Have I used up my 15 minutes yet?
The Stinger and I are featured with our bikes in the “Custom Dojo” section of the Jan. 2006 issue of Mr. Bike.
(I’m on the bottom left with my Softail, Stinger’s on the bottom right with his Zephyr.)
Not the most flattering pictures, but the bikes look cool, which is what’s important, right?
This is far from the first time we’ve been in Japanese biker mags, and far from the biggest feature we’ve been in. What’s unusal about this time is that it had nothing to do with this site. A reporter from Mr. Bike had come to the Club SPLENDOR Hirayu Camp knowing that there would be plenty of custom bikes to take pictures of, and getting gaijin was just an exta bonus. The others on that page are friends from SPLENDOR, including the Stinger’s lovely wife Yuka.
Having this site has brought us a lot of attention over the years, from TV appearances both on Japanese TV and on BBC cable’s “Mary Anne’s Bikes”, to several magazine articles about us, and we even ended up writing an essay for the Japanese Harley mag Vibes. The shots we use on our top page and our about page were from a photoshoot for a Vibes article.
The best thing has been getting mail from bikers all over the world. Just yesterday I got an email from a guy in Brazil politely requesting that I ship him some official Gaijin Bikers in Japan decals (which don’t exist, of course. Is there really a market for Gaijin Bikers merch?) There are also strange things like when some guy linked to us a few weeks ago with only the cryptic comment “Hmmm…” I can only assume he was relating us to his previous post about “dasai gaijin” and calling us deeply uncool, but I can’t really get angry at a guy who’s been touched by the noodly appendage.
It’s also always nice to go to rallies and have bikers we’ve never met treat us like longtime friends because they feel like they know us from the site.
It’s a lot more attention than we deserve for simply living our chosen lifestyle in a country we love, but it’s damn good for the ego.
雑誌にのったんだぁ～！
早速本屋で探してみるねぇ～
Comment by mad — December 7, 2005 @ 10:22 am
mad, ありがとう!
ほぼ全員(YOSもオーエンの嫁の由佳も)変な顔で写ってるけど、バイクはいい感じに写ってるから嬉しいんだ。立ち読みでもしてね。
Comment by Big Ben — December 7, 2005 @ 1:12 pm
こだわりのカスタム・ポイントって質問されて困ったんだけど、どんな感じに書いてくれたんかな。ほとんど15年間、壊れたパーツを社外品に換えてきただけ、みたいな感じだしなー。
立ち読みしてみよっと。＜買えってか？（笑）
Comment by YOS — December 7, 2005 @ 6:21 pm
YOS、「カスタムというより、壊れたところを直すだけです」と(標準語のですます調になっている以外に)殆どそのままだね。
グラピアアイドルのYOSは、このぐらいじゃ買わないかぁ。
Comment by Big Ben — December 7, 2005 @ 6:34 pm
BENのUPしてくれた写真、拡大して見れたよ。
ワシ首に手ぬぐい姿でカッチョ悪いな…。
「カスタムというより、壊れたところを直すだけです」とまで言い切ったっけなあ…。年中壊れてるみたいだよな。（笑）まあ、みんなフキダシのコメントはシンプルなのね。
まあ、実際この帰り道にちょっと壊れたんだけどさー。
Comment by YOS — December 8, 2005 @ 1:37 am
やれやれ～、いくら取材されても普通の顔を中々写してもらえないな～（笑）。ま、景色とバイクは絵になるけど。しかし、同じ色の本物のZと並べて写るのはちょっと申し訳ない気分？
Comment by The Stinger (オーエン) — December 8, 2005 @ 4:49 pm
News cycle
Riding Sun reader Big Ben (who runs the popular gaijinbikers.com website) and his Harley-Davidson Softail appear in the January 2006 issue of Japan’s Mr. Bike magazine. And, Ben
Trackback by Riding Sun — December 8, 2005 @ 11:50 pm
[…] Back in 2001, we got an email from some folks at the BBC, saying they were producing a TV program about global biker culture called Mary Anne’s Bikes, and wanted to do a feature on us (another benefit of having a website back when that was still relatively unusual). We got a bunch of our friends together and rode around Tokyo with their film crew, causing major congestion on the Shuto expressway in the process, and got some sweet shots. Since I’m on a Google Video kick right now, I’ve uploaded the clip. This is back when I had no hair and my bike still had short forks, Owen was still single, and we were both noticeably younger than we are now. Thanks once again to professional editing and a kickass voiceover by Mary Anne Hobbs, we come off looking a good deal less dorky than we were in real life. […]
Pingback by Gaijin Bikers in Japan » Mary Anne’s Bikes — March 15, 2006 @ 12:57 pm