Monday, Sept. 12, 2005 | 8:51 a.m.
Whether sporting a radical design or decorated with an eye-catching paint job, there's only one rule for the new wave of custom-built motorcycles. The bigger the better.
Big tires. Big pipes. Big motors. And big prices.
And make no mistake, notes Paul Stewart, owner and president of Dynamic Choppers, a Las Vegas motorcycle manufacturer: the bigger the bike, the smaller the male member.
"It's a compensation issue most of the time," Stewart said. "It's a macho issue." Or it could be that custom-built bikes, which range in price from $25,000-$80,000 and up, are simply an ostentatious display of money.
"The other type of guy wants you to know how wealthy they are," he said. Some of the biggest, showiest and, yes, most expensive, bikes (custom and otherwise) will be on display at the Fifth Annual Las Vegas BikeFest. More than 35,000 motorcycle enthusiasts are expected to attend this year's event, which runs Thursday through Sunday at Fremont Street Experience and Cashman Center.
Among the scheduled highlights are the $100,000 Poker Run; Miss Las Vegas BikeFest pageant and various custom-bike contests; concerts by .38 Special and Canned Heat; and Vendor Village at Cashman Center, which features 260 companies selling motorcycles, motorcycle parts, apparel, jewelry and leather.
But the BikeFest is more than just a showcase for custom-bike builders and vendors, said Pam Schwartz, executive vice president of Full Throttle Events, co-promoters of the event, along with ConvExx.
"Las Vegas BikeFest is about promoting the industry," Schwartz said. "It's an opportunity for motorcycle enthusiasts to get together in one place and have fun in Las Vegas.
"It's a lot of guys who ride motorcycles every day, a lot of couples who ride on weekends with their friends, doctors who ride on the weekends with their buddies." While the Las Vegas BikeFest is a celebration of biking, what it's not is a safety concern.
Schwartz said the April 2002 Laughlin incident, which resulted in three deaths and 12 injuries after a group of Hells Angles attacked members of the Mongols, is not the type of behavior typical of the Las Vegas BikeFest.
"We've never had an issue," she said. "Las Vegas is very different place than Laughlin anyways. It's a little different atmosphere."
And owning a motorcycle is not a requirement to attend.
"A guy might not have a bike now -- maybe his kids are in college and he's paying for that -- but I still love that guy," said Rick Fairless, owner of Strokers Dallas, a custom-bike manufacturer in Dallas.
"It's just about your love for motorcycles. We don't put somebody down because of what they ride or don't ride. It's just about enjoying yourself and having fun. It's a mind-set."
While the popularity of motorcycles has ebbed and flowed in and out of fashion since the '30s, the bike industry has enjoyed increasing popularity since the early '90s.
Many in the industry attribute the motorcycle craze to the myriad TV shows devoted to custom-bike building. Of course, it doesn't hurt that celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Kevin Costner, Peter Fonda and Jay Leno are seen blazing through open roads on their custom machines.
Stewart, who has been building bikes for 15 years, has noticed a particular surge in bike orders since 9/11.
"That's when we saw the biggest influx of people coming in and wanting bikes," he said. "People just started living for today. Pick up magazines before that and after that and that's really when you see bikes getting more eccentric and dramatic."
In the four years since the terrorist attacks, Stewart has been forced to expand his business several times in terms of office space and employees.
But becuase of high demand and tight turnaround -- in most cases he guarantees to build a custom bike in no less than 90 days -- he cannot keep up with the orders.
"I've got nine guys working 10-14 hours a day and I can't keep up," Stewart said. "I can't build them fast enough."
The Las Vegas BikeFest is only to increase his business, he said.
At last year's event, the Dynamic Choppers attracted anywhere from 40-50 biker enthusiasts to the booth every hour. That attention translated into roughly 50 percent of Stewart's business during the last eight months.
"It was a very good show," he said.
With an even bigger display from Dynamic Choppers at this year's BikeFest, Stewart is understandably expecting even more business than last year's event. He is also participating as a judge in the Artistry in Iron competition, featuring 25 of the world's best custom-bike builders and a highlight of the Las Vegas BikeFest.
An award-winner himself, including the prestigious Legend Top 50 Show award at this year's Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in North Dakota, Stewart said he'll be "judging on things that people didn't do" to their custom bikes.
"Everything is there to look great," he said. "I'm going to look for things that they forgot."
Fairless, who prefers not to enter his bikes into competition, said he considered an offer to participate in the Artistry in Iron event an invitation he couldn't refuse.
"There are only 25 guys around the world to be invited," he said. "It's such an honor, I made a choice to enter this bike into the show."
His entry, "Bettie," named after pinup queen Bettie Page, is "very curvy" with the unique modification of having the gas and oil tanks built into the frame.
Still, it's not whether the bike wins the competition or not that matters, Fairless said.
"To me it's not winning or losing. How can you say a van Gogh painting is worth more than a Michelangelo painting?" he said. "It's all subjective when you get this caliber of bike builder together."
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