Darwin Motorcycles Brass Balls Bobbers

Brass Balls w. Indian Powerplus 100 Motor

Like Sucker Punch Sallys, Darwin Motors is another innovate, small custom cycle outfit that's made an international reputation designing and selling high-quality retro-styled bobbers based on Harley-Davidson style 45degree v-twin mills. Last year they branched out into another style theme and won the 2011 AMD championship with their RLX cafe racer based on the new S&S 56degree X-Wedge v-twin motor.

They've got a great Old Skool design sense. Visit their site if you love bobbers.

core77 Design Blog & Website

Jeff Tiedeken's "Gravity Bike" featured at core77

core77 is a popular, long-running site dedicated to the needs and interests of industrial and graphics designers. If you are an industrial designer or graphics designer, definitely bookmark this site, and check in  on their blog from time to time... lots of useful information there about industry events, design schools, and job openings. Lots of feature articles and blog posts about cool products and concepts from around the world.

A core77 blog post about this very minimalist downhill street bike by California aerospace welder and craftsman, Jeff Tiedeken really caught our eye. It's a coaster in the real sense of the word... no crank and gear set, strictly gravity-powered! While you're at it, check out Jeff's blog about his adventures in design and fabrication, Monkey Likes Shiny.

Update:  We just did another design-related post feature the Derestricted website and blog. Some really great content there.

T. Jefferson Parker's Charlie Hood Series

T. Jefferson Parker is a crime novelist who's definitely a cut above most other popular writers in the genre. We especially like his series featuring LA Country Sheriff Charlie Hood. He's just released the fifth in the series, The Jaguar.

The increasingly crazy and violent borderlands of Mexico and the American Southwest, especially Los Angeles, provide the setting. American desperadoes, Mexican drug lords and their henchmen in SoCal, and American lawmen battle for supremacy in this volatile landscape.

An especially fascinating character is the mysterious Mike Flynn, who lends something of a supernatural air to things. Flynn seems to turn up everywhere Charlie goes... at first he appears to be just a fringe character hanging around on the edge of things, but as time goes by he looks more and more like a cunning and subtle agent of chaos who manipulates people and events to keep the pot boiling. He knows things he shouldn't know... he speaks familiarly of people who have been dead and gone for a century and more, and of times and places long since forgotten. Is he a man, a devil, or an angel?

Check out Parker and Charlie Hood.

Sucker Punch Sallys Bobbers

Sucker Punch Sallys "Love" Bobber

Sucker Punch Sallys got its start making bobbers and bobber bike kits back in 2002. Ten years later they are still going strong, even after the tragic death of founder Christian Clayton at the age of 40 a couple of years ago.

Their bikes range from really clean stripped down Old School bobbers like The Traditional to some with what I'd call a more contemporary flash, such as the "Love" model pictured. Yeah, there is a companion bike in a vivid red called "Hate" that features a leaf-spring front end.

Don't need a bike right now? They've also got a line-up of cool apparel (the founders were actually in the motorcycle apparel biz before the started SPS). 

Back Alley Bobbers

Back Alley Bobbers Honda Spirit 750

The folks at Back Alley Bobbers specialize in converting modern Metric Cruisers from Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Suzuki into Old School bobbers.

They currently offer nine build conversions for everything from 250cc Honda Rebels to the Yamaha V-Star 1100.

My personal favorites are those based on the Honda Spirit 750s.

Check 'em out, especially if you've got a Metric Cruiser that you're lookin' to customize. They are in Salt Lake City, but will ship anywhere in the world, they say.

Cafe Racer Magazine

Cafe Racer Mag

Here's one of my favorite motorcycle magazines, Cafe Racer.

I fell in love with cafe racers when I was a kid... still love those old vintage Triumphs, Nortons, Beezers with their clip-ons and solo saddles. I once had the opportunity to ride a borrowed Yamaha RD350-based cafe racer up and down the twisty backroads above Silicon Valley back in the Seventies... that was a hoot, but I still favored the Brit Bikes.

Well, I gotta say, however that this Yamaha Virago-based cafe racer featured on the cover of the latest edition is awesome. It was created by Greg Hageman at his Docs Chops shop in Tampa, FL, though Greg has announced that he's heading back to his native Iowa next year. Take a look at his work, he's got a great talent for making beautiful cafe racers out of the most unlikely bikes, like this Virago here.

Cafe Racer also has Cafe Racer TV on the Discovery Velocity Network. They recently interviewed cafe racer fan Billy Joel.

Update: We just posted about another favorite bike mag you might like, Cycle Source.

        

"Big Ned" Monster V-Twin Total Custom Bike

Mark Walker & Big Ned

Saw this ground-up custom in one of the classic motorcycle mags on the rack at our local supermarket this morning. Phenomenal, mind-boggling. Designed and built from scratch by Australian mechanical genius, Mark Walker. It's called Big Ned. You can see a lot more of Big Ned at the website of Australian blogger "Computech," who's a friend of Mark Walker.

From what I can tell, virtually every bit of this monster was designed, built, and assembled by Walker, especially the engine. This is unlike anything I've ever seen.

How is another entry Computech that includes some early pictures chronicling the birth of Big Ned.

Trophy Queen Automotive-Themed Retro Handbags

GTO Themed Handbag

 Jenny Tanner is a SoCal gal who designs and makes custom handbags, baby bags, and wallets with vintage/retro automotive and motorcycle themes for lovers of rockabilly and Kustom Kulture. She founded Trophy Queen in 2000. We love the themes and the materials, especially the metalflake stuff, like the silver and purple clutch bag shown below.

Jenny also designs and makes one-off custom handbags to order... she's got a pretty cool Evel Knievel-themed one in --- what else? --- red, white and blue shown on her website.

The two bags pictured here a just a small taste of her work... lots of cool stuff there with a tuck-n-roll look, diamond tuck, and other really great retro-cool look. 

 Jenny rides a 1946 Harley, and is working on getting her '34 Ford pickup truck on the road now.

Cool Metalflake Clutch Bag

Alien Prequel "Prometheus" TED Talk Trailer with Guy Pearce

Ridley Scott created this teaser trailer for his upcoming Alien prequel, Prometheus, which is due in theaters in early June. We understand that this is not actually a clip from the movie itself, but a kind of backgrounder to the movie. It features Guy Pearce as "Ted Weyland," CEO of the fictional Weyland Corporation that was responsible for the disastrous mission to the alien spaceship in Alien. It's chilling and fascinating, with Weyland boasting of the glorious future of mankind that Weyland Corp. is designing. Very much a tale of that "pride goeth before a fall," or what the Greeks called hubris, that overreaching pride that calls forth Nemesis... you just know it's not going to end well.

The setting here is a TED Talk in the year 2023. Enjoy...

March 22 Update: We've posted the new Prometheus trailer here. 

The Porsche 911 Design Challenge

1972 Porsche 911E

Porsche and Co.Design magazine have just announced a new design competition that qualifies as cool: Design a product that is "bigger than a purse and smaller than a living room" incorporating three design elements of the classic Porsche 911 and you could win a one-year lease on a brand-new 911 or $20,000, your choice (that's a tough one...). And by the way, it can be anything but a car.

Three gurus of industrial design will judge the entries. Are you game? Check it out:

 Co.Design Porsche 911 Design Challenge

UPDATE: F.A. Porsche, designer of the original 911 of 1963, has just passed away at the age of 76.