I got the call from Sweden on a snowy winter's day in Upstate NY.Henkan, head honcho of Twin Club M.C.'s Custom Bike Show in Norrtelje was on the line. “Yo, TBear, are you planning on coming back to judge our show again this June?”
“Shit yea man, you know I wouldn't miss it” I told him.
“You're gonna stay at the club house again right?”
“Hell yes, with that 3 day 24/7 party going on I won't have too far to fall.” So the die was cast.
Twin Club M.C. has been hosting the biggest and most raucous biker event in all of Scandinavia for 33-years now. Bikers from all over Europe ride in droves to compete and check out bikes from as far away as the U.K., Spain, Holland, Italy, Russia, and Finland. With over 100 acres of land behind their club house, tents start popping up as far as a week in advance of the show on the waterfront in the quaint little sea-side town of Norrtelje about an hours ride North of Stockholm.
It's one of my personal favorite shows. If you're an old gray beard like me, you long for the runs of days gone by where you just show up with your tent strapped to your handle bars, a cutie on the bitch pad and your saddle bags stuffed full of moonshine and beef jerky. No rip-off vendors charging you $5.00 for a bottle of designer water or tents full of bubble wrapped bling-bling for your shiny new Harley. No hotels bending you over for $300 a night for a $30 hotel room. For the Swedish equivalent of a crisp $20 bill, you get into the show, a place to pitch your tent for up to a week, 3 stages of kick ass music all day and night and get this, $1.00 beers!
Damn, I miss the old days here in the States before Discovery's Biker Build-Off and the Turtle Heads gave every asshole with a Gold Card the idea that they too could be hard-core bikers, but I digress.
With well over 500 different styles of bikes entered this year, judging the show was a little overwhelming, especially when you toss into the mix the distractions of the fabled hot Swedish Blonde honeys roaming the rows of innovative hand crafted creations.
American biker culture is over the top across the pond. Seems that everything Yankee made is in high demand on the Swede's priority list and to my great fortune and this even extends to bald, bearded biker photojournalists, a fact that I continue to be eternally grateful for. So with a hottie on each arm, I proceeded to do my best to separate the wheat from the chaff, both bike and babe-wise.
The five member jury consisting of myself, a Swedish biker photojournalist, a highly respected Swedish custom bike painter, a mega-talanted Swedish bike designer/engineer and a British representative of the World Championship of Custom Bike Building show held at Sturgis hunkered down and went over every bike in as much detail as possible.
I personally saw some fabrication and engineering details that I'd never seen before in my long, albeit sometimes checkered career. That's one of the main reasons I have flown over to Sweden's Custom Bike show for the past few years.
It's not your exclusive high-dollar circus sideshow that many of our U.S. events have turned into. You, for one thing, won't see any trailers at this show. It's strictly a ride-in event and the Europeans take this very seriously.
The town of Norrtelje pulls out all the stops to help make this show the wonder that it has become by letting the club hold the show in the town's Societyparken (Peoples-Park) on the sea-side canal and even has put up a considerable chunk of change to erect a temporary pontoon bridges across the canals to help the flow of thousands of people who have discovered and flock to the show every June.
This years winner, a hot Swedish built flat tracker style creation 8-valve custom built honey, walked away with over $10,000 in prizes and expense money to take himself and his bike to the Black Hills of South Dakota to compete in A.M.D. Magazine's “World Championship of Custom Bike Building” to be held in downtown Sturgis where he will compete with the best bikes from the international affiliate events held all over the globe. If you find your self in Sturgis this August and feel like braving your way through the traffic down to Lazelle St., you won't want to miss one of the biggest displays of the worlds finest custom bikes.
–TB
