Sixth St. Specials
Sixth St. Specials
Old Britbikes in New York City
JASON KERRIGAN
FULL NOISE ACROSS THE BROOKLYN Bridge and even with a venom-spluttering, omen-eyed Volvo driver charging ruthlessly through their ranks, everybody's cool. Gotham's skyscrapers rocketing high to their left, the East River an Olympian plunge below and...hang on, hold up, good god a 'mighty! now the Volvo's on her cellular, seething furiously, inching wheel to wheel with the lead BSA, sneering, leering, veering all kamikaze-like. Ben Hur had it easier than this in his chariot race, ferchrissakes!
But, still, everybody’s cool. The dozen British classics sweep into a poker-straight formation and let her blaze into the horizon, a soon-to-be-distant memory in another day, another week, year and decade of navigating the mean streets of New York City.
They say Steve McQueen started this thing. Local legend has it he wrung the neck of his souped-up Triumph, gunning it mercilessly through the streets of the East Village during the early ’50s, his cronies and hangers-on only ever a rev and a wheel skid behind. His effortless cool rubberstamped an association with roaring Brit Twins that lingers in the neighborhood even today.
Through the ’60s, BSAs, Nortons and Triumphs littered the streets here as a mediocre Harley-Davidson glowered down the barrel of oblivion, made-inJapan was still deemed a punchline and only the Queen’s Iron represented cool in New York’s most bohemian locale.
Then came the ’70s and the slow, torturous death of Triumph, a global recession biting carnivorously and the ephemeral nature of all things shiny in the city that never sleeps meant those same Britbikes were soon chewed up and spit out, many neglected beyond repair or simply abandoned and scrapped. By the mid-’80s there might
have been only a handful of decrepit, dilapidated old British bangers still puttering through the cement-and-steel canyons of Manhattan.
Enter in 1986 a kilt-wearing Scotsman, drunk as a lord, high as a kite, stumbling about the Village wondering where the hell were all these bloody
motorbikes he’d heard so much about?
Gone, the locals shrugged, disintegrated.
Hugh Mackie, a Glasgow Art School graduate fresh from two years in Paris constructing sets for French neo-noir movies, decided since he was here anyway he might as well do what he could to rectify the situation. Which is how his shop, Sixth Street Specials, in all its grease-stained glory, was born. In the 20 years since, Mackie has put some 300 old nails back on the streets of the East Village.
“Everybody’s got a story to tell about the Britbike they used to have,” he laughs. “Whether it’s the Brough Superior they stole from Lawrence of Arabia or the Bonneville they rode to the moon and back on just one tank of gas, they’ve always got a tall tale.”
Mackie reasoned many of the once-beloved rides had to be hiding in barns and the backs of garages. After placing ads in local newspapers along the Eastern Seaboard, he chased leads on aban doned machines. Whenever he'd find a serviceable bike, he'd ship it to New York, renovate it, then sell it to a local rider. By 1990, the workshop, located deep in the hard-as-nails Alphabet City segment of the neighborhood, accounted for dozens of old Bonnevilles,
Tigers and Commandos once again being thrashed throughout the city.
“I made it my quest. I just wanted to see them around here,” Mackie says.
Job done. On any given Sunday, a random sampling of Britbike jockeys appears on the stoop of the Sixth Street shop, set for a blast through the city. Their ranks constitute a bizarre mixture, running from architects to entrepreneurs, a student, a concierge, a videographer, a machinist and even an MTV director. Their number includes three women. Their bikes range from a pristine Norton Commando to Bonnies, Tigers and Tridents in various states of rag-taggery to the odd BSA. Few of the bikes can lay any reasonable claim to road-legal mufflers, but NYPD coppers rarely take exception.
“These bikes are cool, and they’re cheap and accessible now. The people who ride them tend not to be just enthusiasts-they are fanatics,” Mackie claims, chuckling as one stalwart wheelies past the shop to the tuts, tsskks and scowls of an old dear watching from her fire escape next door.
“It’s very much a scene now,” he continues. “Look at these folks. Flalf of them have the rocker look, right down to the Ace Café patches, and the other half are so into these machines they know
more about them than I do!”
The aesthetic appeal of a bunch of old Bonnies has not gone unnoticed by New York’s media poseurs. Magazine editors and fashion stylists often commandeer what bikes are available from Sixth Street to use in photo shoots and the occasional film set. And the allure of Mackie’s machines is by no means lost on the Hollywood community. Director Jim Jarmusch had Hugh restore his onelunger BSA Gold Star to perfection, and actor Laurence Fishburne inadvertently became a Britbike convert while shooting The Matrix.
“Fishburne is a bike guy, but has always been into more modern stuff than we deal with,” explains Mackie. “But he knew co-star Keanu Reeves was a huge Britbike fan with a couple of perfect Nortons. He decides he wants to give Keanu a present and has me renovate this beautiful little BSA 250 for him.
“The complication came when Larry got home to his apartment one day only to find that Keanu had secretly installed $50,000 worth of hi-fi equipment as a gift. Now this was a nice wee BSA, but it wasn’t quite in that league, so Larry keeps the bike. I had it shipped down to his place in New Orleans and thought that was the end of that.”
Two months later, though, the phone rang in the workshop, a frustrated Fishburne on the other end. “I get on the blower and, sure enough, it’s Morpheus from Matrix, sounding a bit out of breath. Wants to know how the hell you’re supposed to kick start these freakin’ things?! He’s stranded at a gas station about 50 miles outside the city.” A quick lesson in hot-start procedures followed,
Mackie coaching the actor until the cute little Beezer rekindled.
“We had a good laugh about it and he still rides the bike from time to time as far as I know,” says Mackie.
Being coddled in the Big Easy is diametrically opposed to the life most old Brtibikes lead in the Big Apple, a city with road surfaces worse than Beirut’s, populated by drivers whose parking skills are notoriously on a par with those of Mr. Magoo. Even carefully placed bikes are battered remorselessly.
“They always get knocked over,” grimaces Mackie. “Always. It’s just the nature of the place-no space, bad drivers. It’s almost impossible to run a bike here without it earning battle scars. So we fix them. It’s part of the trip. You sort the bike out, get back on and ride it. Riding them is what it’s all about.”
Mr. McQueen would concur. □
