Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118161
California Cycle Continued from page 40 OUR LAST STOP IS ACROSS TOWN AT THE STUDIO of one of Kimura's contemporaries, a designer with a similar bent, if significantly different style. We cross the dry L.A. River and dead end in another industrial district – where amid high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire and rusting corrugated metal is a structure unusually polished for a warehouse, neatly painted in an understated grey, with a charcoal rollup gate and red accent door. Clean-cut and in his late thirties, Ian Barry comes out front to meet us. Barry founded Falcon Motorcycles about eight years after quitting his job as a programmer and setting up a tent in a friend's driveway (that was his workshop; he lived in another tent in the backyard). Since then, his custom bikes have met with enough success that he is now housed in this appropriately epic warehouse space in east L.A. Stepping off the street and inside is like stepping into the pages of Dwell magazine. Where Kimura's workshop is a dark, organic warren of bike parts, tools and machinery, Barry's is bright with high ceilings and two-and-a-half metre windows that pivot to access breeze and garden, an oasis of greenery in a savannah of concrete. Inspiration lines the walls, from art deco posters to line drawings of plants. But it's quickly apparent that real work goes on here. As with Kimura's garage, there are bikes in various states of production and, on the wide slats of a wood-floor section, several finished works. We start with the first in Barry's Concept 10 collection, The Bullet – a glossy boardtrack racer representing thousands of hours of labour, almost every part custom fabricated or reworked. Snapped up by film and TV actor Jason Lee (star of My Name Is Earl), the bike launched Barry's career as a builder by winning the Custom Award at the 2008 Legend of the Motorcycle Concours in Half Moon Bay. The Bullet's frame and engine are from a 1950 Triumph Thunderbird, the same model and year as Marlon Brando's bike in The Wild One, which gets us talking about where Mark and I started 10 days ago. As it turns out, Barry grew up in Santa Cruz and is familiar with Zero Motorcycles. To my surprise, for someone so obsessed with bikes created before he was born, he's also keen to get out and test drive an electric model. "I like what they're doing. I think it's great," he says. "Anybody who has a problem with the idea of an electric bike is just wrapped up in nostalgia. It's a giant leap if it creates a betterperforming, better-handling machine." I ask if he'd drop an electric engine into one of his vintage frames, like musician Neil Young putting an electric engine into his 1959 Lincoln Continental. "I wouldn't do it," he says, shaking his head. But he does explain what he is hoping to do with electric power. With his Concept 10 collection, he's making one each of the major British marks (Velocette, Ariel, Norton, AJS, BSA, Rudge, Brough, Vincent and the two Triumphs he's already built) in order to learn everything he can about traditional fabrication techniques. Hopefully, "that will then get carried forward into developing a chassis around an electric engine. But I won't use an old bike," he says, "I'll start from scratch." We thought we were making a one-way trip by motorcycle through California. In the end, it seems, we've made a loop. Building super bikes, with B.C.'s world-champion custom designer: www.bcaa.com/champ Y For maps, TripTiks, TourBooks, travel tips and Members-only California savings: www.bcaa.com/ california More travel info at visitcalifornia.com marketplace Your One-Stop Guide to Travelling & Leisure north america hawaii TO ADVERTISE IN MARKETPLACE , PLEASE CONTACT REBECCA LEGGE AT 604.299.7311 p48-49_HotTopics.indd 48 8/17/11 12:26:39 PM