May 30th, 2023 – London, England
Did you miss Day 2? We get settled in and start exploring London.
Our original plan today was to head up to Sheffield to meet with some dealers that Iconic has worked with in the past – specifically The Bike Specialists and Padgett’s. The former has supplied us with some great machines like this 1-km Honda RC45, while the latter most recently supplied a RC213V-S that we sold in the crate. The buyer of the 213V-S is having us make it a rider – unfortunately it seems that the water pump has gone bad in storage so we’re working with Honda UK to get that sorted out.
With all that said, Sheffield is roughly 3.5 hours away (one-way), so we decided to scrap it and stay local today instead. We decided to meet up with Simon and James for lunch at the Bike Shed as we’ve become friendly with the owners since they’ve expanded to Los Angeles.
Yesterday I was intrigued by the exterior new London Taxi, so today it seemed like a good idea to hop in one and see what the interior was like. Adam seems as excited as I am to check it out.
I have to say, it’s a surprisingly nice place to spend some time – it’s obvious that this was designed from the chassis up to be a cab, unlike the old Crown Victorias and Priuses you find in New York City or all the random cars that do double duty as Ubers or Lyfts. It’s quite spacious – I had flashbacks to my Business class seat on AA – and the large glass roof panel makes it feel even larger.
London’s horrible traffic gave us plenty of time to chat with our driver, a Portuguese gentleman who goes by Tony. He used to be a motorcycle courier, so I obviously had some questions for him about that. He says that the best bikes for that job back in the day were the Yamaha 550 and Honda CX500, though they weren’t much fun to ride outside of work. His favorite bike that he owned for courier duty was a Yamaha XT600 – it was peppy, narrow, and could take a beating. “I also had a Yamaha R1. I didn’t make any money because of the gas consumption but I sure had fun! 15-20 years ago, all of us couriers would race each other.” He notes that petrol is so expensive now that most people are either on scooters or electric motorcycles. His main ride nowadays is a Kawasaki ZZR1400 (we know it as the Ninja ZX-14 in America), but he’s looking to switch to something a bit more comfortable (and not as insanely fast) next year.
Tony also told us that we just missed an event called Ride London, which had roughly 25,000 bicyclists on city streets cover 30, 60, and 100 miles ride. “I grew up on bikes, I love everything with two wheels. That’s also why I don’t like football.” Tony was a joy to chat with – he ended up following Iconic on Instagram while we were stopped in a traffic jam, and we hooked him up with a t-shirt. We also got his card to see if we could hire him to ditch the meter and take us out of town for a cool errand tomorrow.
It’s been six years since I was last at the Bike Shed UK, and it’s remained mostly the same – no need to change what wasn’t broken.
Incredibly, once I walked in I saw a buddy from Los Angeles sitting on the couch. I’ve known Morgan Gales going back a few years from his time at Cycle World, Hot Bike, Motorcyclist Magazine…the list goes on. But he’s now working for the Bike Shed in Los Angeles and he was at the UK location getting a feel for their recent show as they plan on doing something similar in the US soon. It was a wonderful surprise to see him!
Norton has a much bigger presence at the Bike Shed than they used to – they actually have a small retail space where you can sign up for test rides and criminally overpay for branded apparel – Adam noticed a cashmere sweater for 1,200 pounds.
Ignoring the fact that I’d never pay that much for any piece of clothing, I wonder how people are feeling about Norton right now – I wouldn’t be particularly stoked to represent a brand that’s arguably best known as of late for fraud and stealing pension funds. In happier news, I was excited to see a Norton V4 SV in the flesh.
After Norton was acquired by the Indian company TVS, they revised and renamed the V4 superbike (previously under the name of V4 SS). I think it looks cool and the components are staggering – Ohlins FGRT 200 forks with NIX 30 internals, Ohlins TTXGP shock, Ohlins steering damper, BST carbon fiber wheels, Brembo brakes (hydraulics/calipers/discs).
The carbon fiber bodywork looks great, and I dig the ghosted flag on the tail.
The short-stroke V4 produces 185 horsepower and 92 ft-lbs of torque, but the craziest number is probably the amount of pounds you’d have to give up to make one yours: 44,000 (roughly $54k USD).
You’d really have to want a Norton at that price, and it doesn’t seem like there’s many people in that boat. A commenter on my Instagram says that “according to howmanyleft.co.uk there are 47 SS and 3 SV models registered in the UK.”
I had a delicious steak sandwich for lunch paired with a local lager. It appears that the theme-appropriate Old Engine Oil black ale I had when I was last here is no longer in production.
During lunch I saw another familiar face approach: Vikki van Someren, one of the founders of the Bike Shed! Her husband Dutch (a co-founder) joined soon later – we’ve gotten to know each other since the Bike Shed has expanded to Los Angeles. We all chatted for a bit and you may find Iconic working with the Bike Shed some time soon…
As our meal wrapped up, we were joined by a client who recently purchased a signed Loris Capirossi helmet on our auction site. We figured we’d save him the hassle of shipping and just bring it with us from the US, which worked out well.
He had a large sleeve tattoo on his arm of a space shuttle liftoff – when I asked him about it he revealed that he has large tattoos on his arms and legs, many of which were motorcycle related.
I thought the Michael Dunlop one was particularly well done.
In addition to the restaurant and the Norton Atelier store, the Bike Shed features a tattoo parlor and a barber shop. Parked in front of the latter on display is a lovely Ducati Paul Smart with a custom tail.
Regular motorcycle parking for customers is in a back room. My favorite was a KTM Adventure:
One of the fun quirks of the Bike Shed is that to access the parking area, you have to ride by/through diners eating outside.
One improvement over yesterday is that we were seeing a lot more motorcycles out and about.
We saw a couple of interesting businesses on our way to the closest Underground station. The first one caught my attention due to the name and the odd geese:
The second one was something I’ve never heard of before – it’s called Ballie Ballerson, and it’s some sort of combination of a cocktail bar with a huge ball pit so you can be a kid again (except this time you’re drunk). We didn’t go in, but if you’re curious about what it looks like you can check out this review.
I split from the group to run a personal errand of sorts – I found out a couple of days prior that a cousin of mine from India (whom I hadn’t seen since 2004) was living in London with his wife and six year-old son. It was wonderful to catch up with him – I won’t share a current photo of their family but I figure this’ll be a fun excuse to show you a photo of me (in the center) and the cousin I just visited (on the left) playing cricket in India back in 2000.
His home has a lovely view of East London, especially Olympic Park and the football stadium for West Ham United.
I eventually bid my cousin and his family adieu, the hopped on the Underground to go back to the city center and meet up with my crew again. They were getting a drink at O’Neills, which wasn’t my kind of place (loud live music with a bunch of drunk people singing along), but there was a cool sign on the outside about the building’s history:
I was fine with calling it an early night because tomorrow we check out one of the craziest motorcycles ever built – the Crighton CR700W!