Frisco In Holland

April 11, 2016

0Points

Article And Photos By: Grizzly

Originally Published In The March 2012 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine

We met Sik and his buddy Jesse at the beach. They had been on the road for a couple of days and were setting up camp for the night somewhere along the shores of the big Ijssel Lake in Holland. Sik’s Shovel immediately caught our attention. ‘A Frisco style bike in Holland, Europe?’ “Well, of all places, Holland might be one of the most suitable places for the Frisco style,” explained Sik, the owner of the Shovelhead. “Me and my friends in the Garage Maniacs are crazy about this type of bike. Like you probably know, these choppers were originally meant for racing through town. That was their sole purpose. Stock Harleys were way too heavy to handle in the crowded streets of cities like Oakland and San Francisco, so people stripped them. They made them lighter so they would go faster; they had to be as narrow as possible so people would be able to split lanes easy. It’s a perfect bike to own in a country like ours.” ‘Have you ever ridden here before?’ I asked. “Holland is crowded, man. It actually is a country but sometimes looks more like one big city.” While Sik handed me a beer kept cold in the water of the lake, he told me what else made him build this Shovel. “I always loved the American chopper, especially the ones that were used in the old B movies. I started to buy books, got hold of old American magazines and searched the Internet to get to know more about these forerunners of the long bikes. I did not only learn how the American bikers used to strip their Harleys, I also wanted to know how they did their customizing. I learned for instance how they always made their bars lean a bit forward and how their sissybars were almost vertically mounted, little things like that. First, I wanted to make my chopper look clean and crisp but then I came across an old photo of the New York Hells Angels. They had their bikes lined up and not one looked shiny and bright. They were all one-offs but looked worn. All the hand-built parts were crudely done, the custom paint were rattle can jobs or just laid on by hand with a brush. These were users’ bikes, man, no fancy showroom-only machines. I wanted my bike to look like that!”

S i k continued, “It was all new f o r me, I had little money and no experience. I already owned an old Super Glide which I had rebuilt a bit but now I wanted to have a Frisco with that specific hardcore look as seen on the photo. So I bought a used hardtail frame for four-hundred-fifty dollars. I mounted the Shovelhead motor and gearbox from the Super Glide and also used the rear wheel and the headlight.” Sik then started looking for a 21inch front wheel with a Hydra drum brake. He had already started a blog and had found people who were into the same things as himself. He saw on the Net that a guy called Hein owned exactly the wheel he wanted. He emailed him more than a dozen times to find out what it would cost but Hein would not sell. Then one day, Hein said he wanted to swap it for the metalflake helmet he had seen on Sik’s blog. “The fun part was that the helmet was not metalflaked at all; ha ha! But I wanted the wheel badly so I searched eBay and found a helmet in the same colours as mine, and yes, it was a metalflaked one! We swapped our stuff and he even gave me the money for the postage of the helmet back when I truthfully told him the whole story,” said Sik. So Sik got his wheel with the Hydra drum brake for a l m o s t nothing. We walked around the bike and the Dutch Frisco fan told me there is a story behind almost every single part. The twisted sissybar for instance was once bolted on a Yamaha XS chopper owned by a guy called Tjebbe. Sik explained, “I wanted a bitch bar like that and first tried to make one myself. I unsuccessfully tried twisting the metal without heating it. Then I did it the proper way but still could not make the bar look the way I wanted. Disillusioned I called up Tjebbe only to find out he sold the damn sissybar.

I called the guy who bought it and guess what? He had sold it too! After tracking down four owners I finally had my sissybar and most of these guys are now friends of mine. Aint that cool?” “Am I boring you yet?” Sik asks while it is getting dark around the lake. ‘No way man, please go on,’ I said. He continues pointing at his ribbed gas tank with its ribbed cap. “I painted it myself but it once belonged to a dude called Martin. Martin is an old guy but a real chopper-freak. I learned a lot from him.” It is obvious; this bike has soul. Sik met a lot of new people while building it, never lost contact with them and he even became friends with some. He decided not to paint the frame and the fender. He also opted not to renew the chrome on the twisted Z-bars or the sissybar. All handmade parts were crudely done, simply because he did not have the skills to do it any better and after finishing it, he just rode the shit out of it. And yes, it now, after a few years of hard riding, looks exactly the way he likes it. Not clean, not crisp, but worn. We like it too, especially the ‘stance,’ it’s just right!