Category Archive
for: ‘Opinion’

Thanks to shows like Discover HD Theater’s Cafe Racer TV and its sister magazine, Café Racer, the motorcycle style of the same name is currently enjoying a renaissance in the American zeitgeist. We were even part of a Cafe Racer Q&A this year at the IMS. It doesn’t get much more commercial than that. If …

I had an interesting experience last weekend while riding my wife’s old Honda CM400 (a bike which regular readers will remember from the “Sick Honda” series). She was out of town and I was bored, so a ride was naturally in order. The weather, counter to most of this spring, was actually lovely for riding. …

There’s something romantic about the idea of the ex-patriot, the person who leaves their home country to live abroad. We’re a nation built on the shoulders of ex-patriots. Sure, you could use the much more boring term of “immigrant”, but what fun is that? There’s a subtext to being an ex-pat. You’ve chosen to turn …

The motorcycle is a mainstay of cinematic self discovery. The other night, on a lark, I watched One Week — a movie starring Joshua Jackson about a guy who gets a terminal cancer diagnosis, buys an old Norton 850 Commando, and rides it west across Canada. Jackson’s character, Ben, uses the bike to escape his …

In his book Shop Class as Soulcraft Matthew Crawford skillfully documents our evolution from a culture of craftsmen and DIY mechanics to a culture of office drones and endless consumers of disposable goods. He doesn’t lay it out in judgement, simply as a steady and significant change. There was a time when the Sears catalog …