Custom Culture and Conspiracy Theories

all pictures Wrenchmonkees Via Bike Exif

There are people out there who believe in the theory of dispersed and spontaneous, simul­taneous evolution.

The theory goes, roughly, that mankind on the grandest scale is passing through huge cycles of time — linked to the stellar rhythms of the universe. These grand cyclical patterns manifest themselves, so the thinking goes, at the level of astronomy, geology and biology — but also of course in human culture.

Such thinking leads to a couple of things: a) the paranoid delusion that mankind is about to be trans­formed by some catacyl­ismic event (the latest favourite is the winter soltice of 2012 (21−12−2012), now there’s some inter­esting numbers for ya) and B) that when certain things are going on in a culture, people all over the world spot these things going on, and act upon these things.

This, long, drawn out and slightly garbled intro is simply to introduce you to the beautiful work of a bunch of Copenhagen based custom bike jockies of renown, Wrenchmonkees. As this month’s theme is a Honda theme, we only naturally picked up on this rather lovely take on the rather unglam­orous Honda CX500 from the late seventies/​early eighties.

I personally always liked the CX500 and you can see from the way the Copenhagen crew have fettled this bike into beauty, that there existed beneath the veil of squarish and awkward styling a bike of genuine prettiness.

Getting back to the point of my opening shot — it seems like there’s barely a week goes by that we don’t stumble upon a bunch of greasers — from Sidcup to Sydney — who have spotted that mediocrity and cultural conver­gence have managed to overthrow the erstwhile passion that was inherent in the motorbike industry — and realised that for the price of an entry level superbike from the mainstream manufac­turers you can build and sell an absolutely unique machine bespoke to a punter’s exact requirements.

Wether this means the world as we know it is about to end, or we’re all just bored with cookie cutter culture, we can’t be sure.

Decide for yourself.