was able to, Go through English newspaper archives, searching for terms like Promenade, Percy, and I found like the first use of the term and how it developed and what it meant.

And uh, so, but I also knew that similar things were happening in the United States and also, you know, Australia and in Europe. And, and I have a, a pretty big photo archive and I was actually able, also able to look through, um, I have friends with also [00:25:00] enormous photo archives and I just kind of knew what to look for, you know, it's like, this is what a motorcycle looks like of someone who likes to ride fast.

It's not encumbered with a lot of crap. Mm-hmm. It's pretty stripped down sometimes. Extremely stripped down. It has low handle bars, sometimes it doesn't have a muffler, you know, it's like, or drop bars. At least drop bars. So, uh, you know, if looking through these photo archives pretty regularly, I would find, oh my God, there's someone in 1914.

With a bike that's clearly built for speed, you know, uh, there's someone from 1921 in Germany with so, or amazingly like Phil Irving, who went on to co-design the Vincent Motorcycle in the twenties. He was a total tearaway, had this a j s motorcycle that he had the tank copper plated then overpainted. So it looked like metallic gold with purple accents.

I'm like, whoa. And he talks about that the bike was completely illegal 'cause it didn't [00:26:00] have any lights or any muffler or anything. And how we would slap the number plate from another motorcycle on it. Okay. And how much fun that was. And like, oh my God, I did the same thing. You know, nothing changes. That almost sort of goes over into the custom and that part of your writing too.

But first I wanna think about the style. Did you find a similar style too? I don't necessarily mean wearing the same clothes, but a kind of countercultural thing that went along with this too. There was always a concern with style. In fact, everybody, let's say for example, the Promenade Percys in England, everyone who wrote about it talked about their clothing as well.

Like they wore slick suits, the bikes were shiny, their hair was a certain way. And then, for example, Phil Irving talked about, you know, I have no doubt a quote is, I have no doubt that clothes make it the man. And he talked about what he would wear, and there's photographs of him. He looks amazing. You know, he is wearing like a beret and like an Oxford University cr a [00:27:00] V-neck sweater with the stripes.

And then some job person, some boots, and looks like smashing. And it's like 1926, you know? And, uh, so I don't know why there is such a connection with style. Sorry. Worth exploring. Yeah. Somewhere you say, I think it's in the book or in your, um, The essay you ride for the Riders, you say that motorcycling is about grace and eros, I think, or eroticism or something and somehow this, yeah, ROS.

Okay. And I, I think this is something I'd like to explore, get your thoughts on too, that you can't really disconnect the motorcycle from first. You're already kind of on the edge. There's a bit of edge work just in riding the bike. And then also the experience itself is sort of comes with you have to take a particular style or there's something about it this Es.

So I don't know, I just wonder like how, what do you think about that and this grace [00:28:00] too, right? Because there's something about it that demands that you get in a graceful state, even if it's not something you create yourself, for sure. Yeah. Well I think eros is, I mean in the kind of the Greek sense like this like of vitality or a sense of life of being alive and tism can be.

A part of that in terms of like a more sexual component, but I, I really intended as like the all-encompassing sense of like really feeling alive, which I think everyone feels on a motorcycle, right? Maybe not in town, but once you get out of town, you just, it's just such a, a rich, uh, and visceral experience, you know?

And yeah, for sure the grace aspect is the, the lyricism of like moving through space and, and the playing with gravity as you go around corners. And, um, it's such an elegant activity. Um, even if it's tense and fraught because you're going really fast, it's still in a vital, vital experience. [00:29:00] So maybe someone who is attracted to that or who responds to that is also a person who might feel the need to cut a figure in the world to wear a particular style or to express themselves that way.

I don't know. I don't have a definitive answer for that, but I know that a lot of people who are into like fast motorcycling and historically had a particular look about them, and it was not the, not always the same. Like I gave a lecture, a Zoom talk with a British motorcycle club in Vancouver last week and talked about the promenade Percys, but I also connected it with what was happening simultaneously in Europe and the United States.

And the Americans had a much more casual sort of vibe about them, but they cut quite a figure. Even if they're wearing a chambray shirt and loose khakis, they would have like a, maybe a neck or chief and a flat cap, and it's like, yeah, it looked pretty badass, you know? Looks, it looks pretty good, huh? Even some of just the [00:30:00] early bicycle riders like Glen Curtis or a few of those, they look quite beautiful the way they're Yeah.

Dressed up just to ride the bikes and then when you get into the motorcycles it gets even better. Hmm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there has been, I think, a strong thread. Since forever, you know, of two wheels with style. Not everyone, of course, but the people you wanna write about. Definitely. Um, and actually I've, it's, it's a subject I've considered really digging into for an exhibition.

Mm-hmm. Uh, that would be really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. A a, a dear friend of mine, Conrad Leach, who's now an artist, um, he was one of the mean fuckers actually. Uh, he was a chief menswear designer at the Burton Group in England, which is like top man for a while. Actually, Alexander McQueen was one of his interns.

Uh Oh wow. And, um, he gave that, that up to become a painter. He had an exhibition which sold out, and that's where he is today. Now he's in Los Angeles. Uh, but, uh, we've talked about [00:31:00] collaborating on a, on an exhibition, exploring that very subject, like the impact on, of motorcycling and style. I think it's a rich, yeah, definitely the impact.

And, and it kind of goes both ways. Also a lot in popular culture. There's something about the image of a person on a motorcycle may, whether it's in rock music or almost anywhere. You can find there's a certain image that people wanna have, even if they don't ride, sometimes they wanna have this image. Oh, yeah.

Fashion has been ripping off motorcycle culture for decades, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. As you say, music too. I mean, I think the aesthetic of punk was definitely influenced by motorcycle culture. You know, it was transformed by Vivian Westwood went into something completely new, but I definitely think that, well, motorcycling and bondage strongest threads and drag.

Yeah, all the time. A lot of overlaps, even with the style. But I, I like what you said about the eroticism, because I think what I even mean by that is definitely more this, not between humans [00:32:00] eroticism, but more. This feeling that you have of just life itself, being something that's erotic, that you feel very alive and awake with all your senses.

The way we were talking about what the motorcycle does, it really wakes you up. And it's more like this feeling of being, um, turned on by the world, not necessarily something sexual that comes, I think with motorcycle, with riding. I agree. Yeah, I totally agree. It is one of my favorite things. And I've often felt like, you know, a big component of my career as a writer has been like expressing that it's like what people use cliches, like freedom and things as like shorthand.

'cause they really don't know how to say exactly that. It's like, what does this feel like? Why does this feel so good? Well, I feel free, you know, and it's fine because a lot of people haven't really, really explored How do you express, like, why something makes you feel the way it does, you know, reflect on that.

Uh, they just know that it feels good and that's that's enough, you know, and that they pursue it. Um, but I [00:33:00] think it's also, there are times when you really want to be able to express like why this is important to you and how it makes you feel. I, so I've been asked literally to, to express that in books many times, uh, over the years, which is great.

Yes. And I think you've found ways to do it. Word gets, yeah. It's not easy to do, but it reminds me a little bit of the thing you started with, with standing in the cathedral too, and also your, your own painting, the style that you found with the rooms. These things are very hard to explain or even to take a picture of, but you can somehow, um, suggest them or create a little bit of the feeling of them through curation, which I think is what you do actually, even if, even with, with writing or with your books, a lot of them, you put the right words with the right images or the right stories to evoke these.

These things without necessarily just saying directly, it's [00:34:00] this. Yeah. I mean, literal curation. 'cause I, you know, yes. Get hired, do exhibits at museums, so, um, yeah. Uh, definitely. It's funny, there's a lot of discussion about curation, especially on, with social media. Like a lot of people aren't really creating much, but they are curating images and mm-hmm.

Putting them on into the world. But I think it's a different thing when you are finding those things that you respond to and then you write about them and then you explain why or what the connections are, why it matters, and what the context was that brought these things together for you and what you're trying to say.

That's been actually one of the most pleasurable things about curating exhibits, like at the Peterson Museum, is, uh, being asked to contextualize like, what is this about? For example, I. You know, we had this adventure overland exhibit there a couple of years ago, which was really fun. Spectacular. Some of the things you had there from like the lunar [00:35:00] Yeah, I just said hot overlay.

Anyway, I could get very excited about it, but I'll I'll shut up. Oh, it was, it was amazing. I thought it was just amazing. Uh, yeah, we had everything from actual like 1920s and thirties overlanding vehicles, motorcycles, uh, and we had to, let's say the lost in space chariot and an actual j p l model of, of Mars rovers.

And it was such a great combination just to discuss the spirit of adventure and the spirit of exploration. And once again, this is another subject that I'm pursuing the development of as another exhibit. I'd like to really carry that theme forward in, in a touring exhibition because I think that. Over landing in the age of exploration is really says a lot about, you know, like travel as uh, a mode of education for people to get out of their [00:36:00] box and realize that it's a big, wide world, that people do things really differently and also really the same.

You know? And I think that kind of wisdom is really important for the world. Kind of the consciousness of, of a global unity as different as people may appear. It's like, well, we're fundamentally the same. And, um, so, you know, non-military and non-religious overland travel, you know, or mm-hmm. Or curiosity, I think is a, a spirit to really encourage, you know, see.

Yeah, I, I love that idea and just, it makes me wanna loop a few things together. For example, you were saying about this social media curation, uh, I think it's a little bit different to. Curate like on Instagram, certain photos. Then there's a different kind of attention or awareness that goes when you're in a real life space, first of all.

But also when you just put your attention on, on a particular subject the way you did, like when you have to find [00:37:00] the context around a theme and right. This is a really different thing than just trying to stimulate through putting particular images together. But that gets to what you were saying about travel because there's something about when we go to an a different place and we have to travel to get there, or the travel itself is part of of it that there's a different kind of attention.

Motorcycling is requires that kind of attention. So I guess there's some connection there too, between your meditation experiences early on when you were a kid, the way that you ride, the way that you ride. I mean, having, being a rider, motorcycle, motorcyclist, and also this way that you're talking about your work, which maybe curation isn't quite the right word, but.

There's something about putting your attention on it and finding connections almost the same way as this overland exploration. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I would say it's a particular way of thinking. It's like finding, uh, integrating information and [00:38:00] finding, like, collecting like a lot of disparate data that, you know, has a connection and then sort of finding what is the connection with all this.

It's like I find that really satisfying. It's kind of how I think. And uh, so I chose motorcycling to do that because it was something I was passionate about and kind of addicted to. And it could have been anything, but this is what it is that it's turned out to be, uh, such a rich, uh, subject matter for me.

Like when did it change over for you? 'cause you were doing the decorative painting, so, and you were writing R I D I N G. When did you start writing? And actually the vintage, when did that come? That was early two thousands, or it was 2006. Yeah. Um, I had done things like edited clubs, club newsletters for motorcycle clubs and stuff like that.

A little bit of writing. But in 2006, I was in the Sartorialist blog, which is like a fashion, a very famous fashion [00:39:00] blog, and, uh, you know, taking pictures on the streets, kind of. He was like, yeah, he took up Harry Callahan of the New York Times mantle of like street fashion photography, um, which became a huge thing.

It is huge. Yeah. Mm-hmm. He really was the want. That made it like, huge at the Instagram and TikTok sense. But, um, uh, actually when I was featured, it was actually easier to have a blog, to comment on a blog. It was like Google's little trick, you know? Mm-hmm. Their trick. It's like, well, you're here. Why don't you start a blog?

So I did, and I called it the vintage, which was a term that I'd known for a long time. That was from the, originated in the thirties. It was just someone who was into old vehicles, basically. It was a generic term. And so, um, I started slow, very slowly posting photographs from events and things that I had done or my own bikes.

And, uh, I started getting traction pretty quickly. [00:40:00] And my best friend, who was much smarter than me on these things, you know, this is, this is your next career, this is gonna be your next career. I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, it's like there's no money in this. Oh, yes. You were ahead of your time there too.

We, we were both right, but, um, uh, I, at one point I challenged myself to post three times a week with a little more writing and photographs just to see what happened and, you know, kind of, it exploded. It was really the first kind of older motorcycle oriented. Blog. And, um, so I started getting like, uh, 30,000 views a month.

And, and then I started to get asked by magazines like Psycho World to write articles for them and other magazines and, you know, it just kind of became much more of a, uh, career, let's say I got asked by auction companies to write catalog descriptions or I did color [00:41:00] commentary for auctions starting in 2009, which was basically standing up at the podium next to the auctioneer and talk about every single motorcycle that went across the podium.

Oh, that sounds fun. Well, can you imagine and hard 500, 500 motorcycles in a day, like a history historical education and motorcycling. Exactly. And I wasn't that strong on certain areas of motorcycling, especially American bikes. So over the, of course of a couple of years, I like got pretty strong. My motorcycle history, so I still do that.

Um, you know, on, well now MotorTrend TV do, every year I do the big Las Vegas auction. I do, uh, two days of, uh, TV commentary, which is a lot of fun, actually. Seems like a natural kind of thing for you, or that's really fun. And just telling stories about like what this thing is and some anecdote about it.

It's pretty cool. Chatty and cool. And I write [00:42:00] for auction companies, I write like catalog descriptions or articles for their magazines, so that's actually the bigger part of my income. I do make some money on the vintage and website per se, but I make a lot more just writing for other venues. Yeah. You don't really do a lot of ads or anything like the way people would traditionally make a lot of money on those things.

Yeah. Or do you Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I, I struggle with that because I, I have had people, you know, over the years who have wanted to partner. To do things. And I actually, I did partner, I hired an intellectual property development company a couple of years ago, and they analyzed all of the, you know, at that point, what was it, 14 years of stories and intellectual property that I had created, and they gave some recommendations on avenues that I could actually develop to make more money.

And, and spent two years doing that. We, uh, tried to start an electric vehicle festival. Yeah, I saw that. Looked [00:43:00] like it might still happen, or I was gonna ask you about after revolution. Yeah. And it, and we partnered with someone who had a venue and, uh, it looked like it was all gonna go down. We had lots of interest from the industry and that our partners fell apart, so that didn't happen.

Then we tried to do another one at Palm Springs last November and there just wasn't that much support and I kind of gave up on that idea. So I. I've spent the last six months really, uh, sort of meditating on, well, what's the most important thing here? What's, what really moves me as we were talking?

Mm-hmm. Which is my motivation. Well, I'm just kind of going back to the core of, of Ingen. I love doing curation, so looking at doing larger scale curation projects with bigger museums and international travel and, uh mm-hmm. And, uh, some really digging in on some projects like the story of Cliff Voz, who designed the Easy Rider bikes and was [00:44:00] never acknowledged until the end of Peter Fonda's life that he had made this huge contribution to the film that story needs developing.

He, he became a friend of mine. I know the story. I broke the story. It deserves a book and maybe it deserves a film. So that's another project that I really need to dig in on. Yeah, definitely. There's so many, you tell so many stories of people. I'm thinking of the woman, I can't remember her name now. Anka.

Anka Eve Goldman, yeah. Yes. She was the, for example, she could also have a book of her own. There's many people you could write a book about that you've written stories about. Yeah. I actually approached her, uh, when I lived in France to, to write her biography and she refused. I've just went through the same process with, uh, John Reed, who was like the Arness of England.

His shop was called Uncle Bunt and he was the person who really commercially popularized the chopper in England and he lives here in California. We've been friends for about eight years. And I was like, John, you know, you're not getting any younger and uh, I'd [00:45:00] like to do a book. And he just said, nah, I'm not interested in doing that.

So what do you do? It's like, you know, the great either pester him or. Sometimes it takes pestering if you really wanna do it. But I, I like what you're saying about your going back and asking yourself like, what's really moving me about this? Because those tend to be the things that become successful. And as you've been talking to, it sounds like there is this kind of grace in your life, or like the way that your life, this decisions have led you.

Um, there's things that happened because you were motivated and followed your motivation. So I don't know what why I'm saying that, but it just would seem strange to go against it ride for the market in a way. Um, when there's that kind of, it's that same kind of grace and heroes thing. And it reminds me also of riding the bike.

There's, there's a different state of being that in that space. For sure, for sure. And, but sometimes, I mean, I've made okay money in the last 10, 12 years when I've really completely shifted over. I gave up my contracting, but the reason I moved to Paris was really [00:46:00] to, because I couldn't do my other job, right?

Mm-hmm. I had no connections there. So, I had to switch to fully to writing as an income. And it was also great for me because I didn't have a lot of friends there and things. I really focused on writing and it was great for me to develop my skills and I've been able to, to make a living since then. But I've always had people who have wanted to help kind of develop this concept and, and people that I do work with, I mean, I have a team and they're basically mm-hmm.

Volunteers and we've tried to develop, let's say, the electric revolution idea. And that's the reason why I've kind of dug in. But I think you're right. I mean, that's kind of a conclusion that I've come to is you just, I just have to like dig in on the things that have I find moving because ultimately those are probably the things that other people are gonna find moving too.

And they're really stories that nobody else is [00:47:00] telling. Maybe nobody's exactly. Yeah. And also your other interests, fashion and things like this. I mean, this is a place where there's a lot of money. And from the style side, I mean, that's also an interesting element. Yeah, for sure. There's so many ways these days to do things, but you'd be amazed at how, I mean, people bend over backwards and they completely, they cater what their content is to that, the Yeah.

That, that's the fine line. Yeah. It's, to me, that's dash. But for some people that's a career and you know, there are people who, yeah, a lot of money doing that. And to me, money is not a motivating factor, you know, it's like, I don't do things for money. I do it because they're interesting to me. So, yeah. And it's, it's the best way to live.

Yeah, exactly. Because over a certain threshold, money is important. We all have to make it. And that's, it's a good thing. It's fine, but over a certain point, if you're not doing what, if you're not working from the place that you're, that moves you, then it stops mattering and starts even being a burden, I guess.

I mean, if you'd created [00:48:00] this whole Exactly. Whole enterprise Exactly. On something you hate, and then you have to take care of it. Oh, exactly. Yeah. So I never, I, I briefly engaged a social media company that, you know, promised to take me to a million followers, but what it, what that required ultimately in terms of like content and the production and, and everything was so, so noxious to me.

I was like, no, I can't do this. You know, this is not me. Mm-hmm. It's like, I may fit the suit, but I ain't gonna wear the suit, you know? Yeah. No suit may fit, may not wanna wear it. No. Um, yeah, it's better to stick with what moves you and trust the grace, because all these things, you know, they come, it's not like you're not doing hard work and you're giving a lot.

That's really the point is that you're, you're actually giving a lot with these stories and things, opening up paths, and I think it's really important to provide something, you know, to the world. It's like giving something to the world. It's like, Shining a light on things that, that I find [00:49:00] interesting and moving and like worth exploring and discussing and, and I think really how, I think you commented earlier about that the way I've discussed these subjects is different, and it's true, I think differently about motorcycling and motorcycle history than most other people.

If you look at the bookshelves, I've got thousands of motorcycle books and they tend to be very, I don't know if I should use the word capitalist or, but at least industrial oriented, like they are histories from the history point of view. Mm-hmm. And I'm interested in the opposite. I'm interested in the people, the point of view of the people who use, modify and provide feedback to the manufacturers.

It's like the culture of it is way more interesting to me than the factory. And yes, there's cultures within factories and designers, and those are great stories too. But industrial production per se, Is a very limited interest. What's really interesting is talking about [00:50:00] like, well, what's the global impact and what's the relationship between people and these products and how did they express their love for this thing called motorcycling?

Through dress and lifestyle and film and fashion, so many different ways. It's been really, really fun and fascinating, and especially being able to incorporate film into this whole discussion and having a weekly film series on the ent and having done a film festival, motorcycle film festival in New York.

It's amazing how often we find a film from the teens or the twenties. It's pretty motorcycle centric. That's really cool. Or the thirties or the fifties or whatever. It's, it's amazing how much stuff comes up. Mm-hmm. And it's less common because we really dug in in the last, yeah. Seven years. Having a film every week.

That's a lot of films to feature and no duplication. That's 350 movies. Mm-hmm. There's yet more people are still making them and they're amazing. That's [00:51:00] actually an important archive to have just for historical purposes. And actually, I was trying to get at that too. The way you're approach opens up these paths that are already there, but it's like showing the connections between, I mean, that's basically like a snapshot of a, a historical moment.

The style, the values also this way that the motorcyclist or is seeing the rebel or whatever and what that tension is. All these things in the movies that, that you've made or that you've curated, it's actually historically very meaningful on many different levels. So it seems like that's kind of the responsibility to find some way to preserve that and make sure that stays around.

For sure. Yeah, it's been a, that's been a wonderful, I. Experience and exploration. Now you find these same kind of historical resonances in film about guess four or five years ago, someone said, have you seen this film from the 1920s? And I'm like, no, I have not seen that film from the 1920s. And it's a, a short silent film and I'm totally spacing on [00:52:00] the name right now, uh, done by a, a surrealist director and it's black and white and it's like, it's like the model for girl on a motorcycle.

The, the film with Mary Unfaithful. Mm-hmm. That was based on an Eve Goldman. 'cause she was friends. Yeah. The Blacks one. Yeah. One, yeah. Yeah. One piece riding, riding suit. But in the twenties there was this film and it's literally, that's all it is. It's, it's a woman on a motorcycle, mostly shot from below.

So you're looking up at her and it's this weird landscape. Her, and then these weird abstract shapes. It's a very art film, but it's like ultimately like she's having an orgasm on this motorcycle. Wow. 1920. It's, it's slow, but it's, and it's super kind of arty, but it's like, whoa. Kind of mind blowing. It's like, wait a minute, somebody is totally clocked.

Yeah. The whole thing. The whole gestalt. Yeah. The irrit, the art, the grace, you know, the fashion she's wearing like, oh, leather helmet and goggles and, and this kind of implicit or [00:53:00] explicit sexuality of mm-hmm. Like, like more for women than for men. I actually wrote, I wrote the first ever article about, you know, that women have orgasms riding motorcycles, you know the vibration.

Yeah. Yeah. They bicycles and Definitely motorcycles. Yeah, bicycles too. It's definitely motorcycles. Vibrate more. Yeah. It's easier. Controllable. Uh, and, uh, can't believe no one had ever written about this, and I pitched it as an article to Cycle World and they didn't want to touch it. Mm-hmm. And okay, I'm writing it and the article's called The Sex Machine and I involved my film editor, Karina Man Flow.

I said, uh, I think maybe you should send out the questionnaire to a bunch of women. 'cause if I do it, it could be seen as a little creepy without a questionnaire that we dreamed up and we got great responses and look it up. It's pretty funny and has great photographs by this woman, Rita Nessy. She's a, a New York photographer and they're amazing, I guess they're self-portraits.

She's wearing like this one [00:54:00] piece leather, uh, like catsuit. And she's using, um, one of the revival cycles in Texas, um, uh, accustomed Ducati. And she's using curved Mylar to distort these images. And they're amazing. The photographs are amazing. So yeah, definitely check out the sex machine. It's that will the, at the sex machine.

Otherwise God knows what you'll find. But I love that too because it also speaks to this, pushing the boundaries, but also just observing what they are and maybe questioning them a little in terms of, um, All the themes that you just raised around sexuality and this female male, and, um, I think it can go on both ways too, right?

Because there's something I think maybe you can say if you agree or disagree, but in all these movies and in this history from the Cafe Racer on, there's definitely something about men expressing their love of style in a way that's okay. You know, like you [00:55:00] can do it there because there's always style and also their love of each other and their need for community, even though it's such a solitary thing.

Right? And those things also don't get talked about in the same way as, as the orgasms are women being used, liking to ride motorcycles and liking the power of it, not just being a sex symbol. So it's interesting to open up all those things. And you do that a lot with your work, don't you? Yeah, for sure.

I'm fascinated with all that. Yeah. And you know, there's still more room to discuss, like how women feel about motorcycles beyond that one aspect orgasm. It's like, well, what about. Feeling empowered. I have written a lot about the Dark Rider syndrome as it was developed. First clocked by Jean Coto in, uh, Orpheus, the film Orpheus, which was made in whatever, 1947 or maybe a little later, um, where, uh, deaths henchmen are two riders on motorcycles.

And it was the first instance where a motorcycle is associated with death was [00:56:00] like explicitly a potent subconscious use of a symbol, right? Mm-hmm. And, and two years later came the Wild One film. Mm-hmm. And, you know, and I, I've written about how this kind of notion of what I call the dark rider, like this potency of, of the motorcycle, it's like the impression that you make, uh, you don't get it on a scooter, you don't get it on a moped, you get it on a motorcycle of, of menace and power, and how there's a whole branch of motorcycling that's like, Very much associated with that.

It's ultimate expression is of course, oh 1% are clubs. Uh, but you know, even Harley Davidson, like in the eighties when Willie G started finally, you know, taking over the company, their advertising in the sixties and early seventies was almost like Honda like kind of nicest people. And then all of a sudden in the eighties you've got like guys in black leather going through the city [00:57:00] streets at night.

It's like tough guy, the dark writer, you know, trope. Mm-hmm. And I think Harley Davison suffers from having embraced that. Maybe now it's like hard to move a new generation, you know? And that's what you're so strongly associated with. They're a victim of their own branding in a way. Uh, because maybe not so much in Europe, but in the United States, you tell someone, you ride a motorcycle, they say, oh, you in a Harley, are you a club?

You know? Mm-hmm. Are you like, mm-hmm. Are you Hell's Angel? Yeah. That's kind of the narrative that most Americans associate with bikes. I think that actually speaks to something I was trying to get at too, is that you, you aren't that narrative. You can be that narrative, but what you're doing with your work and the way you even do the books current and the ride, especially, these are beautiful.

Yeah. Artistic objects. There's something you're opening up, right? So it's almost like people would say, oh, if they ride motorcycles, they don't care about art and fashion. But it's never been true as you point out. And [00:58:00] there's always been this connection. There's a kind of style, people think very deeply. I mean, you're risking your life, you're not, it's not frivolous and it's not always about being macho.

That's just one aspect of it. So you open that up too, even with the J, with the books you do and stuff. Is that a conscious thing that you try to do? Or is that just coming out of your personality? Definitely. I mean, the books that you mentioned were all, were published by Gestalt and they have a really strong aesthetic, so they're very open to that.

I think my other books, uh, which were published by motor books are a little bit different because it's an American company and they have a different bent that's a lot less about style except motorcycle style. So that's an European versus American publishing. These are pretty big cultural differences by just collaborated and, um, in this new t and two volume set called Ultimate Collector Motorcycles, and it is the most lavish book about motorcycles [00:59:00] ever published.

It's two volumes. It's slip cased, it weighs like 25 pounds, like mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah, I heard about that one. Oh, it's just incredible. And it's like 50 Euros or for the Lux edition, which is even larger and heavier and more lavish. It's like 850 euro. And uh, but you know, we set up a little stand at the quail motorcycle gathering.

Mm-hmm. The vintage into the Motorcycle Arts Foundation, and I gave one table to Tash 'cause the book has just come out. Mm-hmm. And they had their reps there and they sold four of those $850 edition and 11 of the other ones. So. Oh, that's good. People want, people are, as you say, with the ride, it's like, you know, it's not a, it's not inexpensive book.

It's, it was, uh, I think it was probably 50 or $60, you know? Mm-hmm. This is mm-hmm. It's like a really uping the off table book kind of. Yeah, exactly. This is like really upping the stick, like whoa. Yeah. It's an art, it's art within itself and it, it opens you up to thinking of motorcycles [01:00:00] as art, even. Sure.

Even thinking of art as maybe expert an experience. Right. Not only the object, which I think you also talk about and bring out in your articles and work that it's not like even though you've done, you create these things in museums, part of that curation is suggesting this dynamism. This what you were trying to say earlier.

You can't actually explain what it's like to be on the motorcycle, but when you bring in the context and the history and the stories, it starts to become alive. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And also that it's a rich subject deserves study. I mean, really I have to thank my buddy Ton Gilfoyle and Charlie Falco for doing the art of the motorcycle exhibit at the Guggenheim.

Yeah. When was that? Nineties? 98, right? 98, yeah. Yeah. Is that the first ever? Uh, it was the first, yeah. Major music motorcycles is art motorcycles. And you know, they really opened the conversation about that this is a subject worth exploring [01:01:00] and really changed the global conversation around motorcycling.

And I, I talked with Alton about it and he is like, ah, nobody even remembers that exhibit. I'm like, no, that exhibit changed here. No. Yeah, and I think it's still changing things. You're part of that history that's still evolving as someone who also doesn't fit in any kind of box. But I also have my motorcycle license.

I love motorcycles and not really the way of riding them, but just as there's so much more there, the art of the motorcycle, but also all the exhibits you have done. I think it's just the beginning of starting to understand this almost as like a cultural theory. Yeah. Or something. It's individual, but it's also community and it transcends, it's international, so, and it's global.

There's a social component of course, also to these exhibits. So I just wonder how you see this relationship between the solitary thing of riding the bike and the community aspect and how important that is or, well, I mean, everything is solitary, right? I mean, is it [01:02:00] fashion to solitary? It's like you're dressing yourself or.

So yes, the experience is very personal. Uh, although it's less like individuals. Let's say you're riding with a passenger, it's a little more, it can be shared. But yeah, I just think it's a normal human thing to whatever you're passionate about, whether it's a symphony or it's art or bicycling or motorcycling or whatever, rose, you know, gardening, uh, people coalesce around it.

They find like-minded people. Communities of interest, I believe is the term. So supporting the community in a positive way of like-minded souls is like super important. And I really encourage people to attend shows and, you know, pay for the ticket and go to events. It's how you keep a community and its events vital.

It's like participation and that's why I have [01:03:00] always supported events and. Know, I get a lot of invitations and I don't say yes to very many of 'em, but when I do, it's because I really wanna support something. And it's not that I don't wanna support other events. It's usually like, I can't travel that much, you know?

Mm-hmm. I get invitation like, oh, will you help us start a concourses in Munich? Or in, oh, like, no, just don't have the time for that. I'll show up if my schedule permits, but I don't have the time for that. So, um, I have to be pretty selective. Yeah, I bet you do. Do you still find a sense of community in it though?

Or do you feel more like, you know? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. So many people who, you know, dear friends and amazing, talented, or me, like one of the major benefits, you know, like I was never interested in custom motorcycles and doubly never interested in choppers until I realized, uh, with custom motorcycles is like, uh, that I was riding custom motorcycles.

Like a cafe racer is a custom motorcycle. Mm-hmm. [01:04:00] I altered that motorcycle to suit my taste. It's like, oh gosh. I guess I've been mucking around with custom bikes since the eighties. So when Cycle World asked me to start riding about custom bikes, you know, it really changed my head. And then I started meeting these incredibly talented individuals who were artists working in the medium of motorcycles.

And that has fascinated me. It's been a whole other connection between aesthetics and motorcycling and all the tensions within both the genre in terms of like functionality versus non functionality and aesthetic trends. And copycat is the people who are really doing innovation. And some people who are, it doesn't really matter.

It's like if people are interested in aesthetics, they're gonna do their thing. But it's been amazing meeting a few people who are really, truly gifted, you know? And. It's been exciting and a lot of 'em become friends and that's been a rich reward [01:05:00] for me personally. Like meeting incredible people who are also, and also certain collectors and certain other writers or, so that's like on the personal level, my community, it's like finding my peers, you know?

And then in the more broad sense, like finding it really important to support the community as a whole, as it's changing a lot, especially publishing, starting in about 2010 by Exif and Piper and all these other blogs about customization of really introduced a whole new audience. But now those folks are 10 years older.

They're thirties and forties now, and Yeah. You know, how do you get the teenagers? Mm-hmm. I guess there's patterns and some of it goes back to that. What's the, what is this rebellious or edge work today that we do associate with this kind of cafe racer or the James Dean or, I don't know, is that still able to [01:06:00] connect in a world where we have to rethink what motoring even means?

Yeah, well, I, I've done a lot of stuff around electric vehicles that, you know, the first book about electric motorcycles and done a lot of articles and Yeah, that can exist in the electric scene too. That's what I really wanted to talk to you about that the electric revolution was the exhibit you did at Peterson?

Yeah. Yeah. That was after the current Was after the current, yeah. Okay. I started the current as a web vertical on our website just doing stories about the electric industry and we had already done custom revolution. That was my first exhibit at the Peterson and when we were, I. I mean we were approach, I was approached by the Peterson to curate an exhibit about Southern California custom motorcycles.

I said, well, how about if we do something that's more like the global, there's never been an exhibit of the global custom scene. So they supported me and spending a lot of money shipping bikes from all over [01:07:00] the world that I thought were like apex examples of, of custom motorcycles from Japan and Germany and England and the United States.

So for our next exhibit, I thought, well, maybe we should do something about the electric industry. 'cause I had just done the current with the book or, yeah, there's a book, A beautiful book with a little cake. With a cake on the cover. Yeah. Oh, that's such a beautiful book. Oh, another one. Another beautiful bike, but perfect choice of the cover.

I know. Really beautiful. So yeah, we decide the next exhibit would just be Electric revolution after Custom Revolution. So it seemed perfectly natural. I. But we had started the current thread years before, and I've been riding about electric bikes since 2009. But anyway, electric Revolution proved to be like hugely popular.

Mm-hmm. Like we got something like billion media impressions on that exhibit. Mm-hmm. And it was an important exhibit for me too, you know, just kind of as an expression of a culture around a new [01:08:00] medium. It's like motorcycles. Yes. They've been around forever, but electric motorcycles have not, and electric cars have not.

And the concept around Electric Revolution as an event we were developing this kind of festival was to create, to help create a culture around electric vehicles. Like we've had a culture around gas vehicles for 130 years. So drag racing and drifting and uh, rallying and, you know, Races around the center of a small town like standup scooters or electric bicycles.

There is a culture developing around electric vehicles. So kind of highlight that culture as a way of supporting the industry. And I've come to the conclusion now that the industry doesn't need my support anymore. It's not that I'm not interested, uh, of course, but I feel like the industry is standing on its own legs now.

Like when I first started riding in 2009, the industry was not standing on its own legs. Yeah, I was about to say you sort of helped [01:09:00] create that as a pioneer with this exhibit in this book. Those are right. Yeah, those are markers for sure. Yeah. It shows that it's worth people's time and energy in a way.

And it showed that so many people are interested in it. Yeah, exactly. And it documents this historical change. Do you think, what do you think about this change in motorcycling? Do you think it's either or with I, ces or. S or how has it manifest in their own may not have a choice. We may not have a choice, you know, given legislation.

I mean, my eyes were really open about the electric motorcycle scene 2010 years ago. We went to Shanghai. It wasn't that long ago, actually, it was more like eight years ago. And, and internal combustion small vehicles have been banned at the center of Chinese cities for a long time. And so everything in there is electric.

And it's like it's quiet and the air is fresh and it's like, oh my God, this is the best thing in the world, right? And so it really kind of opened my eyes of [01:10:00] like how it could look in an American city or a European city having lived in France, it's like in the summertime when you've got 80 mopeds hopped up, mopeds, like gunning their exhaust at a green light, and the air is suddenly filled with two stroke smoke, which has a ton of unburned alcohol fuel.

It's like your eyes are stinging and it's miserable. And you can do the same thing without creating any fumes. We can have the same level of fun, uh, without the obnoxious element. So I'll always love my internal combustion motorcycles, but you know, let's be realistic. The future is here. Norway is already 40% ev and it ain't gonna be too much longer before the rest of the world.

Is Tesla's already the number one selling car in California? It's just, it's the future. But I've got some heat because of the, you know, the environmental impact of let's say lithium mining and, and [01:11:00] rare earth mineral mining, which is serious, you know, but I'm sorry, the petroleum industry has led to like how many wars the petroleum industry has greatly impacted geopolitics.

Huge. It made the Middle East one of the most important places in the world. Um, so they're huge, huge issues to overcome. Technology. It's like, how is the power generated and how is it stored? What, what kind of impact are we gonna have creating this? They can barely recycle these batteries. It's like absurd.

Absurd. And these are the things that have to be focused on. We need better batteries. We need to recycle all these materials. Uh, and if it's truly gonna be green, we gotta have our power production. That's green. A lot of opportunity there. Mm-hmm. And maybe rethinking a lot of the transportation networks that have been built up by this traditional form of motoring.

The roads, the way the cities are created. There's a lot of things [01:12:00] that sort of have to be rethought. We have to do some kind of mentality shift about, basically we have to change now and yeah, we have to find a new way. Yeah, for sure. And it's going to impact everything in the same way that gasoline powered vehicles changed everything.

They changed how we structured our, yeah. Our roads, our cities, everything. With actually just last week there was a fascinating story on N P R, uh, about haring and how haring regulations in American cities from the 1960s made it impossible to create cities as we have known them. And basically created the kind of this weird suburbanization of any new developments where you get like giant big box stores squatting in a sea of parking, you know, and, uh, they're like, you look at the center, the appealing center of e every old major city in the world.

You can't build like that anymore unless there's a giant four stories of underground parking beneath [01:13:00] it. So a pedestrian oriented city is no longer possible with current regulations. So maybe changes in how we view transport and things like that will revive, uh, the design of cities to make them much more kind of human-centric.

Um, A lot less transport centric as they have become since the fifties. Really? Oh yeah. And that, that just reminds me of these trucks and that whole infrastructure of the way we ship our goods and stuff. I just had to drive back to Amsterdam from an event I had in Berlin, and it's just one whole lane is just truck, after truck after truck, and you just think about it like, what is this?

What are we doing? We're like moving things from one place to another in this really awful way. And it's not good for the drivers either. No, no, no. Something has to really change in that way. Yeah, for sure. Our investment in rail, especially in the United States, oh my God, it's been horrific. We haven't had like a new design of train in [01:14:00] 70 years.

Uh, it's just, it's horrific. You see these huge accidents because we put no money into our infrastructure, which has a lot to do with where we spend our money, which is trillions of dollars on wars in foreign countries. Instead of developing like we should be, every country should be. Developing a modern infrastructure, you know, high speed rail and also, uh, just as you mentioned, commercial rail with sophisticated delivery systems with lots of branches so that there's a rail car coming right into the center of San Francisco that's distributing goods through green methods.

Short haul delivery instead of fricking trucks. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or finding new ways to have materials, for example, like three D printing or something where you have to ship less. It reminds me of other things you were talking about where it's just a shift of perspective. You kind of had this shift when you went and saw this city in China, but how can everyday people have this?

I know you've written about it some, but it's almost like it we're just in this inertia, right? We don't [01:15:00] realize there's another way we could do it. Is it gonna take an ecological disaster or, well, unfortunately, that's often the motivating force. I mean, for China it was just a little levels of nos.

Noxious pollution, and the city centers. That led them to, uh, create this legislation and they had a ready enterprise that could step in very quickly and fill the gap. But for the last 10 years, I've been asked by small electric motorcycle manufacturers, it's like, what do you, what do you think the tipping point is gonna be?

What's gonna be the design that's like the Honda Cub of the electric industry? I said, I don't think it's gonna be a design. I think it's gonna be legislation. You know, and it's happening. Paris and other cities, Paris has already banned vehicles over 20 years from the city center, and it's not gonna be that long before they're gonna ban any vehicles that are not electric from the city center.

We're close to that. And I have to say that for as much as I love my vintage vehicles, it makes sense. Hello? We have [01:16:00] to do things that aren't completely selfish and support, you know, what's necessary for the evolution of our cities and our society. Yeah. We need, we need to rethink how things are going.

'cause a hundred years of. Burning gas is having really a negative impact. Yeah. It really is, and it's definitely feels urgent. Yeah. It's the Shades the Beast. Um, yeah. A former environmental studies major, and it's like, yes, yes. It's definitely urgent. Urgent. It was urgent then. Yeah. 43 years ago we were talking about this.

Wow. Gosh. Yeah. You were already thinking Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the roof for the White House and Ronald Reagan took 'em right back off, you know? Mm-hmm. This has been up for over 40 years and there's just been a tremendous amount of resistance because of entrenched industries. What's threatening there?

It's an existential threat for the oil industry, and they're incredibly rich and they have a lot of influence, and there's a lot of history and a lot of culture, and those forces [01:17:00] have also had their voices heard, you know? Mm-hmm. There's a lot in the motorcycle world who like, you know, I don't want anything to do with electric bikes.

I like my bike, want to be able to ride my bike? My internal combustion bike forever. It's like, well, maybe you will, maybe you won't. And that's just reality, you know? It was never, always, thus, and no one guaranteed you the right to have X. But you know, if you would try riding an electric motorcycle, you would probably find that it's a lot more fun than you think.

You always, the vibration, the vibe, but you know, the sensation of motorcycling, the core of it, that kind of miracle of physics that is two wheels is the same. And it will develop, it will improve, and it will become the norm because it's inevitable. It's just, it's going to happen unless someone figured a way to develop, to create hydrogen profitably, which hasn't happened, you know?

No conspiracy out there [01:18:00] about mm-hmm. Getting rid of hydrogen power. It's like, no, it's just not there yet. Just haven't figured that one out yet. Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna let you go soon, but, um,

what's that? It's been a great conversation. It has, and I could keep talking to you, but I, and I realize now it's really been a while. You probably need a break. But I do wonder what, what this idea of forever motoring electric motors or whatever kind of motors, I mean, you're a historian of motorcycles, but you're in the motoring world and you've seen these patterns and you've seen how important it's to people.

Do you think that's gonna shift with this electric change or what, however we address this urgent problem? Or do you think that's something that we have to find? We'll, we'll always have, in a way, this exploration and all these things we've talked about already Yeah. Will always be people. Right. There's nothing new under the sun, right?

So, okay. Maybe it's electric bikes. That means people are gonna create subcultures around using, they happen to be using [01:19:00] electric motorcycles. So you'll have the touring subculture and you'll have the sport riding subculture, and you'll have. Young urban recos who are making 80 mile an hour standup scooters.

That's already happening. It's already happening. So everything old is new again. Everything new came from, you know, we'll find you a historical president. That's my job from the twenties or the 1860s, you know, that says, yeah, we're just doing the same stuff. We just are wearing different things. And the thing itself looks a little different, but I'm completely confident that there will always be expressions of a love of speed and a love of motorcycling in whatever technology is available.

I mean, we look at Star Wars, you know, didn't that land speeder that Luke was speeding around? It looked like fun, right? It's like, oh, motorcycling, or this is hot, rotting, whatever form it takes will be just fine. Yeah, I think that's a very beautiful answer. Last thing I'm gonna ask you, 'cause I have to, um, is about Richard Vincent.

Did he just pass away recently or did I, I mean, [01:20:00] yeah, he did. I'm so sorry to hear that. Gosh. Yeah, well he was doing what he loved. Um, I didn't really publicize it. He was on his motorcycle and he was down riding between Santa Barbara and Ventura on Highway 1 0 1, and he was riding past his favorite surf break at Rincon, you know, a legendary surf break at all.

Those photographs and films that he took in the sixties were taken at recon. Oh gosh. That makes me a little emotional. I know. It was a great surf break surf that day. There was a fantastic wave and I, I think he got distracted and, um, he hit the center barrier on the freeway and was killed instantly. And so it's tragic and it's also kind of poetic, you know, it's like that's where he began, that's where his story began and that's where it ended.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, he was doing something he loved, he was clearly connected by something to something he loved, like in the sea. And uh, [01:21:00] we all gotta go sometime and. Richard definitely could've hung around for another 10 or 15 years and been an example to us all, uh, and told a lot of great stories, but there you go.

You know, I can think of worse ways of going. Yeah. I love it that you describe it like that it, it somehow I can see that all the elements were, were there. Yeah. It's never a happy moment to think about this. It's painful, but somehow there's something about that. Yeah. There's a kind of circularity on this whole life story that's kind of beautiful.

Yeah. Um, and like in your video, I think the, it's, he says something about racing, being like, waking up in the morning or riding is like waking up in the morning or something. It's kind of like a, a new going to sleep or, I don't know. Yeah. You know, I was, I. Two thirds of a way through a feature documentary about Richard Film Interrupted.

Is that still the title? 'cause now Interrupted has a whole other view. I, I, exactly. Wow. Probably interrupted. [01:22:00] We have not really settled a lot. That was a working title. Um Okay. But we'll see. I think we had gotten all the interviews we needed from Richard. We had decided that, uh, previously, but there was still some contextualizing to do on my end and inserting his photography and things into the narrative.

It's beautifully shot. Um, our director Brett Deal is amazing director and our cinematographer Leonard Alexander. He's a amazing cinematographer. So the footage we have already is beautiful. 'cause the property Richard created in Oregon, he bought this completely clear cut stretch of land on the hills by the Oregon coast.

And he bought it for a song that early in the mid seventies. And he over the. Subsequent 50 years, he made it into a park. I mean, it looks like a state park with gorgeous meadows and the trees are now 50 years old and so they're mature and it's, there's wild elk and he restored the salmon runs. And the trout [01:23:00] runs and the creeks Such a interesting ecological story too.

It really is. Yeah. Ties in all the themes we've been talking about in a way, doesn't it? Yeah, it does for sure. It's so funny, you know, if you knew Richard, you would never like, uh, clock him as an environmentalist, but in fact, his life legacy is a restoration of this 2,500 acres of land, you know? That's so beautiful.

I was gonna ask you, what do you think his legacy is? Is it really about motorcycling or is it about this perspective that he gave, or, I mean, it's kind of both. I didn't realize what he had done. I had only seen, I had visited his house once, but I hadn't really looked at the property. I. Uh, my parents had a house in Sea Ranch, which is similar.

It's like a house in the hills above the water. So I was used to this kind of environment and thought it was beautiful, but didn't really know the history and what Richard had done. Mm-hmm. So I was purely attracted to his photography and films from the era from the early sixties and his story of being drafted to Vietnam and then [01:24:00] becoming a hermit after he was injured and then reemerging 45 years later.

And, but as we were filming and kind of were getting footage of this property, we realized, oh my God, there's a different story here. You know, that's not motorcycling. That's like, what, how does a person heal from trauma? And what if that healing, like heal the whole landscape? That's an amazing story. So that is very beautiful.

It reminds me of something else you wrote about the healing effect of moving through landscape. I think it's also in the right, the writer. Yeah. Intra. It's interesting for sure. Think of it in that way of moving through a landscape on the bike, but also moving through the landscape in terms of what he did, you know, with your life and changing it, becoming part of it.

Healing as healing yourself. And I think that also speaks to what we are trying to talk about with having to change our patterns in motoring. There's some bigger story in his story, isn't there? [01:25:00] Almost like a Absolutely. It's even, even with his death now, there's almost, there's some big lesson there. Yeah, yeah.

And it's so funny that he would be very reluctant to term his life story that way. You know? That's not how he thought about his life from the, but from the outside and even his own family, it's obvious he wasn't that guy, if you know what I mean. That's not how he talked about himself and his life. But everyone else, it was abundantly clear that this was the arc of his life.

And so, and it's. Sad to say, but it's also true that sometimes, you know what, people have to get outta the way of telling their own story or having their story told. It's um, it's hard for us to see our own lives as well. And as I was saying with Ave Goldman and John, people like not wanting their tor story told You get what you get, you tell the story you can.

So mm-hmm. Hopefully we have enough of [01:26:00] Richard's story on film that we are able to finish this whole project. Mm-hmm. The next year. Hope, I mean, it's just happened, so we're still grappling with, okay, what does this mean? And we're in no hurry. It sounds like there's an important lesson there, and I guess it's hard for all of us to be vulnerable.

I mean, another quote of yours that I'm remembering now where you say something about, it's hard to talk about why motoring being on a bike moves you because you feel vulnerable. I think it's also hard to talk about your life, you know, as, as these people in that way too, because you have to open up to your vulnerability.

So maybe that's part of why people say no, they don't wanna have to really be seen. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. And it's the lesson for all of us. It's like the, the corollary to that. I mean, so there's the one aspect of, you know, being shy to tell your own story or feeling like you don't really want that kind of focus put on you.

But on the other hand, what we often fail to see, and even what I often fail to [01:27:00] see, 'cause I feel doing the work that I do, is very isolated. You know, like it takes people sending me a note once in a while to realize, oh, somebody's reading this, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. But whereas everyone assumes, you know, that everyone's reading it, so it's even weirder a little bit like fame or, yeah, I guess so.

Kind of in a bubble. Yeah. It's like it's impossible to have that kind of exterior perspective unless you get that kind of feedback. I don't think it's, I think it might be important, let's say in the case of John Reed, it's like to understand how much their story can mean to other people. You know, it's like this is important.

You had a unique life story and it was very interesting and you did your thing and you were successful and you had an impact and, and people want read about that 'cause it's important. It's so important. It's the most important thing we can give is it goes back to this exploration idea we talked about with the overland exhibit.

Opening up new paths for people. You know, that's why it's important that these people let [01:28:00] their stories be told why they're alive or why they should be told after they've passed away. Because otherwise those paths close, everything grows up around them again and someone else will have to forge through.

So these stories are so important, you know, just in terms of trajectory, you can think of it like a landscape. But to go back to that again and they found ways and those other people need, need that, you know, it's a bigger picture. I think you can tell that with Vincent's story too. And yeah, it shows people that they can care about what they really care about and they can heal and it can also be healing in a wider way.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's a great, uh, you know, it's like becomes part of your purpose in life. It's like sharing your story. It's like, it's actually not an act ego, it's actually a service. It really is. If you're living in that vulnerable place and you're really trying to tell the story, which is not easy, but I think it's what we all try to get to or we try to do for each other.

You've, if we can't do it while we're alive, then other people help do it, [01:29:00] do it later. But is there anything we didn't talk about that you wanna make sure you say or anything you want me to put in the notes or, yeah, I mean, this's, the stuff that we're doing that I, I haven't even mentioned, you know, we, we just did this whole educational offshoot that we've, couple folks in my team who've been really interested in where we.

Discovered this man in Ghana, his teenager, Samuel Avo. You, maybe you could just share the story, but wasn't he an electric revolution too? Or He was revolutionaries, yeah, revolutionaries, yeah. And yeah, we recently hooked him up with Art Center College in Pasadena and got him a year scholarship and a computer and mentorship, and now we send him to a design conference in Marrakech.

So it's a component from the Motorcycle Arts Foundation that my team is especially interested in. It's super fulfilling sending Samuel to Marrakech and seeing him like thrive in a completely new and guy had never [01:30:00] left his hometown. You know, first time in a foreign country, first time doing a Zoom meeting, first time, oh wow.

X, Y, Z, and you know, just life changing, embracing it and you know, we really, we're now like grappling with, okay, how do we raise funds to do more like this towards a good reason, a good purpose. Yeah, totally. And it sounds like you have good people around you. I mean, you just kinda know everyone and have gracefully kind of flowed through all these different worlds.

Must feel a little surreal at times. I'd say 45 years of meditation. I've definitely made me very present minded, so. Mm-hmm. Here I am, there I am. Drives my wife crazy. At times. You're so focused on whatever you're doing. It's like, well that's what I do. Aw, yeah. But that's a great skill. Well, I hope you both have a beautiful day there and the sun comes out for you.

It's lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you. Thank you, [01:31:00] Paul.

Listen to full episode :

Link here to a beautiful story about Paul in Classic Driver.

Read some of Paul's Cycle World articles, including one about his friend Robin Tuluie.

Watch the panel discussion of Electric Revolutionaries here.

Check out the film Impatience that we discuss.

Here's The Sex Machine, the first article written about the experience of having an orgasm while on a motorcycle.

Gestalten's gorgeous books The Ride and The Current (in collaboration with Paul).

Taschen's incredible Ultimate Motorcycle Collection (in collaboration with Paul).

Here is the NPR episode on parking he discusses: How Parking Explains the World.

Watch the following videos to learn more about two extraordinary humans we discuss, Richard Vincent and Samuel Aboagye.

Link here to the Motorcycle Arts Foundation.

And find The Vintangent and Paul on Instagram.