Long Beach Ultimate Builder Bikernet Editor’s Choice Winner
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From Top Dead Center in Oxnard, CA
By Bandit with photos by Peter Linney
4/12/2013
I’ve been scrambling from project to project, but this feature always lingered in the back of my mind, like it haunted me. I picked it as the Long Beach Ultimate Builder Bikernet Editor’s Choice winner, and Peter Linney immediately shot it for a feature, and then he wanted his payment. I didn’t like the way he shot this bike, but I was also very aware how difficult a twisted chrome frame is to photograph under any conditions.
Freelance magazine contributors were once very proud to see their material featured, but since the economy tanked and the Internet drove magazines to cut budgets, these poor bastards struggle to get paid at all. Plus the advent of digital cameras and computers upped the competition.
We do our best for moto-journalists here at the Bikernet Headquarters. Even when time is tough, we try to pay a handful of talented journalists, who contribute to our ever-growing content base. Anyway, this feature hung around and I struggled for the time to investigate the twisted story. Another project was always in the way.
I didn’t realize the mountain of substance behind the twisted chromed frame, but found out once I picked up the phone. I met a couple of the builders at the show, and for a minute we discussed twisting metal, since I had recently scavenged through a wrought iron metal yard, where I bought a massive plumber’s pipe threader. This shop, Coast Welding, bolted these units to the tops of steel tables and used them to twist square stock for wrought iron gates. So, I was intrigued when I saw this frame… Read the entire article.
