DEUS BIKE BUILD OFF: Sydney

PHOTOS | HELEANA GENAUS

Seeing people descend on Bondi Pavilion to see the love poured into the builds that were entered made the 5:30am wake up call (on a Sunday) well worth it. It was a rainy day by the beach, everyone was in good spirits, very chilled out and happy to be in good company. This year, the Sydney crew at Deus invited some emerging forces within the local moto scene including Stories of Bike, Sydney Cafe Racers who were promoting Throttle Roll, The Throttle Dolls and Rising Sun Workshop.

The female contingent was strong this year, with The Throttle Dolls representing with a stall and selling out their t-shirts. Erica entered her custom work-in-progress Honda GB400 with freshly painted "meow" art on the tank. The Judges were amongst the most knowledgable around including Mark Hawwa (Sydney Cafe Racers), Chris Hunter (Bike Exif), Matt Machine (local God of metal bending, motorcycle crafting, angry rants and personal hero of mine), Jeremy Tagand (Deus) and Matt J (MattJ_industries). Everyone was a winner for participating, as exclaimed by Dare Jennings, however the hand made in-situ gold trophy went to a Honda CT90 with copper details converted to electric power by Ryan from Suus and Joe from Stealth Electric Bikes (who drove up from Melbourne to enter).

Was great to see some Petrolettes past and present at this event... and now I'm thinking about taking on the build off next year with something controversially conservative. Stay tuned.

Heleana is a force of nature. The founder of In Venus Veritas and The Petrolette, and a co-founder of Rising Sun Workshop. Heleana shares her love of vintage cars, riding motorcycles, and (not-so-secretly) dreams of flying planes and piloting a riva aquariva (a la Sophia Loren) very fast through the canals of Venice. Supportive and connected, community is her lifeblood, and she is as real as they come.