Monday, July 18, 2011

Riding September

A few stills from the Riding September video
Blitz Motorcycles Independent Custom Garage is a 3-man French outfit that does great work turning vintage bikes (their website features bikes based on the BMW R100/7, R60/2, and R80/7, Kawasaki 650W and 650Z, Triumph T100, and Yamaha SR125, SR500, and JW125) into rough-and-ready customs that do a lovely job of holding onto the classic appeal of the bikes and referencing icons of old motorcycle culture, while being thoroughly unique and often innovative machines.  For example, the murdered-out R60/2 wearing dual-sport tires is called “Great Escape” in reference to the Steve McQueen film (ironically, he rode a Triumph Trophy 500 painted to look like a wartime German BMW in the film, but no matter), and the Triumph T100 wears stars and stripes on its tank and one of the more tasteful sets of Z bars I’ve seen, and is called “Tribute to Easy Rider”.  Their website is well worth a look, and most of the pages have an English option. 

The Blitz Motorcycles team also has a knack for making very good videos of their machines in action.  The BMW R60/2 promo video features a winter ride and music from Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus.  This is an unusual choice for a motorcycle video, but one that works rather well.



They are also responsible for what is, in my opinion, one of the best pieces of motorcycle videography in existence.  The video is called “Riding September”.  It features the Blitz Motorcycles crew riding a couple of SR500 flat trackers and a BMW R80/7 through some great scenery, goofing off, cooking dinner, and generally hanging out and having fun.  They’ve done a great job of capturing the camaraderie of riding buddies, and it’s great to see a shop crew out using their bikes as they were intended to be used, and custom bikes that are most definitely built to be ridden hard.  The soundtrack is “Frankie’s Gun” by the Felice Brothers.  Watch it-you’ll be glad you did.


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