The state license plates celebrate "The Sunshine State," but we're thinking that Florida--and the Orlando area in particular--should consider changing its motto to the "The Sportbike State"
Even though Super Streetbike's corporate offices are technically located 2500 miles to the west in Los Angeles, the magazine is frequently accused of having a Florida bias because so many of the custom bikes we feature, the stunters we profile and the sportbike-centric events we cover originate in the Sunshine State. This isn't so much a bias on our part as it is a reflection of Florida's status as the center of the extreme sportbike universe. The nation's first and best custom sportbike shops, the biggest motorcycle events (including Bike Week, Biketoberfest and, recently, Stuntwars) and the nation's best stunters all reign in Florida. Owing to the unique combination of fantastic weather, dull roads with no curves or other discernible terrain to distract you and an extraordinarily high concentration of motorcyclists, the stretched-and-slammed custom sportbike culture and stunt scenes make Orlando a sportbike hotbed.
We headed down to O-Town to spend a few days checking out what the local scene had to offer. Our guide for this journey was our good friend "Vertical" Joe Dryden--a well-known stunter/custom bike shop veteran who felt the pull of Florida and relocated to Orlando a few years ago, leaving behind his home state of Maine. Dryden originally planned to stay for the winter to train, but he ended up liking things so much that he never left. Who better, then, to show us around, to give us the nickel tour of Orlando's finest bike nights and secret stunt spots, hot custom bike shops and even a local charity stunt show? Here's the town of O, according to Joe.
Stunt City, USA
If you're going to discuss the bike scene in Orlando, you've got to start with the stunters. After orange juice and molded-foam mouse ears, Orlando's most notable export might just be straight-nasty sportbike stunters. Orlando is like a parallel universe populated by humans with a special stunt gene. The stunt talent pool there is exceptionally deep, so much so that even the most average stunter in O-Town will make the best local heroes in other states look like chumps. As a result, it can be amazingly hard for anyone to stand out in Orlando. Still they do, and some of the best stunters in the nation can be found in Orlando on any Wednesday, as it just so happens...
During the time of year when riders in other parts of the country have their bikes put up in the garage collecting dust, riders in Orlando are still able to hit the stunt spot every week so their skills never get rusty. Our meet-up with the Orlando stunt scenesters began with the bike night that happens every Wednesday night at the Hooters in Casselberry. It was there that we met up with Dryden and his riding buddies Chris Theis and Joe Yerardi, along with roughly 400 other motorcycle enthusiasts who crowded the restaurant's oversized parking lot that night. The Casselberry crew knows how to throw a bike night. In addition to the hundreds of bikes (mostly sportbikes, along with a few choppers and Harleys) to hold our attention, there were also raffles with prizes from local businesses and bumpin' music provided by the DJs of Underground Sound, which gave a definite party vibe to the event.
Strolling through the restaurant's parking lot early in the evening, we got a good eyeful of the types of bikes that cruise the Orlando area. Everything from the bone-stock crotch rockets to race-ready lowered-and-stretched drag bikes were on the spot, as well as a bunch of barely legal stunt bikes complete with scraped-up 12-bars that we would later follow to a practice spot after the action in the lot quieted down. The stunt crowd swelled as the night wore on, including the addition of a group riders from Tampa Bay. They make the one-hour ride to Casselberry semi-regularly, they tell us, because the scene is much better than their own local bike night.
As the night wore on and action in the parking lot started to wither, we headed out the practice spot, following a group of about a dozen stunters who seemed to only put the front wheel down for stop lights. The spot we ended up at was dubbed "Port-a-Potty" (we didn't hear how it got the name, nor did we ask). The vast majority of the riders there were riding just for fun--most Orlando riders aren't into the competition aspect of the sport, they're just into riding for themselves and hanging out with friends.
Orlando's best--including Gary Hefferan, Willy "Suicidl" Wintle, Steve Atkins, Mark "T-Neck" Martinek, James "huRricane" Atkins, plus Colton "Colt" Ralston from Ft. Lauderdale--were tearing up the spot that night, not stopping for anything. When Hefferan's brake-caliper anchor bolts broke on one side, he just zip-tied the errant caliper off to the fork leg and carried on, practicing "one-caliper" stoppies. Just playing around, Hefferan showed us how it's done, doing froggy circles with the throttle pinned and the bike leaned over so far it looked like he was going to scrape his MXD cage on the ground. Steve Atkins was breaking in his brand-new Kawasaki 636 that night--the bike still had temporary paper plates on it--but that wasn't stopping him from scraping the underseat exhaust and rocking fast circles with stock gears and no cage.
The inevitable squid passes (one-handed rev-limiter sit-downs, low-flying, toes-to-the-ground spreaders) were hilariously bad; hilariously good was the impromptu stoppie contest between Ralston and Hefferan on a 50cc Yamaha Zuma scooter that closed the night. They were easily rolling more than 100 feet on the slightly modified scooter, and Ralston told us his best Zuma stoppie clocks in at around 150 feet. Just another Wednesday night at the Orlando stunt spot
Half-Assed Incorporated
Just like our boy Dryden, Mark Weeks is another Northern-state expat who now calls Orlando home. Originally from Minnesota, Weeks transplanted himself to Florida after college to open his own business customizing boats only to find the market was saturated. "I moved down to Florida to start manufacturing and distributing boat towers and other accessories that dealt with boats, but there wasn't room here for another business like that," Weeks says. Instead of returning to the land of ice and snow, Weeks identified an opportunity in another favorite industry--motorcycles--and took a leap and opened a motorcycle parts and accessories shop with the ironic name "Half-Assed Incorporated," better known to us as H.A.I Bike Shop.
"H.A.I. Bike Shop came about after I got annoyed and weary of not being able to find what I was looking for at the local dealerships," Weeks tells us. "When I eventually did find what I was looking for, it was at a huge markup. I figured if I was having these problems, then there were most likely others in the same boat, so I saw an opportunity to build a better bike shop." Weeks started off with a small store and an equally small inventory, but thanks to very competitive prices and excellent service, business grew rapidly. Now in its second year, H.A.I. has doubled in size both in terms of square feet and parts offered--everything from helmets, clothing and tires to swingarm extensions, exhausts and an extensive selection of parts for stunt bikes. "We started off with only five racks of merchandise, half of it for dirt bikes, and now we've got a full showroom and it's almost all sportbike products." H.A.I currently operates with a staff of three: Weeks, plus stunters Chris Theis and Dryden (who works there part-time).
Much of H.A.I.'s success and credibility in Orlando has come from Weeks' readiness to embrace the stunt scene (as evidenced by his employee roster). He knew getting his shop's name out in public by word of mouth would be a crucial form of advertising and supporting stunt riders is a great way to do this. Laughed out of most traditional shops, stunters will be very loyal to--and vocal about--any shop that goes out of their way to legitimately earn their business. "I knew about stunt riding before I moved to Florida," Weeks says. "When I opened the bike shop, I knew sponsoring riders would be a good way to market the shop. The first person I sponsored was Hefferan. He was the first person I came across who had a 12-bar." Since then, H.A.I. has added eight more riders to the roster, and it now sponsors nine riders total, some of them the biggest names in the sport. In addition to Hefferan, H.A.I. also supports Digidy and Rick Payne from PureBred Riders, Kyle Woods, Dryden, Theis, Aaron and Jacob Burnelle from Geared Up and the young stunter, Aaron Colton. H.A.I also supports lesser riders just by stocking parts that can be practically impossible to find in other markets. Whether it's a crash cage, handbrake setup or a large rear sprocket, H.A.I. has it in stock and on the shelf and, just as important, has a staff who knows how to get it set up for you.
H.A.I. is also working with manufacturers to get parts made specifically for stunters. "We worked with Two Brothers on an exhaust pipe made for stunters that is shorter than a stock pipe so it won't scrape during wheelies," Weeks reports. For those of you who don't live near Orlando, H.A.I. plans to have an online store up and running (www.haibikeshop.com) by press time. "We've been working on the online store for about a year now, it is now in its final stages and should be launching in a few weeks." But as convenient as an online shop is, it doesn't compare to having it in your backyard. Just having a resource such as this available to local stunters sets the city of Orlando apart from others.
The Original Innovators
Of course, you can't talk about Orlando-area shops without including Nick Anglada's world-famous Custom Sportbike Concepts, which is well known to readers of this magazine for the numerous trendsetting custom sportbikes that have rolled out of that shop in recent years. Widely regarded as the inventors of the fat-tire sportbike, CSC has done the same thing for the custom bike set that H.A.I. is doing for Florida-stunters right now. The primary reason you see so many stretched-and-slammed, chromed-out and candy-painted sportbikes in Florida is the CSC shop has been active in building bikes and leading by example, inspiring so many sportbike owners in Florida and beyond to adopt the pro-street stance.
Although CSC was originally launched in Anglada's one-car garage in Texas back in `98, he soon relocated to the Orlando area (the shop is located in the suburb of Winter Garden), and the business is now more Florida than Flipper. "Most of my business was coming from the Southeast, Florida in particular, so it only made sense to relocate."
The company roster counts five full-time employees (including well-known Team Xtreem member Adam Chumita--cripes, you can't turn around in Orlando without tripping over a name stunter) and turns out around a dozen full-custom bikes a year and more chrome and billet bolt-on goodies than you could possibly count, delivered all around the world via their web site, www.18889CHROME.com. Lately, CSC has become the go-to shop for theme bikes built to promote major manufacturers, such as the radical Hayabusa it built for BASF to display at last year's SEMA show.
CSC is the source for some of the sickest sportbike mods available, like its trendsetting single-sided swingarm that houses a massive 300mm tire--typical of the custom sportbike innovations currently coming out of Orlando. "The single-sided swingarm was the first thing we collaborated on with the guys from Hickman Machine," Anglada tells us. "We wanted to do it right, so it took almost two years of designing and testing to get it the way we wanted."
Anglada and the rest of the guys at CSC aim to keep Orlando at the center of the map for custom sportbike culture by continuing to push the envelope with evermore outrageous and innovative custom sportbikes. Anglada wasn't offering any previews, but he assures us that his next bike is going to be a masterpiece. "I'm not holding anything back on the next build," he says. "Everything is going to be custom, it will be the most expensive bike we have built to date." With that said, we'll take Anglada's word and look forward to seeing the finished project soon--hopefully on the pages of this magazine.
The United Church of Stunting
The final stop before we blew out of O-Town after our extended weekend was a small stunt exhibition held in conjunction with an annual "bike blessing" event at the Living Water Fellowship Church in Kissimmee, Florida. The local HOG brigade rolled up to have their Softails and Fat Boys blessed by the priest and then, on the other side of the parking lot, tested their faith by watching Vertical Joe, "T-Ice" Theis, Exefer and Aaron Colton (visiting from Minnesota) commit all manner of sins against sportbikes during their stunt show.
For most of the church's parishioners, watching a stunt show like this was a new experience. Seeing the expressions on the faces of the on-looking parents and children was priceless. "Riding at events like these is where it's at," Dryden says. "I'd much rather do shows like this than competitions." After hanging out for the remainder of the afternoon, it is easy to see why. The riders weren't under any pressure to perform; it was all for fun and just to put a smile on the crowd's faces. And the crowd was feeling it for sure--we're guessing more than a few of those kids in the crowd underwent a conversion to the sportbike faith that afternoon at the Living Water. We know they'll find plenty of fellow worshippers in nearby Orlando who share their newfound faith, out here in the center of the Sportbike State.