Let us be the first to admit that some of the streetfighters that we've been seeing out of Germany lately straight scare the sh*t out of us. Look at the bikes on these pages, what with all those spiked seats (if they have seats at all), bodywork with molded-in skulls and teeth and bone and blood and guts and gore, and generally more points, spears and sharp edges than the cutlery isle at Williams-Sonoma. You've got to ask yourself, are these motorcycles or implements of torture? Then there are the, um, "enthusiasts" who build and show these bikes, dressed in camouflage skirts and bondage gear with Technicolor mohawks and all manner of piercings (and those are the dudes who we just described!), and the women dressed in what looked like used trash bags with hair styled by Lawn Boy. Fighterama? Well, let's just say that we're happy to enjoy these continental streetfighter events vicariously from a safe distance of, say, 6000 miles away in the U.S. of A.
We're not exactly sure why it is that when German streetfighter enthusiasts want to celebrate, they do so at events that come to resemble an acid-induced, HR Giger-inspired nightmare (we're certain that historians and social scientists have some interesting theories on that, but we're not touching it with a 10-foot fork tube), but it's a fact, and the wildest and craziest of these events each year is Fighterama, held annually a few kilometers north of Dusseldorf in western Germany. The theme of this massive festival is "100 percent tuning, 100 percent technology and 100 percent action," with the emphasis on the "action," apparently. No mass-produced parts, no "bouncy castles" for the kids, no lame fashion shows, Fighterama promoters promise, just hundreds of sick, one-off custom sportbikes, strippers, fire-breathers, loud punk rock and metal music, stunt shows and anything else that your hooligan heart desires.
This year's show attracted more than 200 exhibitors from all over Europe to show off the latest trends in the streetfighter marketplace and an exclusive custom bike show displaying the maddest specials from the continent, mainly streetfighters but also the occasional drag racer, chopper, WWII-era bombshell with wheels, or pretty much anything else you could imagine.
Stunt shows have increasingly become a part of the Fighterama experience, too, and this year promoters rounded up two of the best stunters in the world to rock the house: 2004 World Stunt Riding Champion Humberto Ribeiro of Portugal and Angyal Zoltan of Hungary, the second-place finisher in this year's European Stunt Riding Championship. Zoltan especially put on a killer show-wheelying around with no front end on his CBR or skitching off the back of a Third-World, two-stroke crapbox bike that looks like it was plucked from a Soviet dumpster, front wheel a few feet in the air, hanging onto the footpegs and running the rear brake and shifter with his hands!
And then there was the after-party, with head-splitting live music, fire spitting and other amateur carnival tricks, and, of course, the Miss Fighterama contest-which would never be confused with a Miss America pageant, unless that pageant was being hosted by Satan in the bowels of hell.
Which, come to think of it, rather resembles the entire Fighterama experience. Like we said, this one's best experienced vicariously, so enjoy the pictures!