Shop by Vehicle
Track Order
Contact Us
The weather was damp and overcast on Sunday morning, but the sun came out almost exactly at noon, when the doors of Brooklyn Bowl opened. As the buzzing crowd queued up at the double doors, it was hard not to see the clouds' sudden parting as an auspicious sign: almost a literal new dawn for a sorely missed New York City motorcycle show, finally back from a seven-year hiatus.
The street outside was entirely taken over by motorcyclists and their families who rode in through the rain, creating a swarm of parked bikes (classic, modern-classic, and otherwise) down Wythe Avenue. Inside Brooklyn Bowl — a landmark concert venue, bar and grill, and bowling alley housed in the bones of a nineteenth-century ironworks complex — dozens of bikes (and one hulking police trike) were lined up across the main dance floor, up on the stage typically reserved for live music performances and spilling over into the bowling alley. Eight of the 16 lanes were closed to make room for more bikes, and the rest were left open and operational, which families (many with younger children in tow) took full advantage of. Jonathin Toubin (founder of New York Night Train) provided a rock 'n' roll soundtrack from the DJ booth, spinning seven-inch vinyl, notably punctuated by the clatter of bowling pins and the odd gutter ball in the background.
The Still Split'n Lanes classic motorcycle show enjoyed a six-year run from 2014 to 2019 before being interrupted by the pandemic, said Tim Warner of Basket Case Productions, one of the expo's two organizers. Since then, BCP has kept busy by organizing Brooklyn-based group rides and meet-ups, but riders never stopped asking for another installment of the classic motorcycle show. The moment when he and his business partner, Girard Fox, finally "tore the Band-Aid off," Warner says, was a conversation with the owners of the Bowl, who welcomed the show's return and provided BCP with additional space to display more bikes than any previous iteration. This year, that meant a total of 54 rare and restored classics, customs, and vintage race replicas from the 1910s to the '80s. Putting the show together physically came down to Warner, Fox, four or five friends, the builders and lenders themselves, and elbow grease; the whole thing was unquestionably a labor of love, and you could feel it in the atmosphere.
The lineup of bikes on display featured builds by NYC locals, as well as builders, collectors, and lenders from Long Island, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia being particularly well represented), Tennessee, and North Carolina. Past iterations of the show also featured bikes from California, Ontario, and Mexico City. In an effort to fill the void left by the Brooklyn Invitational (another NYC classic show, which ended its 10-year run in 2018) and the IMS (a yearly Javits Center staple until 2019), Warner stressed the importance of making Still Split'n Lanes international and bicoastal, and assured me that the show will "one hundred percent" be returning next year. The Basket Case team is already planning for 2027, hoping to bring in more builders and corporate sponsors, as well as representing even more parts of the country and the world. In the meantime, Warner and Fox will continue to host their yearly New Years ride along with pop-up rides to Red Hook and Cold Spring, producing motorcycle documentaries with friends, and setting up screenings around the city.
Fox, who is himself a collector of old Harleys, highlighted a couple bikes that stood out in the Still Split'n Lanes line-up: perhaps most notably, an imposing Zündapp K800 with its art deco bodywork and distinctive flat-four engine still in immaculate condition.
"Style-wise, it's like nothing I've ever seen," he says. "I thought I knew everything about old bikes, but I always learn something new at my own show."
"But it's not necessarily the value of a machine that gets our attention," he adds. "There's a former East German — very much a worker's, common, simple — motorcycle that we fell in love with… that's equally cool to us. It's rusty and crusty but it has this history that stands out. It's a Soviet-era bike that thousands of people used daily, so we love mixing that up with something rare."
One motorcycle I personally feel inclined to highlight was an exquisitely well maintained and still fully operational Vincent Black Lightning Race Replica: the very same model that once carried Rollie Free past the national land-speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1948 in that famous photo.
Warner and Fox both ride Harleys, but they agreed that neither one belongs to any particular "tribe" within the motorcycle world, nor does BCP.
"I just pick stuff that gets me going, personally, and that's how [we] do the show," Fox says. "It's about what gets your blood flowing… and I just get stuck with stuff that breaks down all the time. I lost my brakes six blocks away, coming in from the rain today," he adds with a grin.
Warner nods along wistfully: "On his '49 Pan."
