Hello, My Name Is: Jerry Harms

Name Jerry Harms
Occupation: Café Bike Fabricator
Hometown: Montclair, New Jersey
Birth town: Montclair, New Jersey

How did you get into motorcycles?

I started riding motorcycles when I was seven years old. It was my friend’s bike. I was into dirt bikes and ATVs and stuff like that. I was one of those kids that always took things apart, which always got me in trouble with my dad. I was just naturally mechanically inclined. I just knew how to figure things out mechanically. I wasn’t taking apart engines just yet, but when I was eight, I found a Romar engine just out with the garbage, and I thought, “oh, cool!” I was curious. I thought I’d take it home and take it apart.

I took the whole engine apart just to see what it was like on the inside. I started cleaning things and then I put it back together and it ran. Then I started reading books. I learned how engines worked. I carried that knowledge over to everything else I touched – I started working on cars a little bit, but I was leaning more toward motorcycles. But

What was your first bike?

It wasn’t until I got home from the military that I got a motorcycle of my own. It was a ’72 CB750 and I redid it by myself with hand tools. I didn’t have power tools or anything. I got it for 800 bucks and it was all I could afford. All my friends had sport bikes, and I was the only one with an old school bike, but I worked on it. I chopped the fenders on it, I changed the seat, I put a snake skin seat on it, I got a bullet-nose fairing – I ended up making it a café racer, not realizing that that’s what these things are called. I learned to work on motorcycles from working on my own bike.

So you got into café racers by accident?

Yeah, working on that first bike. I didn’t know what I was doing had a name at the time. But then I fell out of it for a bit. I got preoccupied with work and everything going on at home, where I’ve been helping my family out. I didn’t get back into it until two or three years ago and it was actually my friend’s bike, a black CB750. Initially he bought the bike for a couple hundred dollars and he took it a couple different places and no one could get it to go right, it was always running on one cylinder.

So he asked me if I wanted to work on it, and I said, “yeah, sure,” because I actually needed the money. So I got into it, got it to run good, then after that, I got into all this extra stuff to see what I could do for him, so I put a seat on, did the bars, the chocolate frame. When I was done, I thought, “wow, that looks really cool.” So not long after, I got my own bike and I wanted to do the same sort of thing for it. But the particular model I had, the KZ750 Twin, at the time not many people were cafeing it out, or at least they don’t look the way mine does.

So I was kind of going to uncharted territory. I took it on to challenge myself, to see if I could still do it. And I actually got it. It’s pretty cool, too. It had a battery, it had electrical, fuses, all the electrical points on the bike and I made everything disappear. I wanted to give this bike a nice clean look. I got the idea from someone doing it to the CB550, they don’t have oil tanks, like the 750s do, so I thought maybe I could do it on my bike. I didn’t have the money to get another bike, when I got it, I thought “cool, free bike, hopefully I can get this thing to run.”

At first I just wanted it to run, then I went crazy, making it a café racer, but it turned out beautiful and now whenever I park, it gets a decent amount of attention, a lot of compliments. And because of that bike, I’ve gotten a few people who want me to help them build whatever bike they’ve got into café racers, which is pretty neat. And I’m finding out now that there is a decent amount of demand for these things. I pretty much put these things together in my sleep; I didn’t know these things were a big deal. I didn’t know. I just do them.

What kind of thing tipped you off that café racers were high in demand?

That bike that I worked on for my friend Ryan, the one that got me back into all this, he ended up selling it on Craigslist. I was supposed to buy the bike, but he wanted to put it on Craigslist to see how much he could get for it and it drew a huge buzz. People were bidding against each other for this thing. One guy was coming down to buy the bike and there was another guy racing down, trying to get Ryan to hold the bike so he could buy it for more money. It got crazy. He ended up selling the bike for just shy of four grand. Apparently the 750s and 550s are so common, people like to buy them and build them into cafés.

What’s the hardest part about working on a bike?

As with any project, once you start, it never quite ends. Even when it looks like a bike’s almost done, to me, it really isn’t. I’m always changing the last details. It could be something stupid, like a tail light or a bolt or something, but it matters. Every detail. Even if it looks like it’s done, I just have a lot of ideas.

And I have a lot of ideas that I want to try out, that I haven’t seen done yet. Right now it’s tough because I was working out of a garage, but I lost the garage so I am trying to find another place to work out of, but it’s been kind of hard, the past couple of months.

What’s the best part about working on a bike?

Taking something that is mundane, regular and plain-looking and turning it into something that is almost a work of art, to be able to ride around on something like that – I can’t find the words for it. It’s nothing like anything else I have ever felt. It’s something special. It’s an amazing feeling to take something and turn it into something else and have people appreciate it. That’s the best feeling in the world, it’s just amazing, it really is. A lot of ideas I have only come about when I’m right there, working on it. A lot of it happens right there, in the spur of the moment.

The way I built my bike, I didn’t think it out at the beginning. It happened as a process, as I was working on the bike. Painting the engine, painting the frames, putting the seat on, I’ll think, “you know what, let me try this out,” or “let’s make all this disappear.” I did it all on the fly. There is nothing else I want to do besides build these things. I love doing it, I really do. I really do.

And what’s your favorite part of the process?

Tearing it all apart. Getting right down to the bare essentials. Maybe the wheels will be on it, but that’s it. Then rip off the body, the panels, everything, the racks. I tear it apart. And from there I will get my hands on certain pieces and I’ll put them on the bike to see how it looks and that’s when I start to create. That’s when I get the ideas. It’s all about the details. That’s the best part, when the ideas start to come. I could have three of the same bikes come in and they would all come out different.

A lot of stuff that I take off the bikes I work on, I reuse somewhere else. I always keep everything I take off, because I know I can use it for something else. I have done that with a couple of bikes. I like to make stuff. I like to fabricate. That’s a lot of fun, too.

Is this what you’re doing now?

No, right now I drive an 18-wheeler. It sounds neat, but it beats the hell out of me. I’m trying the best I can right now to nail down a small place like a garage so I can work out of it and keep going. I have a couple of people who want me to build bikes for them, or they want me to café them out. So I have people who are waiting for me to continue, and if I could nail down a place, that would be great. Right now I am looking for some financial backing to get that going so I can get back to it. That’s all I want to do. I just want to build bikes and that’s it. That’s my dream. I want to have a whole shop to build these things.

That’s funny, in the beginning I didn’t think the bike I was working on would be anything special. I thought it looked cool, but that’s it. I had no clue at all that this is what I could do and that there was a market for that, that people wanted these bikes. It’s so cool because I love doing it.

How did you meet Genevieve?

It was at a Pep Boys part store, a grand opening, they were doing a speed shop thing. And my friend was running the store there, so I went in to say hi and help him out and check out the place. I remember I’d seen one of the flyers and her picture was on there, and I remembered seeing her on TV a while ago, but I didn’t think anything of it until I saw her there. She caught my eye, I mean, she’s a really cool person. After checking out the stuff there – they had a couple of bikes – I wanted to get an autograph on my gas tank.

I originally wanted a picture with her, but it took me an hour and a half to get the balls to go up to her and ask her because I was so nervous. She was great – she’s the nicest person in the world, I couldn’t believe it. So I got her to take a picture with me, standing next to my bike and then I asked her to autograph my bike. And it was during this conversation, I asked her if she was into motorcycles and I told her that I build café racers and it turned out she was a huge fan of these things. I showed her a couple of pictures and that was it! We ended up hanging out and talking the rest of the day about café racers — and the next day after that. It was pretty cool. Most of the people who are friends and I hang out with, they think it’s pretty cool, but they don’t really understand the whole thing behind it.

A lot of these bikes are built by their owners, so each one has its own personality, and they’re also built for speed. I guess it started in the 60s, racing from café to café, or from one point back to the café. And it was all done with a jukebox, and they had to get back before the song would end. Most fans don’t understand that, but she did and it was really cool to talk to her about it.

Hot: motorcycles, video games, cats, Dunkin Donuts, muscle cars
Not: when people don’t appreciate your work and expect more than is reasonable, traffic, snow and winter, meeting people, drunk drivers, not being able to work on my bikes for an extended period of time, waiting.