Occasion Report: Selecting Favorites on the 2023 Handbuilt Present

Three days of stay music, artwork and over 150 handbuilt bikes and customized automobiles—it undoubtedly took a bit to get our you-know-what collectively after a enjoyable weekend in Austin. Its eighth 12 months operating, Revival Cycle’s Handbuilt Motorbike Present is without doubt one of the most numerous motorbike occasions round, to not point out critical sensory overload.

Citing an absence of connectivity in our fashionable digital world, Revival Cycles held the primary Handbuilt Motorbike Present in 2014 with the aim of getting individuals out to understand craftsmanship in customized bikes. The present has grow to be an enormous attraction since, and Revival estimates that roughly 20,000 individuals attended over the course of the weekend. The 100,000 sq-ft Austin American Statesman is the middle of the occasion, which supplies you loads of respiration room to understand what’s on show.

It’s a fairly immersive expertise, and the crew at Revival does an incredible job making a setting that evokes you to dig into the main points of each customized bike. You’ll discover all the things from conventional choppers, to cutting-edge road bikes and basic cafes on the present, with each being chosen for its distinctive model of handcrafted character.

After you are taking within the static leisure, the Ives Brothers’ Wall of Dying present is one thing you need to see in particular person. The place else do you get to throw $1 payments at guys driving bikes and go-karts round a vertical pit? And as at all times, the present coincides with the MotoGP occasion on the Circuit of the Americas to fill your want for pace.

This 12 months’s present introduced extra of the nice issues we’ve come to count on from Revival, together with stay music. 15 or so bands performed all through the weekend, which is unquestionably greater than earlier years. It was additionally an enormous 12 months for BMW Motorrad, because the model is celebrating 100 years of constructing bikes. Not solely was BMW one of many present’s greatest sponsors, however in addition they introduced a various fleet of customized bikes to show.

However for us, the spotlight of the weekend was being chosen to offer three awards for finest design, finest paint and better of present. Selecting favorites out of a pool of 150 superior bikes was like making an attempt to select a favourite youngster, however we finally we hashed out three winners.

For finest design, it was arduous to beat Rick Dozer’s Harley board tracker with a handbuilt tank, entrance finish and aluminum body. Eli Carver introduced residence finest paint with an attention-grabbing BMW cafe that screamed 1972. Helmut Siepman by no means skimps on particulars, and his BMW bobber named Brunhilde was our decide for finest in present. Keep tuned, as we’ll be profiling all three of our winners in upcoming options.

Photographs courtesy of Revival Cycles and Ricky Casado