Building a Better Bike

摘要

Every day, in a nondescript, sun-beaten warehouse 15 minutes outside of Austin, you'll find a handful of foot-long beards and tattoos so bad they're excellent. The guys at Revival Cycles weld metal and pound leather with the kind of grit you could stick in your jaw and chew. The crew creates composite motorcycles and rebuilds vintage bikes: cafe racers, dirt bikes, and track rockets as potent to ride as they are arresting to look at. The variety of forms is jolting, from a flat-seated scrambler-type with insectile blue-and-white tanks to a reimagined Ducati painted up like Christmas. Most cost six figures and take many months to make. The entry-level 140 motorcycle (above), a beast of brushed alloy that takes about 650 hours to build, starts at $115,000.