A Las Vegas craps dealer, by the name of Gerard stopped by recently looking for a motorcycle seat. He informed me that he needed a special seat to finish off the custom build. He thrust a well-made, heavy, steel pan into my hands.
“It’s gotta be thin.” He stated.
“Okay. It aint my nuts that are gonna be launched up the back of my throat.” I thought to myself. “Thin it is.”
He brought out a piece of artwork. It was a cartoon drawing of a guy about to smash a squirrel with a rock. Okay.
“This is the artwork I want on it, all of it. My dad drew this back in the fifties.” He declared proudly.
“Okay. I can make that fit.” I assured him.
“I’m not finished.” He vanished from sight briefly, reappearing with a large frame. On inspection, I saw it contained a Vargas print.
“She needs to be on it too, but I want her on a lounge chair, and facing the opposite direction.” Joe’s eyebrows rose.
“That would make her pretty small.” I said. “I couldn’t reproduce her as detailed as she is now, that’s a lot to put on a seat.”
“I’m not done.” He said, raising his hand to silence me. “You need to take out the squirrel, and replace him with a pair of eyes, like someone’s spying through the fence. I want Indian Larry’s logo on the house next door, coz this bike is going to be a tribute to him. So I want it to look like Indian Larry’s looking through the fence.”
“Oh!” I said enlightened.
“Then,” he continued, “I want you put a Maltese cross at the top, with a number 13 on it.”
“It won’t fit.” Joe, my ol' man said, shaking his head.
“And I want my parents’ initials,” he went on, ignoring Joe, “with R.I.P in between them at the bottom.”
“That’s too much shit on there. It’s gonna be too busy.” Joe voiced his opinion from the corner.
“Anything else?” I asked, not thinking for a minute that there possibly could be.
“Yeah, if you can fit a swimming pool in there somewhere, that would be great.”
“A f**king swimming pool?” gasped Joe. I thought he was about to choke.
“And if you can put the squirrel back in the picture, maybe up the tree, that would be great.”
“What the f**k!” Joe blurted. “There’s no way she’s getting all that shit on a seat.”
As all women know, when your old man says you can’t do something, you’re damn well doing it!“Let me draw it up.” I said.
This one was a challenge. I knew there was a lot of sentiment involved with this seat, so I didn’t want to screw it up. I wanted to get it as close to the picture he had in his head as possible. It had to flow as though we had just cut it out of the Sunday paper comic strip.
Sometimes when you try to do a whimsical picture it ends up looking like it was drawn or tooled badly, because cartoon characters are never proportionate. Nobody knows that it is just like the original piece, because they are not familiar with the character. Everyone recognizes Rat Fink immediately whether it’s a good job or not.
A couple of weeks later, Gerard came over to see the finished seat and pick out a color. I normally dye my seats before assembly but seeing as Gerard had no clue what color he wanted I had to wait.
“I want it the color of your hair.” He decided.
“What color’s that?” I wanted to know. I have been told I’m a redhead, a strawberry blonde, even a blonde.
“I don’t know.” He replied. “Whatever color your hair is.”
“You’re not cutting your hair for this guy. No way.” Joe was adamant.
“Just cut me off a piece about an inch.” I said offering him the scissors. “Cut it from the back, underneath.”
Joe refused to be of any help. So when he went out, I called in the big guns, my mother-in-law, Rose. She was only too happy to take a big pair of shears to my head. She handed me a tuft of hair about four inches long.
“I said an inch!” I cried in despair.
“That’s about an inch.” She replied.
“No wonder there’s no f**king pleasing you!” I said returning to my workroom.
You cannot match the exact color of human hair. It is extremely porous. It will absorb light. It will reflect light. Depending on where you’re standing at the time the color looks totally different. That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it! I think I got the color close. It’s not an exact science.
As it worked out, Gerard was thrilled with the end result. It was exactly what he had envisioned. That’s what he told me anyway. He didn’t throw it at me, and he paid straight away, so I have a tendency to believe him. This is probably my favorite seat. I like the seats to have a theme, or some kind of story or meaning to them and this one had that for sure.
When Gerard is done he has promised to give me pictures of the completed bike for Bikernet.com. Time will tell and shit will smell, right?
Connection:
Shirley Zanelli
Bad Ass Hand Tooled Motorcycle Seats
(702) 325-3532
Shirley@badassseats.com
www.badassseats.com
