[RideApart] - Born Free 8 Custom Bike Show

[Ninjette Newsbot]

Born Free 8 Custom Bike Show - Oak Canyon Ranch, Irvine, California

It's hard to believe from the size of it, but the Born Free show hasn't even hit its 10th anniversary yet.

I have been to many a car and bike event, but this one is right up there with the annual SEMA convention in Las Vegas when it comes to custom vehicle sensory overload. Everywhere you look there are candy colored, cool, custom bikes, each one better than the last. Having finally been there to see what all the fuss is about, the plan now is to go back and camp out next year.


Normally when I cover an event for RideApart I use an old Pentax digital point and shoot, and my LG G3 cell phone, but I did not feel those would give me the rich detail custom bikes demanded. So, this time I actually reverted back to shooting 35mm film in an SLR; those flairs and overexposures are real, not instagram filters. I could have spent days photographing the bikes there and still missed crucial details on them. I went full hipster.


Oak Canyon is the perfect place for an event like this because it has trees and shade, varying terrain, and a pond. It is like a cross between a fairgrounds and summer camp. The location is about an hour away from anywhere worth mentioning, so it is a good riding distance for sketchy project bikes just barely finished.

Just off the show grounds is a camping area (which typically sells out three months before the show) for the hardcore and long-haul bikers to spend the weekend. You would be surprised at some of the bikes there, which look like they'd hardly make it to the liquor store but display plates from as far afield as Utah and British Columbia.



For many years, Oak Canyon hosted the Hootenanny, where bands like Social Distortion played surrounded by vintage cars, bikes, and vendors. The Born Free show has a similar vibe, though with more emphasis on bikes, and less on the music.

Rhett Rotten and his Wall of Death (just like the one in Eat the Peach) was there putting on a show every hour without fail, and always with a line to get in. Still, there were several bands playing over the weekend, among them the Fryed Brothers serving up rock with a country bent and a fiddle, and all-female AC/DC tribute band Hell's Belles somehow blowing the roof off this open air venue.


At Born Free there are three distinct areas, and five tiers of bikes to geek out over. The lowest tier is the casual showgoer who rides in and has to park in one of the two dirty and dusty lower-class parking lots. But, they are both still full of cool bikes like the twin turbo, twin cam Harley Softail, or the sick CB750 chopper that were ridden in by ordinary showgoers.


Perfect for cold winter riding, the turbos dump the exhaust right by your knees.
Wanna freak everyone out at bike night? Put your kickstand on the other side of your bike.The next tier of coolness is the so-called Grass Pass, which basically lets you ride your bike right inside the show. Of course, everyone wants one, which is why these passes usually sell out two months before the show. With one of these passes you just keep getting waved by security and parking attendants, so the gathered crowds get to see how cool you and your bike are.

Just slightly above those bikes are the multitude of bikes brought in by the vendors, many of which are so awesome they will just leave your jaw hanging open.



Arlen Ness backed up a truck, and unloaded it with a career-spanning collection of bikes
The next tier are the actual show bikes, entered and divided into various categories, such as: best knucklehead, best Japanese, best British, etc. Many of these bikes are on par with the professionally built bikes in the vendor area or the invited builder corral, and are often representative of the next generation of custom builders.

You also find a lot of period-correct, back-in-the-day resurrections in this area, which are always great to see out of the magazine and in the flesh.




Finally, you get to the inner circle, the top tier: the bikes by the invited custom builders. Not only is it an honor to be invited to participate as a builder, these bikes are the only ones in the running for the top prize, which includes a trip with the bike to Japan for the Mooneyes show, and a cash prize.

There were a bunch of over the top bikes there, including a Triumph chopper within an Ed Roth-inspired fiberglass show rod pickup truck, but the best of show was obvious. Kiyo Matsuhiro of Kiyo's Garage built a dual-engined Honda CB750 custom, inspired by the Russ Collins drag racing bikes from the 1970s that was just beyond belief, and blew them all away.





The other thing that I took away from the show, was how many of these Clydesdales had been hopped up to run like a thoroughbred.

The Dyna is a great chassis for what it is, and handles better than you would expect most cruisers to, but some have taken that foundation and run with it. I saw canyon-carving Harleys, turbo land speed record Harleys (185+mph at El Mirage according to the plaque), and supercharged bikes set up for who knows what. It is nice to see that even though some people love the low-end torque, and want to buy American, they still want to go fast and turn and stop like a modern bike.




There are many more pictures, but I only used the best of them here. You can click over to a gallery of nearly 100 on my own Wordpress site here: Born Free 8 - 2016.

I'm always game to go out and look at cool bikes, so drop us a line if you know of a cool show, or race, or other event you think we should cover.

Learn more about Bryan and the rest of RideApart's excellent staff here:*The RideApart Team


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