Born From A Swap

AFTER NINE YEARS ONE OF THE WORLD’S PRE-EMINENT CUSTOM MOTORCYCLE SHOWS ...

- Michael Lichter

It all started with three good friends at a swap meet at the end of August in 2008. It was a Sunday morning at the famous SoCal Swap Meet in Long Beach, California where Grant Peterson, Mike Davis and Harpoon were checking out parts, having a good time and talking about how they should have a bike show of their own filled with the kind of old school bikes they love with all their friends and riding buddies. 99 per cent of the time, this kind of talk would come and go and life moves on, but somehow, there was just the right mix of energy and personality between these three; so much so that by Monday night, Mike Davis announced he had a name for their show. It was to be “Born Free”, a contraction from the names of Mike’s company “Loser Machine” and Grant and Harpoon’s company, “Freedom Machine” (although keep in mind, they all had day jobs as well!)

About a month later on a closed off city street, it happened! Through word of mouth and simple internet message boards (we are talking pre-social media as we know it today) a few hundred bikes and 500 people gathered to check out each others rides. It was diverse, and nothing like most people had seen before. It was nothing like the big traditional bike shows that had been going on for decades, but exactly what this younger crowd was looking for, at exactly the right time. With the vibe so right, word spread quickly so by June of 2009 “Born Free 2” blew up with a thousand bikes showing up. That year’s event on the streets of Signal Hill, California was described as a “Motorcycle Woodstock.” It looked more like what people saw in old motorcycle magazines than anything else at the time.