Paul Jr, Vinnie & Mikey LIVE Q&A Podcast at American Bike Fest 2025

Paul Jr from American Chopper goes LIVE with special guests Vinnie DiMartino and his brother Mikey Teutul at the first-ever American Bike Fest at The Rayne Drop Inn II in Marion Center, PA ! 🏍️🔥

This exclusive Q&A session brings fans up close with the legendary crew from American Chopper. Paul Jr, Vinnie, and Mikey talk bikes, brotherhood, behind-the-scenes stories, and answer questions LIVE from the audience.

👉 Don’t miss this epic reunion of American Chopper favorites! 💬 Drop your questions in the comments and let us know what YOU want Paul, Vinnie, and Mikey to cover in the next episode!

🔔 Subscribe to Paul Jr’s channel for more podcasts

#PaulJr #AmericanChopper #Podcast #BikeFest2025 #VinnieDiMartino #MikeyTeutul #CustomMotorcycles #PaulJrDesigns

The Paul Jr Designs showroom is located at 1714 Long Beach BLvd. Ship Bottom, NJ 08008

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, guys, listen. Sorry, we had a little bit
of a late start. We we've been looking forward to
doing this podcast. I don't know if you've seen our
podcast before, but me and Mike and Vin have done
a couple of these and they're pretty good.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
We talk a lot about the old days.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Of American Chopper, which you might very well be familiar with,
and everyone can hear me.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Good, yeah, good, Okay, So we thought.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
We'd just come out here and uh kind of open
it up to question and answer type situation, record it,
and then let everyone who listens to our podcast check
out kind of a back and forth conversation. So if
you guys are good with that and you don't want
to be shy, then just fire some questions at just Michael.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yep, okay, things below the belt?

Speaker 3 (00:53):
So I got I got belt.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Everything is.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Mikey.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
I love you American Choppers.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
I followed this through ever since your father and everybody else.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Oh, thank you. How you doing. I'm doing good? I
love you. You're hilarious.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Doesn't he look good?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I'm I'm doing well. It's good. Wellking on his shirt?
What's your name? Bo Hormone? Nice to meet you, buddy. Yeah,
I love you, mo. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah,

(01:35):
don't be shy, It's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Just pretend we're all there's no cameras or any microphones.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Yep, hey guys doing uh as I've already told you
guys before. I've always been a huge fan, especially your
support first responders.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Nothing to do with any of that, though, I always
wondered whatever became of the Mike Eveny bike.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Oh that's a really good question. What did happen to
that bike?

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I mean I don't, I don't, I don't no firsthand,
but I think it got dismantled and put back together
and resold.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, Michaels I got dismantled because.

Speaker 5 (02:10):
Vinnie went into a fit of rage after we unveiled
the bike and he smashed it.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
What happened during the unveil anyway?

Speaker 3 (02:18):
What?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
What?

Speaker 6 (02:18):
What?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
What was the deal with that? Did that thing fire up?

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Well? I think eventually it did. I mean that was
guy was kind of cloudy, but it didn't. Right. I
got I got some parts off the Mikey Vinnie bike though,
Oh you got the shifter, and I got some of
the trial parts too. I still got the remember that
wrap we put around the oil tank with the Mikey
and a Vinnie on it. It was raised right and yeah,

(02:42):
and we had a couple of test pieces that didn't
work out so well, but I got them hanging around somewhere.
I'll sell them.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Take Yeah, I'll buy him cheap.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
It was a fun It was a really fun episode. Yeah,
especially when Mike made them No you hugged me.

Speaker 5 (03:01):
I hugged Vent around his waist, which I'm accustomed to.
Is good at it, you know.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, it's something we do.

Speaker 5 (03:12):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (03:12):
Just a question about the event, what uh what made
you choose this location and this particular weekend. If you
guys have any plans for other events.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, So Bob who owns the rain Drop, came to
us and said, Bob over here, and he said, look,
I want you to come out to this event.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I want to create a motorcycle event.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
He does a lot of music venues here at the
rain Drop, as you may well know, and he really
has a vision for a bigger motorcycle event and this
is the first of its kind, and so we figured,
yet we'll come out, we'll support it, and I think
it's a good part of America to really grow something
like this. You guys have gorgeous out here. The ride

(03:54):
was spectacular today, right, I mean really nice. So yeah,
you would say, well, why don't you do this by you? Well,
Bob had the idea to bring us out, and I
think we can expand on that, and I think next
year it will be even ten times bigger, and we're
gonna keep investing in it. We're gonna keep promoting it,
and we're gonna keep doing all the things that make

(04:15):
a motorcycle event successful. So one hundred percent, next year
this is gonna be bigger and better and we're gonna
keep expanding on that. Hopefully these guys will come back out,
maybe even Rick Pecko or something like that. I don't know,
but we're gonna we're gonna keep expanding for next year.
Come on, Clayton, looking back, now, what's one behind the.

Speaker 6 (04:42):
Scenes moment from the show that you would that fans
will be surprised to hear about.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
There's so much behind the scenes. To be honest with you,
there's so much rhetoric.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
That was not so much stuff probably on a cutt.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
And stuff that. Yeah, it was inappropriate.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Mostly like if you.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Work in an environment and all the stupid stuff you say.
It's all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, it's like bike builders, kind of like iron workers. Yeah, exactly,
it'd have to be on HBO. As a matter of fact,
he was just showing me. Apparently the film crew gave
you what how much footage, Like it.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Was forty five minutes.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
That was all behind the scenes, crazy rhetoric stuff like
you know, if you're talking with your boys and just
out there saying the dumbest stuff. We have just reams
of that kind of stuff, right, Like we talked in
riddles almost even on the show when you heard us talk.
We had all these nicknames and these weird things we said.
We almost didn't even speak English most of the time. Right,

(05:47):
So there's so much of that stuff out there. And
I think if then gives me that footage, I will
release it on my social media and get it out
into people's ears. We have to beat some stuff, but
I think it would be really good, you know, it
would be really funny.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
And there was some other stuff that I didn't even
know about it. You just recently told me, Mike, Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Tell them about me, well about me and Vin.

Speaker 5 (06:09):
It was just something. It was just something the editors
had in Los Angeles where they cut everything together and
made it look like Vinnie and Paul were romantically involved.
And it's probably ten minutes. Give him an example, like
how hey, send it home, pal, you know, just.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Taking our words and mincing them.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
And you know, I had a lot of fun back then.
That one might be lost though. That's funny, all right,
this one's for Vin.

Speaker 8 (06:44):
So we all know that Paul and Paul Senior got
into it left and right. The fights were a big
part of the show, and a lot of times they
cut to you and you're just caught up in the
middle of it, looking like going back and forth, and
they would even interview you and it was like you
didn't really take sides, but what was going through your
head when some of those fights got pretty heated.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
I mean, like anybody else, you know, it's it's not
really a spectator sport, you know, so you kind of
get caught up in the middle of it and you
don't know what to do. You know, it's like it's
family stuff, and I get it because I worked for
family and that kind of stuff happened. So that's that's
pretty much how it is. I mean, what else do
you do.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, was that was that something that you and your
father because you grew up working for your father, right
and what you guys had, what's a sled shop.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Right early on.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Of course, yeah, in the bowling Alley. Yeah, so Vin
and his father had a lot of history working together
before he came to work for us, and his dad
was a lot like my father. I think that was
probably prepared you for what would come.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yeah. When I finally quit working for my father, was
so it can have a real relationship because the.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Work with him was tough.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
It was, it is it is, especially with that old
school mentality in my way or the highway, yep, it
you know, so I want to have a real relationship
with him.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
So it improved when you guys stopped working together.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Point.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah, see, I never knew that. It's interesting because I
think definitely working with my father made the show what
you loved about it, you know, the volatile nature, the
back and forth, the kind of butting of heads, the relatability.
But it also I think was probably tough on our relationship.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, as a father.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
So unfortunately when we separated, it didn't get better for me.
It got a little worse. It wasn't I didn't have
Vin's exact experience, and I think for you guys out there,
men and women or you know, everybody has family. I
think when American Chopper first took off, certainly the family
dynamic was you love the bikes, you love what we
were doing. But that family dynamic, that butting of heads,

(08:48):
that insanity almost because we had some bad blowout arguments,
was probably the thing that was the most universal because
this show aired in two hundred countries and territories in
ninety languages through the years, and it translated across the
board because people related to family dysfunction. At the end

(09:10):
of the day, we think about this.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
This was two.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Thousand and what was the first episode, two thousand and two, Yeah,
two thousand and two. There was nothing like that on television.
I mean there was a few reality shows, but not
like showing all the raw fights and disagreements and laughing
and crying and everything we were so I feel like
at the time it was groundbreaking. But we you know,
it's funny, we didn't even set out to be that.

(09:34):
You know, we got a call from a producer one
day and said we want to come and film you.
We didn't say, oh, we want to show. And I
think that's why it was so raw and real, because
we didn't set out to be what American Chopper would become.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
You know.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
So I remember when that first episode aired of the
jet bike before I was involved mm hm. And how
when that first aired, you guys were really upset. Yeah,
we were to be about the building of the bikes.
It's true and yeah that stuff.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, I thought, and that the ratings came out so
that you guys remember the first episode with the jet bike.
Anyone here remember the very frame It was a pilot.
That was a first episode of American Chopper two thousand
and two or two or two thousand and three, and
uh I remember we we really worked hard. We filmed
for like six weeks to do that episode, and uh

(10:25):
I thought like man, I was like, man, we're gonna
be like Bob Vila, you know, this is gonna be
like polished, and it's gonna be like we're gonna show
our art. And then they showed all the reality of
the situation, which was the fights. That was like part
of the experience for us, right, it was like part
of the It was real right that that those fights
were happening way before television, right, And so we had

(10:49):
all these blowouts and then you saw them. But what
I thought was great about at the time. So the
next day after the episode aired, me and my father
were looking at each other, like two years we were
building bikes, and we find they got our shot in
that episode aired, and.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
We thought we blew it.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, we blew it. We had it. We were like
this in the back, We had our head in our hands.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
We thought it was over.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
We looked like idiots because there was no precedent for
that type of television. We just thought we were fighting
half the time and this looks bad. But you know what,
in the end, we had a product to show, unlike
a lot of reality shows that came after, which was
just fighting. There was no they weren't building things, right,
So our show was very groundbreaking in that sense. And

(11:31):
then I'd say by five o'clock that day, the emails
started coming in, and we had a bookkeeper who was
robbing us by the way, but that's another story, and
she was printing out our emails and so by like
three o'clock we had like three hundred emails that were
all very positive, right, So we're reading them and you know,
like they were given my father hard time. By five o'clock,

(11:53):
the ratings came in and we just blew it out. So,
you know, we had no understanding of television or how
to be actors or anything like that. Matter of fact,
I didn't even like my picture taken at the time.
And then ratings came in and that was it. That
that kind of started everything in motion. Then we did
the Cody Project, which was the next pilot, and then

(12:15):
we started the series American Chopper, and that was the
first build of the series that me and then were
heavy on, and Michael came in.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
When'd you come in? Black Widow? Black Widow? Yeah, so
Michael came into the show.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
So there were two episodes. The first episode, these guys
weren't in and by the beginning of the series, the
Black Widow launched and we were all in full force
by that time. And then we started bringing in other characters.
We didn't bring them in to be like television characters.
We brought him in because we needed help because we
were so busy.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
It was just necessity.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
And then we got Christian and Nick and Rick Pecko
and later on Jason Poole and Cody was like way
there he was in the he was there before the
Both these got as Cody.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
So it's pretty interesting they all all.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
It all really worked out in a very organic way.
And I got to tell you that's what you loved
about our show. It was nothing pre rehearsed, recorded, The
fights weren't pushed. It was all happening in real time,
and you got to see it every Monday night, and
we didn't even know what you were getting. And here's
another thing about the show that I think you would
find interesting. We've never had control over editing in all

(13:28):
the years of American chop or. We never said you
can do this, or you can't do this, or you
can do that, or you can or else. It would
have been a whole different show because no one wants
to look bad, especially my father. Okay, So the fact
that none of us were able to say anything about
how the show was edited made it as raw as
you can imagine. And I think it was part of

(13:49):
the staying power right.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
It was. Yeah, on Monday nights, it was. It was
a surprise to us.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, it was a surprise to us everybody. We watched
it with you every Monday night.

Speaker 9 (14:00):
Two things, One, where's Cody now and is there plans
for filming of anything in the future.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Oh well, okay, So first of all, where's Cody now? Okay,
So after things started to kind of dissipate, Cody was
my dude, right because he came up through the ranks
and he was probably in his early twenties after he
worked for you. How old was he when he came
to work for me after that twelve?

Speaker 3 (14:27):
He's almost forty now he's born eighty seven.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
He was in his life twenties, right, he was like
in his mid twenties. He was my guy. Cody could weld.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Anything, he could fabricate anything.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
He could run my water jet, and he could wire
a bike, he could.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Assemble a bike. Right.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
He was my one man bad. I only needed just
Cody and so he couldn't machine. That's it C and
c but everything else. Man, he was right on it, right,
And we were we were cooking, and he came into
my office one day he called me in.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
I sat down.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
He said, listen, I got this opportunity. Okay, because our
guess in electric company is Central Hudson. And he said,
I have this opportunity, I can go. My father got
me a job at Central Hudson. And he said, if
I don't take it, Okay, if I don't take it,
I'll never forgive myself. That's how he opens up the conversation.

(15:17):
I love this kid. He's just a great kid. Right,
so immediately I knew I'm letting him.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Way off the hook.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
He's out, go go do, go, do what your future is.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
And that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
He went to work for Central Hudson and it has
worked out. It's better than if he worked for me
forever because you know, things slowed down and maybe things
would have changed. So he took his opportunity when he
had it and he's done. How good for himself. Yes,
he's done. He's I think he owns a farm now.
So he's a disava. Yeah, he's a go getter man.

(15:49):
He kicks ass. He really does. Cody's Cody's done very well.
And uh, you know, back in the day, he loved it.
This kid was fourteen years old driving his dirt bike
like across the street from where he lived to work
with us. So he got his start, he learned how
to be a man working for you know, occ back

(16:09):
in the day, and it was good for us. I
mean it really was. He was a great asset. He
was great on the show and just a great kid.
And you know, it's another example of like just some
random neighbor, like your neighbor coming over and starting to
work and they put a camera on him and it
works out.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Like the dynamic is there? Right? So I think that's
really that.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
There were so many facets to our show that were
so new, unique, And as I get older, I appreciate
him more and more because there's nothing like that out
there anymore. There's no television like that anymore.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Think about it. What do you watch on TV?

Speaker 1 (16:47):
And you know the other thing we were talking about
the other day, families don't get together and watch shows
like American Chopper anymore.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
I don't know your experience, but families.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Used to sit down, the whole family, five people and
maybe the great and Monday nights at nine o'clock, even
though football was on, they watched our show because they
had to see what we were doing. Because it a
lot of times they split episodes, so the first part
would be the Monday before and the finish would be
the Monday after. It was very smart and so you

(17:17):
would have to be there. There was no DVR there
was no HD television in Monday nights nine o'clock. If
you weren't sitting there in that couch watching What Was Next,
you missed it, you know So I think, I think,
honestly and I missed those days we were talking about
We just did a podcast and talked about this stuff.
I missed that. Everybody's on their phones.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
This is like our new world right here.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
It's all just down here with your head down. You
go to go out to dinner, everybody's on their phones
looking down. It's like it.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Didn't used to be that way.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
So our show was still in that framework, you know what.
So what's a well, I don't know. I feel like
we need to do a where are they now?

Speaker 2 (18:00):
I feel like.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
I have to figure out something. I want to build
a bike with this guy, and I want him to
be standing there telling us what to.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Do at all. Yeah, I have the forman yes, yes,
so I have.

Speaker 6 (18:16):
I have.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
I got to tell you something, honestly, like I would
love I have a ten year old son, Hudson, Yes,
just one. We were blessed with one kid. We tried,
but we got one great kid. Oh you have eight kids?
Oh my god, you got him beat why do you
think Vin's got seven? Yeah, so I'm telling you, I

(18:52):
think as far as television goes, listen, I think we
would love nothing more than to I'd love to build
a bike with this guy.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
We were just talking.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
We don't really build bikes on I'm a commission based guy,
so I don't like build bikes as a hobby. Like
Major League Baseball has to come to me and say, hey,
we got this marketing campaign.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
We want you to build a bike like this bike. Right.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
That happens for far and few in between now. But
I'll tell you, man, if we got back together, we
were just looking. Vin didn't see this bike. Vin didn't
build this bike. He built this bike with me. Because
this goes back. But when American Chopper came back, we
built this for MLB and he was just looking at
it and enjoying looking at it because he never really
saw it in person. And this is the kind of

(19:33):
thing me and him did together all the time. These
are two examples of a hundred motorcycles that are heavily themed,
with a tremendous amount of forethought, with a tremendous amount
of creative and it all had to do with theme marketing.
And advertising for some of the largest brands in the world.
Am I right?

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Some of the laws And.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Me and him were crack Okay, Mikey was comic relief
and fantastic farting on seats that my father's face was
on right or talking about it, and and and me
and Vin.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Were crack man.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
We were you know, we were talking about like this bike,
like all these early bikes. It was kind of just
me and him. It was just me and Vin. And
Vin was like the mechanic had this mechanical mind. I
had this creative mind. I grew up in the steel business,
so I was a fabricator. Vin was a mechanic becoming
a fabricator running the little mini water jet that we

(20:28):
had making all the brackets for stuff. And it was
like the beginning of something great. So we really experienced
me you watch the Commanche build. It was like super
early days of that type of stuff, super high level
creative for the time. And we were doing the Snap
on bike. What was that first season was Snap on
Bike the Miller electric bike where we're towing the welder

(20:49):
behind us. I mean this is like heavy, yeah, And
now I'm like, I'll be fifty one coming up right.
So when I look back at my youth, I have
such an appreciation for what American Chopper afforded us because, honestly,
if it wasn't for the show and the exposure it
gave us globally, these big brands would have never said, hey,

(21:10):
will you build us a motorcycle? Right, they were just
pouring in. And aside from the big brands, we did
a lot of off air bikes, like tons of off
air bikes, and this was like in the heyday, you know,
so you know what's next?

Speaker 2 (21:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I would love to build another bike together. I think
people would love to see that. I mean, especially like
whatever age you're at, wherever you are, whether you're thirty
or sixty. I feel like there's a big range of
people in there that love that type of content. And
it's not out there. There's a lot of content. There's
just not good quality content where you're creating things anymore.

Speaker 9 (21:45):
Right, You guys like challenges, we do good, build a
bike for next year and a halven a year.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
We could probably do that. We just need so much money,
that's the problem. We got to pack up the truck,
you know. No, I think we could probably do so
like that.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Do you guys believe in Jesus?

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Oh yeah, well then start praying about it.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
We will we will.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Do that, right.

Speaker 7 (22:10):
We got we got a Facebook live question from Jake Fallen.
He is asking, is there a certain build that you
wish you could go back and redo and how would
you have done it differently?

Speaker 1 (22:23):
I mean, I don't know, what do you think? I mean?
For me, I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
I was looking at some of the stuff and I
was like, oh, I forgot about that. Like how many
bikes have we done?

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Lots of bikes?

Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, yeah, and a real number.

Speaker 10 (22:37):
Though.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
I mean I would I would say this about the bikes,
like when I look at him, I don't I think
almost all of the bikes I think there could have
been something better about them.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Does that make sense? I love them all.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
I think they're great. Actually, their imperfections are almost what
are endearing a little bit. To some extent, you might
not find what's wrong with them, But for me, I
always want to do better, even for us. Look, we
pushed and pushed through the years to make bikes better
and better every time we built them. Were they better,
I don't know. You'd be the judge, but we didn't

(23:11):
stop trying.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
We didn't know. I mean, I pushed him hard.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
He was starting to do the C and C stuff,
and I would I would task him even by sheet
metal guy Brendan, like once we separated and did the
senior versus junior thing. Once we started building bikes as
Paul Junior designed, it really pushed it because we were
feeling the pressure of OCC right cause I come from OCC.
I am OCC right now I come out of that.

(23:36):
I was the creative force and then now I had to.
I found myself separating myself from that situation, which was
very difficult to come to terms with.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
But I also knew.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
They were there and we're here. We have to now
prove that we can do what they did right, and
so we pushed hard. Even our buildofs, like our buildoff
one and two, we left no there was nothing left
to chance. We bled out on the floor working twenty
hours a day.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
And I have to say something.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Brendan's not here, but I'll tell you right now, man,
Brendan Thompson, my sheet metal guy, has been My built
all the sheet metal on that bike right there, so
you can marvel at it.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
That guy Obi.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Won Kenobi man in the trenches, if you had one
guy you wanted to pull down with you and you
had to fight. Brendan was the guy, right and he
came in every time and he performed. And even like
when we started Paul Junior's lines, we had a crazy team.
I mean we had me, we had Vin, we had Cody,
we had Mike, we had Brendan, and we had a

(24:42):
few other characters in there that came and went. But
I'm telling you, man, we were happen. We can make
anything happen. That's how we felt. And we were not
willing to give up anything. And we worked twenty hours
a day at times, didn't we We worked around a
Vin almost got divorced twice, not really, but I saw
it on his face because he was married early and

(25:03):
you know he had kids and he was popping out kids,
laughing them out.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, so you know really, I mean we we really
went for it hard and and you know we had
we we had to be compared to the senior no
pun intended company, and we're.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Just step them up every time. Every next bike we did,
we did better than the last.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
We pushed ourselves.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
I know me too, me too.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
When you're finished with something, figuring out how you're going
to do it better.

Speaker 8 (25:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
When I had Rick Pecko on my podcast, you Go
and and and then we talked about it and his
answer for what what what does he miss about the show?
The creative? He misses the creative? I miss it too,
he misses it. Maybe we all got to get together
and build something.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
Man, I miss it too. I miss when we came
up with a new bike and we got together. It
was like, here's what we're doing, let's figure it.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Out, yeah man, and unveils We're pressure on top of
pressure like crazy.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (26:03):
Yea.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
I have a suggestion that could answer a whole bunch
of the things you just covered for a special episode,
for you all to get back together to do another build,
track down and restore to Mikey Vinnie bike and then
unveil it here next year's bike fest.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
I have no idea what.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
I don't think it's trackable. I think it turned got
turned into uh popcorn bike or something like that.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Maybe I just made that up.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
I don't know, I know, but yeah, that's what I heard.
He's when he gave me that suicide shift.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Oh yeah, Yeah, I think back in the day maybe
OCC had a lot of bikes to their you know
credit they had so many bikes, and I think as
time went by, yeah, I think maybe the shine were
off for them and they were like repurposing stuff, which
is look, you know, it's what you do when you
have to do it right, do what you have to do.
So I think some of that stuff kind of went

(26:58):
went out that way. But you know, even to talk
about unveils, I mean we did that. You remember the
Cadillac bike. Remember that fricking build. That's one of my favorites.
It's one It's the one that got away for me
because they sweepstakes that and someone won it in California.
I got the guy's number. I keep calling him, but
he's not part and he's the price keeps gout bike.

(27:20):
That bike was what episode.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
The experience going out there.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Everything everything at the proven Grounds GM Proven Grounds. It
was pretty killer. It was my OCC at the time.
This was early on, like maybe like two years into
maybe the first season where it was PJD and O
c C separate and uh actually Discovery Discovery brought us
the build. They brought us Cadillac and so both sides

(27:47):
had to build a bike for the CTSV as like like,
this is what we're working with, you know, And certainly,
man we we it wasn't a competition, but we saw
it that way because we were it was Apple. It
was our first Apples to Apples build with those. It
was it really was. It was in our heads it was,

(28:08):
and we really went full on with that whole build.
So I don't remember what their bike like, you no,
it's not memorable.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
I don't No, No, I should they They did a
different type of thing than we did, you.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Know, But I don't know where I was going with that.

Speaker 10 (28:24):
But question for you, so when when you guys decided
you want to build a bike, how long does it
take you? Because when watching the show, I don't want
to say when Mike was walking he was like the mediator.
I used to love when Mike would walking in because
tensions were high and he made it throw the water
on the fire and kind of Yes, Vinny, you your

(28:46):
ability to weld and what you did was amazing.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Paul.

Speaker 10 (28:51):
I don't know how you come up with these designs,
But I mean, do you sleep want it?

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Do you throw it around?

Speaker 3 (28:56):
How do you do that?

Speaker 10 (28:57):
What's the normal build because like the show two or
three episodes and the WI was done and I know
that in real like that's not how it does because yeah,
and put it.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Together like yeah, the show made it very expedient. It
was very uh you know, served up on a plate
in forty minutes.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
That took six weeks or eight weeks or whatever.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
You know.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
I mean for me, I'll tell you so from from
my creative ability is a God given ability. God has
given me a creative gift, flat out, end of story.
I did not I was not creative in school. I
never took a class on creativity or design. I never
read a book on designer creativity. When I was given
the ability or given the opportunity to build motorcycles, this

(29:41):
is what came out of me. Okay, now I couldn't
do it without these guys, you see what I mean.
So without my team, it's just an idea, right. But
when given the opportunity and the team, we created these
these works of art. So from from thank you for
your compliment. With that, that's how I would describe what
you see. We got a Facebook question. Uh, it was

(30:03):
an anonymous message, but it says, are there any new builders?
Out there that you like.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
I mean, listen, I've been out of the game.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, you know, it's so weird because like people say, oh,
how's the motorcycle industry, I don't really know. It's weird
because like I build these type of things for large corporations.
If they're not interested, I'm not really building bikes. I
don't build bikes hobby wise. I build theme right, So
so from that perspective, I mean I don't really follow

(30:37):
other builders, you know, I don't know, man, I feel
like Mike's got a great bike back there. If you
get to look at that. This is from uh Torque's
Custom Cycles Torque bike back there, Yeah, right back there.
Check out that bike back there. He's doing a great job.
What's that called again, some cholo or something. Yeah, it's

(30:59):
like a cholos, you know, all engrave and look go
look at that bike. It's it's like a work of
art in and of itself. But as far as like
following people, I don't know. You got to remember, man,
I came up with like you know, Arlen Ness and
Paul Yaffey and like you know, Billy Lane and you know,

(31:19):
all these all these crazy builders from back in the day.
If you remember back then, there were so many builders
when we came on. When we came on the scene
back like twenty years ago, there was a lot of
great builders, you know, Jesse, James, all these guys were
building crazy stuff. Love him or hate him, it doesn't matter.
That's the world I'm from. That's that old school. I'll

(31:41):
never forget. When I first started building motorcycles, Roger Borget
set out a Christmas card and it was just like
a little postcard and he had this python motorcycle. I
don't know if you ever seen it, but it had
like a snake skin paint job. I had never seen
anything like it. And he had like a race slick
flat tire. They didn't make fat tires like maybe one

(32:04):
eighty or where one sixty was the widest tire. Now
they make them three sixty, right, But back then it
was just a flat tire he put on a bike.
It was this wide and to me, I saw that
and it blew my mind, honestly. So I had a
lot of inspiration from some really great minds, great designers.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
People had great ideas.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
That was some of my inspiration coming up as a
young person in my twenties, you know. So that was
That's the kind of stuff that affected where I ended
up going. Now. I feel like from a design standpoint,
I'm unique in the fact that I build theme. Most
builders will build a bike and change the paint job,
and their look is what you know that they are right.

(32:44):
But for us, what we were was a chameleon in
the sense that we built whatever it needed to be,
whether it would look like this or this much too.
These are two spectacular works of art, but they're completely
different in designed because they called for different things. So
I always like to be I always like to build
what it is that people these corporations would build for

(33:06):
themselves had they built a motorcycles. That makes sense, whether
it's Cadillac or Mercedes, AMG or Geico or Microsoft or
any of those.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Right, it was always I was.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Always trying to interpret what they would do if they
were to build a motorcycle, right, and we had creative freedom.
I mean through the years of Paul Junior designs, there
were no drawings. There's no drawing for that motorcycle. It's
just what you see. We build in three dimension and
in real time. And when you watch the show and
you watch this thing come to fruition. You watched it

(33:38):
in real time, you didn't get the picture first. The
OCC days was we had to draw something get the approval.
I would even sit down with Jason Poole and make
the tweaks, because Jason was great at drawing stuff, but
he wasn't good at understanding how it worked. So he
would draw it, but it would be like thirty feet
long with a snake tail, you know what I mean.
And I would have to come in and be like, dude,

(33:59):
we go to bring this thing in like this far right,
and like this is proportionate. And I would do all
that and then even and then and then the company
would approve it, and then I would go out to
the lift. We'd build it, and I'd have to make
adjustments even still, you know. And then after that, when
we parted ways with OCC, we would just do it
was all free form, even the Cadillac build. It was

(34:20):
OCC building a CTSV bike and US building a CTSV bike.
We were two weeks into the build. We had a
meeting with Cadillac and I was talking with that guy
who designed the car, and I said, look, you got
to understand you're not getting any drawings right because OCC
already submitted their drawing and had it approved, and they said, yeah,
that's fine, we just want to see what you guys

(34:41):
are going to come up with. And that was that
was the position we had. Because of the consistency of
building great products year after year without any drawings, we
just gained credibility. And if you know anything about corporate America,
that's not a real thing.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
No one really does that. No one.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
There's a thousand approvals for a T shirt design, never
mind taking all their IP and turning it into something
on two wheels. Right, So pretty it's probably the most
unique thing about what we did.

Speaker 7 (35:14):
Kind of a two part of question. Do you ever
watch the show with your son? And do you ever
like watch the show? And is there anything like that
Discovery did, like in a particular episode or something that
like over dramaticize that you kind of like question like
that's not how it kind.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Of went down or or something along those lines.

Speaker 6 (35:32):
You know.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Uh, Okay, So, first of all, watch it with my son.
I've tried that.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
There's he's just not that impressed with.

Speaker 11 (35:39):
Me, be honest with you, he is because.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
I'm a great dad. We have a great relationship. But
as far as that kind of thing. I mean, he
sees it. People come up, they want autographs and pictures
wherever we are. We going to stores, and you know,
I always and sometimes like if the shop's not open
and we pull in, he's like, dadda someone out there's
someone out there. Go go take a picre with him.
He's real sensitive like that. So I'll go out and
take a picture because he's like, you know this guy.

(36:05):
So as far as that goes, he does, he's not
really impressed. I think as time goes by. He's very
creative mind. Right, he's a very creative mind. He's is
he doing motorcycles?

Speaker 6 (36:14):
No?

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Will he be? I don't know, I'm letting it.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
We named him a Hudson because the Paul thing was
kind of played out to be on. I always thought
my son would be Paul Junior Junior. I don't know,
you know, like I really did. I always thought I
would name my son Paul. But I think after time
went by, it's a lot of pressure, it's a lot
of things. So and then he just can ask my
wife over there, he's a Hudson, right, and then that's it.

(36:38):
He's Ben Hudson and he's one hundred percent who he is,
so I think from that standpoint, he's not very impressed.
But I'm hoping he gets into watching the show because
I think it's a damn good show. Forget that I
was in it. I just think it even stands up now.
Because I try and watch shows from twenty years ago,
I can't watch for more than five minutes. Our show
actually holds up. It does, even though the quality maybe

(37:00):
the first few years isn't high. Death it doesn't really
matter because we're building things, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
And they took my girls. They're nineteen now, they just
started watching and the like, yeah, so they're fascinated by it.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
You know, we're like old farts now.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Man, it's like we're like ancient.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
We're like classics, right, We're antiques pretty much, you know.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
I'm sure there was probably something on every episode where
we wish they did something different.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
I would say Vinn's right. I think we wish they
did something different they did, yeah, right. I think we
were more sometimes disappointed, like if we worked for a
week on a gas tank and it was like all
this drama and then it was nowhere in the episode.
But that's what no, honestly like they they had more
drama than they.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Could deal with.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
My father was a drama queen, I mean, and I
say that in the nicest possible way, because without him,
we wouldn't have had the success we had, and I
would have never built motorcycles. So, you know, everybody wants
to talk about the butting of heads and they want
to say, oh, you know, they want to take sides,
But the truth is, without Paul Senior man, none of
us are even sitting on this stage because he was

(38:14):
so hulk holgany in his insanity and his drive and
his instability and his you know, all these things that
you saw that were you loved, right, you loved Some
people love to hate him, mostly women sometimes especially moms, right,
but it was really relatable and it was I'm telling you,

(38:35):
the most common thing I get from men, okay, whether
their fathers are alive or not, and quite often they're
not anymore, is your father was just like my father.
And I hear that time and time again. It was
it's like the common denominator. And Vin's dad was just
like my dad, but not not the same kind of guy,
but that old school kick your ass, go to work,

(38:59):
don't free mouth off don't tell me anything. You can't
tell him anything because even if he's right, he's wrong.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
I mean, even if he's wrong, he's.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Right, you know, that old school kind of way. And
I was just talking to Clayton because Clayton's dad, Don
used to drive truck for us and was in a
in a lot of the early episodes, right, Mike, Oh yeah, Don,
his father drove for us.

Speaker 11 (39:23):
Man.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
As matter of fact, he drove for us when we
first realized we were famous.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
And I was just telling him that.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
And it was in Louisiana Steal what was that Superdome?

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, in the Superdome truck? Was that the steel pony?

Speaker 1 (39:36):
What was that? What was that called?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Don't something else?

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Okay, So anyways, the first time we realized we were famous,
we the show had just started. We were in the Superdome,
we were signed autographs and people were pouring in. It
was like one of the early episodes. And he was
our driver. And I remember in that episode I said,
that's Don our driver. I don't know if you remember that,
but anyway, he was there all the time driving for us,

(40:02):
and he did a great job. And you know, it's
interesting because we had so many people like that come
through the show through the years, including Vin's father, who
was awesome and amazing. He really was. Mister D was
in the show, and I remember mister D was always
he was always there. And we had a lot of
fun years with Vin and his dad and my dad,

(40:23):
and they got my father and Vin's father go way
back in the early days of Montgomery and snowmobiling and
everything else. So we're old locals. Like this area right
here is not too dissimilar to where we're from. So
I guess when you're looking at us, you're kind of
looking in the mirror.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
And I think that was a big.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Aspect of what made the show so successful, right. It
was very every man Like I grew up in the
steel business. He grew up grinding it out, greased up,
you know, greet greasy hands, working under a car, that
kind of stuff. So I certainly think that was a
big part of the appeal. We weren't actors, and we

(41:06):
weren't and so do your question, No, not really, like
the drama was just built in. It was there. It's
actually when they started filming what they loved about. As
a matter of fact, the very first episode of American
Chopper got edited, polished, okay, So they took out all
the fights because they just didn't think there was room
for it.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
And the producer who came.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
To us saw the edited version and freaked out, said,
where are all the fights that we saw in the
first episode? And it took another six weeks and it
almost didn't make its first air date, and they put
all the fights back in. So the very first episode
you saw was like the Bob Vila we were looking for,
but we didn't know what was going to be successful.
This producer did. His name is Craig Poligian Pilgrim Films

(41:49):
and Television. He's now owned by Lionsgate, but he's like
the CEO. Now I don't know what he is, but
he has become a mogul monster. And he found us,
found us on a phone call, and I picked up
the phone and I said, yes, and the rest is
history pretty much, you know. Oh my gosh, we started
the actual Oh ce see, I think it was ninety nine,

(42:15):
Yeah I did, Yeah, yep, I did. My parents were separated.
I lived with my mother, we both did, right, you bet?
And uh yeah it was ninety nine, and that's when
uh you.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
Here, Yeah, what the what the fuck do you want
me to say? Holy shit, yes, Paul, how about you
shut the phone.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Oh no, you're fine, You're not starting any fights. So yeah, no, yeah,
we were living at home. Was nineteen ninety nine, and
this is whay, Like I think we built bikes for
maybe two years before, two or three years before television
came on, and we were like going everywhere and everything,
showing our bikes everywhere we could and actually hitting a

(43:04):
lot of dead ends. We would build five or six bikes,
go on the road, show them, sell them, and the
bank account just did this right. We weren't making any
real money. We were. Yeah, well a lot of people
understand that. Yeah, it wasn't until the show hit there.
You know, all of a sudden, we're making more money
on T shirts than even like motorcycles, and we were
making a lot of money on motorcycles. So when the

(43:26):
show hit, that was just put us in the stratosphere,
you know. And again, like I said earlier, two hundred
countries and territories, ninety languages. It's not a it wasn't
a regional show, and it was very much beloved overseas
because that in some of these countries, especially Latin America
company countries. They're very family oriented and it was very

(43:47):
it was very well received in those places.

Speaker 5 (43:49):
So yeah, what's that? Oh no, I'm not married though.
Is that a proposal?

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Another one bites the dust?

Speaker 2 (44:09):
It's more fit? What's that? I mean?

Speaker 1 (44:14):
He's good?

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, oh, I mean for me. You know, I just
saw him not too long ago, and he's uh, he's
doing good. You know. We I'd like to have more
of a relationship. I'd love to tell you a different story.
He's doing good, he looks good. I think he's building
bikes like crazy. He's building more bites than I am,
which is good to hear, you know.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
But you know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
I love the guy so to me, he's my dad,
you know. So I'm always hopeful that the future is
more bright than it is now. And it's not. It's
not like, you know, it's funny people see us in
that early years of the American Chopper, when it was
early and we were fighting. We don't do that hasn't
happened in a long time, over a decade.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
I'd say, But you know, time goes by.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
He's got it like kind of a different family and
like so I don't want to say, indifferent sets in,
but I think sometimes distance he's in Florida, he goes
back and forth to New York. He's kind of got
his own life. So we really don't do a lot
or talk a lot. But but I'm hoping, I'm always
hopeful that changes. He's seventy five, I'll be fifty one.

(45:23):
No one's getting younger, you know, but but it is
what it is. Mike sees him a lot. Mike goes
out there, gets bit by his dogs.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah he's got a dog kill me.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
Yeah, but yeah, we get along very well.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, yeah, Mike.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
He's always gotten along good with my father.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
He's always the you see.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
The show my father. Those two have a great relationship.

Speaker 8 (45:44):
You know, which bike they all three of you built
meant the most of you?

Speaker 2 (45:49):
And why.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
I'm gonna let Vin answer that one, just because I
get this question as an individual all the time. I'd
be curious used to hear what he says, because I
don't think we've ever really been asked that question together.
And we built some heavy iron man, let me tell
you something. Our body of work is deep, So.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
I don't know. I mean, i'd still have to say the.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Fire fire bike Okay, there you go.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Man, it's a good lot answer.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
A lot of them meant a lot to me in
different ways, but ultimately that was the most important.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
All right. Now ask him the PJD days when we separate,
Now ask him that question. Yeah, our run.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
I don't know. The Cadillac was awesome. The Gears of
War was just something.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, we had serious bikes, man, I'll tell you ever that. Yeah, Man,
I'll tell you our pg D days were stronger than
our OCC days in some ways, Like, I mean, this
is OCC.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
This is like because it's.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Like iconic, the Black Widow's iconic.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
I feel like we all had way more pressure and experience.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
We had more pressure and more experience. You know.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
My design is.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
What made everything happen.

Speaker 6 (47:01):
Though.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Yeah, as good as it was, I feel.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Like I think he's right.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
We were we were we were under we were like
we were creating a diamond under the pressure. We felt
the way to OCC because we came out of that
and they were the big dogs, right, I mean, everybody
knows Orange County Choppers. They were just monsters.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
And every episode it was for us to crush it.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
It was and we we went hard on everything. I
mean and then we built like Gears of War and
we we built a nine to eleven memorial bike which
I just posted today, which is in the which is
in the it's in the memorial.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Remember trying to do the Phoenix.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Oh man, it was.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
It was a puzzle.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
I've got a CAD program from them from the original
one and trying to convert all that.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, do that.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
That gas tank was the phoenix, which was the transportation hub,
which was which was designed to be the phoenix rising
up out of the ashes of nine to eleven. I mean,
that's what that whole thing was. And we made that
our centerpiece for our gas tank.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
That thing was a building after and.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
That's right, that's that's right.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
It was down in the visitors center before they finished
the memorial and they had like four feet of water
come in because Manhattan got buried and.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
What was that? What was Katrinque? What was the sandy? Sandy?

Speaker 1 (48:15):
So we had to bring it back in and redo it.
But you know, all this stuff was good. It was
good stuff.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
I think for me at here's because it was so
unique to figure out.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
That sitting back, that's interesting stuff.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
We've never done it. Yeah, in a motorcycle you know. Yeah,
it was a free show from a video game.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, that's funny. I wouldn't pick that one. So I'm
glad I handed it off to him, because you know,
everybody has it's funny how and what I really love
about these podcasts what haven't been on is like I
have my own perspective. So I have my own thoughts
about everything. This is the way it is, right. But
then you talk to him about things, and it's a
whole different perspective. His understanding, his approach, his thought process

(48:56):
of things, he likes and doesn't. He remembers things differently.
It's he remembers things. We just did a podcast not
that long ago. He was saying things to me and
I was like, all of a sudden, I remembered it.
I did not remember any aspect of it. As soon
as he said it, I saw it in my head.
So it's weird, Like you start to reminisce, and you
we we did so many, All three of us have

(49:17):
so much. We have like three lifetimes together. I know
that sounds crazy, but it's true. We did so much,
not just travel, We traveled the world. We build amazing things.
We were in these situations that no one gets to
be in and I have to tell you, man, we
are so we are so blessed to have this experience,
because the older I get, the more I realize how

(49:38):
darn unique this whole situation has been.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
You know, none of it was like we were just
giving it to us and we were letting it pass
us by. We were in it work and we were
all of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
We we pushed hard through all of it. We didn't
just go, oh, this is great, we got television, let's
just sit back and you know, shine the cameras on me.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
We fought.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
We fought hard for everything we did creatively and otherwise.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
You know, he did that. It was because the fire bike,
first of all, through the time, it was everything that
happened with all nine to eleven, and then all the
time we put into it. And that was I think
the first bike I think I've ever road.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. It was usually me or my father.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
And when we built a fire bike, you know, we
took time to build that bike. We didn't just like
nine to eleven didn't happen and we just did it.
We were like you can throw a rock at New
York City from us all in our area or firemen, right,
they all live because we're we're within a certain distance
from the city where you're kind of as far out
as you can go and still work in the city
and be a city fireman. So all around us we

(50:47):
were friends. Michael was really good friends with Ronaldson's Al
Ronaldson had passed away years ago from uh From died
in a fire and that was like unheard of back then.
And later on we went to his son, Al Ronaldson's
firehouse to unveil the bike. But yeah, I mean that
was uncommon back then. Me or my father would ride

(51:07):
the bikes all the time.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
And then and we really busted our ass on that bike.
We spent so many late nights and it was nice
because it was kind of like a little reward at
the end.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
And then was working his ass off for us, so
we thought, hey, let him ride the fire bike, you know,
pay it forward. You know, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (51:26):
The creative process, So would you sit with the brand
and the brand would tell you like key elements are
looking for in a motorcycle, and then how would you
communicate that division?

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a really great question. So yeah,
the creative process was this for me, okay, because I
would need to sit down with the client because remember people,
because we do whatever we want, right, because there's no drawing,
so you get what you get at the unveil. No
one sees the bike until the day of the unveil, right,

(51:57):
So we would sit down with the client and hear
what they are, hear what they say, and then we
would create the bike. Like I said earlier that had
they been a bike builder or if they knew what
to do, that's what they would do. I don't know
how else to describe it other than that. So we
would fully integrate what they're telling us, whether it was
a product, whether it was colors. Quite often they'd say,

(52:20):
we like the MLB bike, so I pro street. I'm
not building them a chopper, so now I'm in the
pro street phase, right, And then they're going to say, well,
this is a product, this is a color, this is
I mean, Sephie. It is a great example, right, it's
a gene expert. They had this technology where they did
this gene testing for people out in the field in
a laptop and they were saving lives in Africa with

(52:43):
this technology. And so we integrated that exact technology into
the bike itself. We did three d DNA wheels. Was
another good bike, remember Sefie. It was a really good
one with the gene expert. Remember the thing opened on
the side with the oh yeah, yeah, better.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Way remember it boom, yes, a better way for one.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah. So we just took what they said and then
we just you know, we just teamed up. And then
you know, it's so funny because mostly people would hand
drawings out to all the people working in the company
and say this is the project. What I would do
is I would articulate ideas in real time to then
and Cody and Brendan and whoever else, and I would

(53:27):
be like almost like it was like almost a symphony.
I know that sounds crazy, but we was like I
was orchestrating all these guys great talents, and sometimes I
had like twenty percent of an idea or seventy percent
of an idea, but it didn't matter because we were
working towards something. And if Brendan came to me and
said I think we should do this, I would take
it into consideration. But if I didn't think it was

(53:48):
right for the project, I would say no. Or other
times I would say that's a great idea. That's how
I would handle these guys, Am I right. I never
took the fact that I was the lead designer so
seriously that I wasn't willing to trust the very best
people out there with the product. You see what I'm saying.
So I would use their skill set. There was choosing

(54:10):
them because they were capable. A lot of people get
caught up other people, Oh this is my idea, this
is what you do.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
There's a certain.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Extent I had to toe the line, but I always
gave everyone a little bit of breath and with because
I wanted the best out of them for the product.
Does that make sense? That's what I always did. That's
the only way I knew to operate.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
And no one taught me that.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
And so when I say it was a God given talent,
I was never taught by a human. Any of what
you see in your impressed by I give all the
glory to God for all of that process. That's all
I can tell you. Right, he knows we grew up together.
I was in this steel business. I could weld things
and stuff, but I didn't have this. I didn't know
I had this in me. I was twenty six years

(54:53):
old when I finally realized maybe I was a little creative,
you know. And my brother Michael, same thing, hyper creative.
I feel like it's just like runs in the family
and Vinnie too. Vinnie's like a creative thinker, like an
engineer mind, you know, he.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Figures stuff out.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
So we're all put together to make to entertain you
guys with stuff like this, and it's it's been a
great process and it's been a great journey. And I
don't think we're done.

Speaker 6 (55:18):
Man.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
I think we're gonna build some more bikes.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
You bet, what do you think? Gang? All right?

Speaker 7 (55:27):
Two for one, we had an online question for Mikey,
and the question was, does Mikey still do art?

Speaker 2 (55:37):
I do. I try to make movies now. I don't
paint any longer.

Speaker 5 (55:44):
I don't know if that answers the question, but yes,
I guess we're gonna buy.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
Some I was. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:49):
We stopped at a crappy convenience store today and they
had a bunch of velvet paintings.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
Oh, like the old school, like a wolf or.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they were great. Great man.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
All right, I think we're gonna wrap it up, guys.
It's been a long day in a long evening. Yeah,
let's we'll take one more over here. I just want
to know.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
I know earlier you said you're planning on making this
a yearly event.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Are our plans like each year.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Maybe bring back another special guest, like one year Cody,
one year, Rick, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
I mean I would actually bring I mean, if these
guys would come back, i'd bring them back and maybe
add another Yeah, so maybe. Yeah, I mean I think, Oh,
it's Rick Pecco's birthday today.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Let's call him on the show. Call him right now
on speaker?

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Should I call him?

Speaker 5 (56:39):
Call him right now on speaker, man, Yeah, it's ninety.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Kids, got kids.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
Seeing these people are going to be disappointed. Now, you
know what I disappoints.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Rix is a certain kind of dunk guy.

Speaker 9 (56:57):
Man.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
You can't just call Rick regimen.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, Rick, you leave a message. We'll have everybody saying
happy birthday Rick.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
When Rick came into the shop every day, he would
walk the same footprints into that show.

Speaker 9 (57:08):
He was.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
And let me tell you something, ma, I'll be honest
with you.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
He was probably the most committed guy I ever met
in my whole life.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
He would drive two and.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
A half hours from Pennsylvania from probably somewhere around here,
not really, but it was. It was like halfway to
New York, but two and a half hours in the
morning and in the evening, and he worked late nights.
He drove five hours round trip for a decade.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Five out.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Nobody does that. Who does you do that? No, nobody
does even by us. It's an hour and a half
trip to New York City if you work in the city. Right,
So five out he did that for how long? He
hit bears on the way in half the time? He
really did. Man, Rick Pecko is a serious dude, and
he was great for us too. You talk, and you know,
it's so interesting because you talk about characters. There's three

(58:00):
of us up here, but we had like twelve great
guys that It's funny because everyone who watched the show
could relate differently to everyone in the packing order and
how it worked, and it was all dynamic, and we
were all freaking nuts. We were nuts. We were nuts
back in the day.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Oh, we were rough.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
We were so bad. Man, this guy was shooting spitballs
in my ear from nowhere all the time.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Yeah, paint grenades.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Yeah, that was great. Remember we used to mess with Rick,
we'd move his stuff around. He was such a guy
that ever he was.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Yes, he was very O c D about everything.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
His stuff around.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
You're not gonna quote him. I could try. Let me
see it.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
He was, Oh, I own a repair shop. Actually, yep,
repair shop, yep, twenty thirteen I started. Yep. No, it's
it's where we live in Montgomery, New York.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Vin's making billions.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
Things like those.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
He goes, no, it's not possible.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Then works his ass off, man, and and he's good.
His weekends are for his family. That's it.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
That's it. That's where he does.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
You've got to find no news. He's not available, but
he works his ass off all week. He's got good
I was in there the other day when we did
the podcast. He's got great employees. Man, they all look
like they're working their butts off. And that's a hard
thing to find nowadays. It's hard to find people to work.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
I got two young, good young.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah, go find that. Cody is the last one we had.
And that was twenty years ago, you know.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Yeah, So I mean that's good, it's yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
So all right, well listen, I think this has been great.
I want to thank you guys for being on the
Paul Junior podcast having us out. We're gonna do this
again next year if you'll have us and uh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
This is has been fun.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
We get to hang out, ride scooters and motor I
was jealous these guys are riding scooters. I want to
be on a scooter today. No, I don't think we're
I think we're done with Ryan. I mean he's he's
gonna be right, and I know he's going to be
scooting everywhere.

Speaker 5 (01:00:21):
You guys want to sing Happy Birthday to Rick anyways,
he'll see it on the world wide Web. Yeah, let's
do it, right, Yeah, all right, everybody, Happy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Birthday to.

Speaker 11 (01:00:33):
Rick Pecko, Happy to br.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
We love you right, come next year, come back.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Next to wherever you are out there in Pennsylvania. Pencil tuck,
God bless you.