Originally Posted by
blackvisor
The magazine folded because not enough people were buying it. Not enough people bought the mag as there has been a steady decline in the numbers of people who are interested in streetfighters and custom biking. There always were young blokes getting into building bikes and they replaced the older ones who retired from biking due to family etc.
But the young blokes getting into biking are few and far between, not sure why, as they have far tastier bikes available now than we had in our day, and it's always been expensive to get into bikes, I don't think these days are any more or less expensive than when I was a kid. I paid 300 quid for my first bike (a GSX250) in 1992 and then paid 440 quid to insure it. I got stopped by the plod 3 times and had to prove I had insurance so good job I did,
Without the young blokes coming into it, all grassroots custom biking in general is slowly but surely diminishing, not just streetfighters. Its becoming a sad parody of its former self when the choices for Chops are just bolt on Harley tat or an expensive Orange County Choppers ripoff, and the new cafe racers are equally sad, taking a slow 250 or 400 and fitting exhaust wrap, firestones, clip ons with no rearsets and calling it a cafe racer build is a parody of the original rockers actually tuning the nuts off the fastest bikes they could buy at the time.
THe neo-rockabilly-retro crowd seems to have a few young faces in it, but I don't see many bikes among them, lots of cool tattoos and American hot rod type cars, but few bikes.
Those of us who go into a garage and make parts for our bikes are a dying breed. We are old. How many of us are under 40? very few.
But 20somethings dont read magazines anyway, paper magazines are as relevant to them as vinyl records, so streetfighters etc are battling hard against digital media.
I don't know what the answer is, the only thing I can suggest is help out the young bikers, show them how to wield spanners, build cool bikes and not get ripped off. And we should ride our bikes more, so new bikers see cool bikes and want to build their own.
