American Hustle

If motorcycles are the epitome of cool, bobbers are possibly at the very top of the heap. This pair from uncle sam gets in at the chilly end of things, but can you really live with one?

- Debabrata Sarkar

Cool is rarely ever comfortable. You can argue all you want, but you will always be beaten down to this basic fact of life. There is a reason why everyday bits require work – for instance, you suck your stomach in when you put on a well-fitted pair of trousers, slap on a layer of gooey gel on your hair to style it and make sure the creases on your shirt match perfectly. If these were easy and comfortable, you would be sleeping in them too. Except, you don’t because your shirt would probably rip open when you stretch, your hair would collapse into an unrecognisable mess in five minutes and your pants, well, good luck with those. Needless to say, motorcycles function in much the same fashion. There are ones that you can travel across continents with and there are ones that are good for a night out in town.

Single seat, chopped-down fenders, handlebars that are designed to look cool more than make life easy; pushes the Bobber style towards the night out in town category. Don’t forget the fact that these have traditionally been shed-built motorcycles, designed by hipsters to drop some weight and gain some performance. Now, of course, we are incredibly busy scrolling through social media feeds, but would still like some sort of a custom motorcycle delivered off amazon at our doorsteps, which we could put up pictures of. Harley-Davidson and Indian have answered this call and made moderately modified versions of their motorcycles to appeal to Mr Instagram, while trying to capture some of the Bobber essence from the 1950s.