interview with chris flechtner of speed shop design

chris flechtner is the mastermind behind speed shop design. the path he has taken to become one of the premiere custom motorbike builders - creating the most amazing cafe racer i've ever seen - is an interesting one. how i chose to share who the man is starting with how he was raised didn't work as i planned, but feces occurs, as they say in france.

instead i give you something else, and it's still good. think of this interview as "a bad hair day." it'll smooth out tomorrow....

chris was born in fitchburg, massachusetts in 1970 to a family where dad was a mechanical engineer and mom was old school at home taking care of everything else. chris's grandfather was the local fire chief and soon chris's dad followed and became deputy chief. chris's patriarchal role models brought him to the station often where he learned to blow the horns of the ladder truck his dad drove the ass end of. not an easy gig as every turn is the reverse of the front of the truck. the fire station had lots of leftover tools from the old days when they had resident blacksmiths that made the specialized tools and equipment.


this fire house still used those tools to modify their trucks and it's where chris learned the basics of metalworking.

flechtner senior also used these tools to do cool things for chris such as building freestyle bike ramps and wedges. chris rode a schwinn mag scrambler, a kuwahara that was chrome with white skyway mags and pink gt tires, and other modified bicycles his dad helped assemble with his welding knowledge and bending tools. one of the best things his dad helped him do was build a one-into-two cable splicer to the brake calipers that would have shown the punks running gyro rotors what's what. one of his favorite places to ride was in a local cemetery.

"punk kids! stay off my grave!" a ghost was heard to moan one night.

according to chris, he had an old columbia 20" coaster brake bike that his dad totally customized for him. "he completely rebuilt it and painted the frame flat black and the tank gloss orange like his water buffalo," chris said. "i remember it had this really cool banana seat that was covered in a sort of brown flocking. when i got older he would help me make custom parts for my bmx bike."

bM:  your dad had a water-cooled inline-three 750cc motorcycle? that was a rare thing to have in the 70's. more rare today because nobody copied the design. would you ever build a custom with a water-cooled engine?

CF:  i think it all depends on the architecture and beauty of the motor. if i see a beautiful motor i will use it. i actually almost picked up a water cooled ducati motor recently for my next project but ended up with a 900ss carburetor motor because my particular design warrants the simplicity of an air cooled motor without injection and all the crap.

CF:  my dad quit racing dirt bikes when he got in a bad accident during a race and my mother was on the side lines pregnant with me. he decided he wanted to see his kid more than race. he always enjoyed racing of all sorts and he would take my brother and me to the track to watch midget car racing, up to the frozen lake in new hampshire to watch ice racing, or the the motocross track.

bM:  midget cars? ever seen porn midgets?

CF:  no.

bM:  they sometimes get featured performer status at titty bars. those are the nights i stay home because it's kinda gross but hey, glad you liked seeing them race. are you sure you weren't at the special olympics?

CF:  actually, now that i think of it, when i was at sturgis this year i witnessed a midget tending bar on the bar top while wearing nothing but a diaper.

bM:  hm. looks like a recipe for a poopy buttwad. some people are kinky like that.

CF:  we had an uncle that owned a hot dog truck and sometimes my cousin and i would go with him when he worked the motocross races. we would climb up on top of the truck and watch the races from up there. my dad had a small man office in the basement filled with dozens of trophy and pictures of his racing career. when i was old enough to understand he would tell me lots of fun stories and was particularly proud of his time racing with the europeans when they came over to new england for the first time. he even had a chance to meet and discuss suspension and such with the man mr. bultó himself.

CF:  my mom always made amazing meals and kept a super clean house.

bM:  where did the old fashioned scenario where mom ruled the house and dad ruled the job go wrong?

CF:  my mom is where i get my compassion.

bM:  dude. compassion will get you killed. hasn't jesus taught us anything?

CF:  my brother and i were mama's boys. she thought we were angels and treated us as such and certainly was not a push over. mom was quick to punish us if we were out of line and she believed in spanking. remember those wooden paddles with the ball attached to a rubber cord?

bM:  yes. it was a game we played as children in mexico. if someone thought they were better than me, i pretended to lose it a bit, changed the angle and popped them in the face with that rubber ball. then i went boing boing boing boing afterward like nothing happened.

CF:  well we seemed to always have those as toys and when one lost it's ball and cord they got placed on top of the refrigerator until it was time for an ass whooping!

bM:  your mother used broken toys as tools for physical punishment? are the women you hang out with all dommes? yes they are! you dig hot asian babes in vinyl catsuits carrying riding crops!

CF:  so i see you have met my girlfriend.

bM:  i think your girlfriend and my girlfriend would like each other....

CF:  my mom is also the reason why i am such a snazzy dresser.

bM:  yeah....

CF:  she loved shopping for hip clothes for my brother and i and she would pick out our clothes to wear every morning and put them out on our beds.

bM:  dude...

CF:  i had pink and lavender izod shirts and cool slacks and even had a white sports jacket, turquoise dress shirt, and a light grey pair of jazz shoes straight out of miami vice. when i got older and started getting into new wave music. i'd start working in creepers and checker board pants. i even had a cool sweater with big skulls all over it like the guy in cheap trick.

bM:  i'm going to try to help you here, man. did you find punk rock or just segue into "shit. everything on the radio sucks now?"

CF:  well, i would say i found it because the older guys i worked with at the bicycle shop got me listening to it. lots of stranglers, iggy, pil, echo, pixies, ramones, misfits, devo, smiths, rem, martha and the muffins... the list goes on.

CF:  both my parents were very creative and liked making things with their hands. my dad always worked a second job and ended up building many houses with other firemen for additional income.

my mom was always taking craft classes and doing cross stitch. her mom made the most beautiful braided rugs. fitchburg had a small art museum and my parents always encouraged me to take classes there. i remember my grandmother's refrigerator was covered with newspaper clippings of stories from all her grand kids. one was of me holding up a drawing i won an award for, another was a picture of me from when i had a flock of seagulls style haircut with a long tail on one side. it was about having different hair.

bM:  i would have run, run so far away from you.

CF:  the hair thing brings up a funny yet embarrassing story. two of my mom's nieces were hair dressers so we had a connection for cheap haircuts. my mom was pretty open about them trying new styles on me and i had some pretty cool haircuts during my early years. at one point my mom got this idea that my straight hair would really benefit from a body perm. yes, a perm! i got a perm and it was great because it was just enough to give my hair a little wave and body.

bM:  (incredulous look on face)

CF:  it was all cool until hockey season started. one day i had a hair appointment and then hockey practice. i got a perm and then went to the ice rink.

with a body perm your hair doesn't look all curly, it's just a little wavy so practice started just fine, people had no idea anything was odd 'till i started sweating. half way through practice we all start sweating our asses off and once i started you could smell nothing but the stink of rotting eggs. the sulfur smell of the perm chemicals came to life once it mixed with my sweat.

i'm standing in line waiting for my turn at the practice drill and all the kids around me are saying "what is that smell? it stinks like shit! someone farted!" it went on and on for the next half hour and i say, "what smell, i have no idea what you're talking about." i wasn't fooling anyone when we got back to the locker room at the end of practice. i sat down and took off my helmet and everyone on the room pointed at me and said "you got a perm!" it was so obvious because i had total jheri curls! i was so embarrassed and upset i swore to my mom i would never get another perm and i never did.

bM:  dude. i need to take you out and get you so wasted you don't remember getting the tattoo on your face. it's the only way now. you also have a day job that isn't building custom bikes. i wonder what they'll think of your tattoo. we can get one like this guy but you can get SUSHI where his says VEGAN.

please tell us about your workshop.

CF:  i rent a small space for my shop and don't have any debt as i grow. my parents did a great job of teaching my brother and me the value of money. we used to get a small allowance but as soon as we were old enough to have a job we got one. my first job paper boy. our paper girl trained me to take over the route when i was ten. times were different back then, you could deliver sixty papers through the neighborhood and not worry about creeps. i did that until i was in my teens and then passed it on to my brother. we had this crappy old yellow huffy that my dad mounted an e.t.-style milk crate to the handlebars. it was awesome! my next job was at the grocery store i frequented for my mom where i started out a bag boy and within six months was working the courtesy booth.

bM:  is fitchburg down the road from mayberry?

CF:  yes, just around the corner!

bM:  i knew it. okay. maki, nigiri or temaki?

CF:  i'm not a sushi snob, i love them all. i live in west seattle and we go to sushi whore up the street. they buy local fish and support the community with a sustainable attitude i appreciate. i do love their fisherman's bowl.

bM:  i love the "rules" page on their website. "rule #4: prices are subject to change based on customers attitude." great! please tell us about your education. few folks go to motorcycle design school but the path that led you to become a custom motorbike builder is a curious one, isn't it?

CF:  when i turned fifteen i started working at the local bicycle shop. the shop was named gamaches cyclery and was one of the biggest in massachusetts. it was one of the first harley dealers and then became one of the largest schwinn dealers in the country.

fitchburg was also the home of iver johnson who made firearms, motorcycles, and bicycles. the owner of gamaches, george gamache, had a bunch of iver johnson bikes he had restored or was restoring. i was trained to put bikes together but soon started working on the sales floor and ended up focusing on repair when we were short-handed. fitchburg was also the host of a big bicycle race called the longsjo classic and was always a big, fun production.

that job lasted until i went to school at massachusetts college of art in boston for graphic design. during my first year i worked in the library. i had an old schwinn mountain bike and i wanted to change some braze-ons. i found a local bike builder up north in amesbury and wrote him a letter asking for some braze-ons.

the the day i had the envelope in front of me i was working in the library and bored out of my mind so i started doodling on the envelope with some colored markers. i threw it in the mail and a few days later i got a call from ted wojcik, the bike builder. he asked if i would be interested in painting bikes for him. i said hell yes and two to three days a week i drove an hour north to paint bikes.

he taught me all the tricks and i learned how to spray imron and hok paints, and developed some tricks like brush painting with the hok paint and clearing over it. i had a bike on the cover of bicycle guide magazine back in 1991 that had all these cool hand painted octopi on it. ted sponsored a bike racer so i started racing mountain bikes and did pretty well but never got very serious about it because i was in school. i worked for ted for two school years until i had to quit to focus on school, where i switched from graphic design to metalsmithing. for grad school i studied furniture design.

bM:  you were a samurai sword polisher after you graduated. how did that come about?

CF:  when i was in college i apprenticed under a knife maker who introduced me to japanese swords. i learned how to do the handle wrapping and helped him restore a katana. that is where my experience with a sword like that started. i always wanted to know how to use one and when i moved to seattle i found a dojo that taught iaido, the art of japanese swordsmanship. i quickly learned that the dojo sensei was a well-known and very busy sword polisher. i was asked to do some fine metal work on a sword one day and from that point on he took me under his wing and taught me so much about swords from making them and polishing them to making the hardware and scabbards that house them. he was a good friend with yoshindo yoshihara, one of japan's leading contemporary swordsmiths and revered as a living treasure.



eventually i helped yoshindo build a traditional smithy here in washington so he could forge in the summer when it's just too stinking hot in tokyo. after practicing iaido for a few years i turned to kendo of which the same sensei is a six degree black belt. i love kendo but have put it on the back burner to focus on speed shop full time.

bM:  because my girl really likes kill bill - the swords, cute asian chicks, sushi restaurants, emotional bondage - i'd like you to be a member of my world domination team. what do you think? we can't let the government know. and we can't all live in the same compound. and nobody can call anybody jesus out loud. but maybe, when the moment is right, we can strike with silent slices and the only sound will be the dull thunk heads make when they fall a few feet onto expensive carpet. i think we could make killer bank shrinking the heads and making necklace pendants to sell to new orleans voodoo shops and russian gangsters. the heads will all be from bankers and the company can be called "the heads fund." clever, huh?

anyway.... world domination team. since you're good with your hands, you can come up with the secret handshake. deal?

CF:  only if we all wear matching jumpsuits and nikes, and only if the nikes are made by slave labor children under eight years old. then it's a deal.

bM:  excellent (maniacal laughter)! you have just moved the beezerker to vegas. how did that come about?

CF:  i did an interview with hell for leather and lamented to wes my frustration at getting the bike in front of the right people. at the amd championship next year there will be no metric class. they're calling it the "performance class" where a bike like the beezerker would get mixed in with crotch rockets, boss hoss bikes, and worse. i'll probably stick with the freestyle class.

bM:  the beezerker looks like it starred in a fritz lang movie.

CF:  yes! anyway, wes contacted a friend of his at the motorcycle industry council who put me in touch with a shop in the new cosmopolitan hotel. the shop is called "stitched." it's very upscale where they mix classic and contemporary styles in an irreverent manner.

bM:  ah yes, why have class when you have money.

CF:  stitched is where rich people get handmade suits with their names on them and the owner wanted a futuristic cafe racer in the store. he was presented with six different cafes and the owner picked beezerker.

bM:  congratulations, man. it is the perfect shop for your ride. wes hooked you up. somebody is going to be lucky to own her. what is your next project?

CF:  that 1995 ducati 900ss. what i am going to do with it is top secret.

bM:  except you told me and i'm bragging that i know. it's going to be pretty cool, folks, and possibly amazing.

thanks for taking all this time with me so bikerMetric readers can learn so much about the man behind the machines, chris. we all did crazy stuff when we were young (ahem) and i appreciate your generous and lighthearted approach to this interview and all you do while still maintaining an innovative and meticulous style. it's been great writing and speaking with you over the past few weeks and i wish you and lynn nothing but the best in all you dream.

motherfucker! yeah!

well folks, there is so much more but unfortunately i had to cut a lot out to get this done. when the speed shop design ducati is complete, maybe we'll do another interview where we talk about his beginnings as a bike builder, covering some of his first builds such as an xs650 cafe racer, motorcycle camping trips with dad, japan, and how these all influence his work.

check out chris's stuff on his blog or at his website, metric mofos. if you're the fancy type and can afford such things as beezerkers or custom commissions, please tell chris you read this on bikerMetric.