New Rise Against

If you haven't downloaded the new Rise Against album, do it!!  This album rocks.  

Los Crazy Chickens

Went to Lucha Vavoom last night at the Mayan.  Los Crazy Chickens rule!!!!!! Best wrestling match of the night.

Manzanar Relocation Center

Here's a shot of 1 of the 3 ponds that were built at Manzanar.  My Grandpa helped to build the  ponds.  When my Grandpa and Grandma later in life bought a house in the San Fernando Valley he built a whole Japanese garden and pond in his backyard.  It was rad for us little kids to run out there and feed all his Koi fish and climb up top of this killer waterfall he made out of stone.  We would spend hours out there playing in his backyard.  Pretty amazing when it was around.

Vince's Dominator

Vince and his WCC Dominator wearing the Joyrides Art Co Blue Dog hat as seen on bikernet.com.  Get your hat at the Joyrides Art Co online store.  www.joyridesartcompany.com.

Street Chopper Ad

New ad I created for Top Shelf Customs in Huntington Beach.  This will be in the upcoming issue of Street Chopper magazine

Bill Edwards and his 56 Mercury

Bill Edwards and his 56 Mercury shot last Friday. I went back on Sunday and did an interview with him on how he got the car and we talked about other things he has done in his life.  From the wild 60's to getting up and going surfing in the old days to selling parts at the swap meets. I will be editing the photos and putting together the interview and will get it up on the blog soon. Thanks Bill for letting me and my wife come to your home and shoot your beautiful car.

Joyrides Art Co. Womens Jersey

Joyrides Art Co womens jersey.  Come get yours.  Denise got hers.  www.joyridesartcompany.com online store.

Model: Denise

Car: 56 Mercury - Owner: Bill Edwards

I will be posting more shots of the car along with an interview with Bill Edwards.  There will also be more shots of Denise from tonights photoshoot coming soon.

Flyin Dutchman

One of the photographer's that inspires me to shoot.  Check out his blog at www.fdphoto.blogspot.com.

John Edwards Panhead

For those of you coming over from the Church Of Choppers link for the John Edwards Panhead story.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the feature.  Thanks Nelson for posting it up on COC.

DAVI KICHI Magazine

Inside they got a article on the LA Calendar show and a small blurb about Top Shelf Customs.

Thanks Eddie for the mag.

Vince's Dominator

Submitted by Vince Wolfe

West Coast Chopper 200 Rear Dominator Frame.  Bike was built by Vince.  124" S&S motor with a S&S  5 speed Transmission, Primo Open Primary, Jesse James Style 53's wheels, brembo hand controls, PM brakes, WCC exhaust, WCC FTW mid controls.

Paint is House of Colors Silver Metal Flake base with candy purple & black race stripe down the center, pinstriped in white with black pinstripe around the silver. Paint job was done to match the L.A. Kings colors with the Crown Logo.

Vince representing Joyrides Art Company.  Thanks for the support Vince.

Bossley Cycles Pt 2

A few more shots from the photoshoot on Sunday.

Brawny Built

On Sunday I went over to Brandon's to shoot the bike he built for Bossley Cycles.   Eddie from Bossley Cycle was there to pick it up from Brandon. Before he took it home we drove down to Long Beach Veterans stadium to get some shots of it.

Red Asphalt Angel WIngs Edition T's

New Angel Wings T-shirts.  The Red Asphalt edition.  These are regular fit, heavy weight t's. They will be available on the Joyrides Art Co. online store soon.  We are in the middle of updating the site with an all new Joyrides Showcase, new photos in the gallery section and of course a new t-shirt ready to buy.

Mi Esposa Hermosa Pt 2

A few more shots from Sundays photoshoot of my wife, Elizabeth.

John Edwards Panhead Pt 4

The final installment of John Edwards Panhead.

I had actually bought the bike from Nelson when he worked at Harley Davidson. He went halves on it with a buddy of his. The bike was kind of a funky deal. Funky king and queen seat with a big 5 gallon tank. Basically when I bought it from Nelson I kept the engine, trans and frame. That was maybe 6 years ago. I then ended up trading it for the full dress ‘57 that I still have in the garage.

I am currently reworking that one now. I ended getting it back and I redid it. It took me about 8 months to redo everything and I rode it for the first time in April.

I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the bike, a little taller sissy bar, and lots of chrome, something real simple and to the point. I wanted to let the little accoutrements grab your eye and speak for it self. At first I was going to do a lot of tin stuff and not a lot of aluminum stuff. It turned out I did a lot of aluminum stuff like polished wheels, valve cover, primary cover and just a lot of little shit.
All in all John Edward’s Panhead is one beautiful piece of machinery.

Hope you enjoyed this feature on John Edwards and his '52 Panhead.

Thank you to John and his Fiance, Fawn for letting us come to your house and do this feature.

John Edwards Panhead Pt. 3

The third installment on John Edwards Panhead.  Today's post John talks about the build. Enjoy.

It is a ‘52 Panhead with a late ‘54 to ’57 straight leg frame with LOTS of modifications done to it. It has a molded Peanut tank, an old leather seat and also a Custom Cycle Engineering dish pans, bird deflector and foot pegs. The foot pegs are rare and hard to find. I got one from Nelson Kanno, “Thanks Nelson”, and the other from Tim Wallingford.

It has stomper brakes like they used in the bay area, early sixties flavor ripple pipes and Magneto, Stelling risers and bars. The Stelling risers were designed for stock springer front top clamps. So if a guy fell and bent the bars, you could chop them off and put on another set of bars. There is a chromed ribbed English rear fender and WM0 Front wheel. Those are kind of sought after. I got the wheels from Johnny Chop. I haven’t seen any on a bike except mine and one other guy I know. Chica had helped out a lot on the bike. He did the wiring and a lot of the welding.

We made the pipes together and I did most of the fabrication. Brawny did the tank. It has a 1935 VL front end that I bought off of Jeff Decker’s dad Allen, years ago. The paint is a special mix to make the lavender color. I had help with the search for parts from Mike D.

Tomorrow's post will have the final part of the story as told by John Edwards and some riding shots from the photo session.

John Edwards Panhead Pt 2

More shots of John's Panhead. The story behind the building of the bike as told by John Edwards will be posted tomorrow along with more shots.

Mi Esposa Hermosa

These are pics I took of my beautiful wife Elizabeth on Sunday afternoon.  If you're interested in booking a photoshoot, visit us at www.joyridesartcompany.com or give us a shout at 562-252-6074.  Christmas is coming!

John Edwards Panhead

So I finally had the opportunity to meet John Edwards and shoot his 1952 Panhead at his house in Garden Grove, CA. I first saw his bike at the Mooneyes BBQ party a few months back. I had taken photos of it in the parking lot and sent the pics over to Nelson Kanno. I knew Nelson would know who owned the bike. “That’s John Edwards’s bike, everyone loves that one.” I can see why. Nelson offered to give John a call for me, but I got tied up with other projects so I was not able to follow up right away.

A few months past and I was at Brandon Holstein’s of “Brawny Built” shooting his “Rusty Nail” bike and I was asking him questions about it. Brandon told me that John had done the paint job for it. That got me back on track of trying to hook up with John. Brandon made a call to John and let him know I was interested in shooting his bike. I then gave John a call and set up a day and time to meet.

My wife Liz and I drove down to John’s house in Garden Grove and met him and his fiancée, Fawn. John was either in the middle of painting or just finishing but greeted us and offered us drinks. We looked at the bike and John started getting into the details of how it came to be and then showed me some of the other projects he has going on in his garage.

Fawn had turned on her laptop to show us bikes and cars that John had painted in the past. Turns out he painted the roof top on my old ‘64 SS Impala that I had sold to one of his friends a few years back. You can also see John’s work in the newest “Horse” mag in the article that I shot of Denver Dan’s “Chainsaw” motorcycle.

After we were done looking at some of his amazing work, I started shooting his Panhead.

I will be posting more photos throughout the week along the story behind the build as told to me by John Edwards.  

Foundry Moto

Check em out.

Body Glove Product Shoot

Did a photoshoot today with the crew of Body Glove at VP of Marketing Scott Daley's house.  The mission was to shoot Body Glove's Magnum wetsuit and to convey how much stretch and flexibility is in the suit.  On the way to the shoot I stopped at the market to get a variety of things for the kids to sling shot out of the suit.  Fruits, eggs and water balloons.  When I got there and we started to figure out what we wanted to do, Scott Daley suggested to shoot his own son out of the suit.  So we tried.

Attemp 1.  Although it was a good idea,  didn't really get the altitude we wanted.  So onto idea 2.

Loaded it up with a watermelon.  It did shoot it once they positioned it right.  But still not feeling it.

Idea 3.  Hey let's try to hang Jack from the tree.  Didn't quite work, but check out the stretch in the arms.

Last idea.  Drive down to the beach and launch water balloons.  Now that I got some shots to work with I got to go into the office tomorrow to see if this will work or  not.  My deadline to submit the ad is tomorrow too.  Nothing like going up against a deadline.  Look  at next months Transworld Surf to see if we run the ad or not.

Sugar Ray

More pictures from Paramount Rocks concert. Sugar Ray was the headliner that night. First time I saw them live and they were actually pretty entertaining.

Rodney Sheppard

Murphy Karges

Mark McGrath

Rodney Sheppard and Murphy Karges

Another Rare CFL Frame

Irish Rich, of Shamrock Fabrication, also sent me these pics of this very rare West Coast Choppers CFL frame.  He has also has a single downtube frame that Jesse and Mark Nelson built for him.  It's 1/2" up, 1" out, and it has a 35 degree rake.  Very short frame.  What makes this frame unique, is that not only is it a single downtube, it also has a curved backbone, with a spiderweb gusset. There were only 2 made.  It was built in Jan of 2005 and has the original special order invoice, and the original MSO signed by Pearl while she was still the office manager at WCC.

Turns out Irish Rich is a die hard Colorado Av's fan.  We'll have to see how the Kings do against them this year.  I can't talk crap about his team because they have 2 Stanley Cups and the Kings NONE!!!!! There were even comments in papers that the Kings are like the Clippers of hockey..ouch that hurt even more!!!  Hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel and the Kings start kicking some ass.