How the hell did we end up in a HD commercial??
Probably one of wildest things I've ended up doing. From what I was told someone at HD was looking for a group of wild idiots with a death sentence to rip Harleys til the wheels fall off. This person at HD reached out to our awesome friend Brawny from Speed merchant and asked if he could get a group of guys that could star in a commercial for HDs new campaign called #RollYourOwn. Like I talked in the last email blast there was a few brands that were HEAVY into hooligan at the time. Speed merchant, SMCO & Rusty Butcher. So Brawney called us all up and we got linked into this wild commercial. I was originally approached to have 2 segments in the commercial which were flat track & they wanted a "jump".
This was my first time doing anything like this. We had to do wardrobe days and even plan out some spots to shoot. HD landed on Glen Helen Raceway for the jump & Perris auto speedway for the Flattrack scene. They really never told me anything about the jump. The day I was supposed to hit it and film this whole scene I just showed up to the track and all these film rigs and people were around this BIG ass about 80ft table top. At the time I was probably at the top of my game but never hit anything that big. So naturally I was a bit nervous.
I guess I should mention the weather was shit. It literally was off and on raining and I started hitting this big ass jump in the rain. First jump went awesome and I felt great so I hit this thing about a dozen times before I noticed we had some issues. My fork tube split in half on the right side and cracked longways. haha I ended up swapping tubes with my other Flattrack bike and got the damn job done! I'll never forget how gnarly it was jumping that tabletop in the rain and even my fork tube cracking in half.
Next scene was Perris Raceway with the Flattrack scene! This was easy. 4 of us ripping around a track with a rhino in front of us filming all the "action". This was a bit easier and went smoothly. I want to dive into this commercial because this was a pivotal time in Hooligan racing. It was getting popular and each race was getting bigger and now we have the factory actually working with hooligan racers. Little did we know this commercial would be played for about almost a year straight. Every UFC fight and more had this thing blasted across it with us in it and cool enough they put our instagram handles on the damn commercial!! Instantly we all blew up and so did hooligan racing.
The commercial was huge for us and a successful campaign for HD. After that we were approach to have our own "factory" hooligan race teams. HD sponsored our company's separately and it was on from there. We each got a small paid contract, a new Street 750 motorcycle to build/race and a list of races to attend for the year. The first one was in Sturgis and most of us had never been let alone rode a bike across the US like that so it was perfect learning experience for all of us.
Funny side story about this trip. My sportster was in the middle and we finished a full crank motor rebuild at 11pm at night then rode it straight to Sturgis at 11pm with no issues! haha This trip was wild and monumental for us. A few weeks prior I ended up meeting Yelawolf the Country/Rap musician. I was supposed to make him leather belts and crazy enough a few weeks later we all ended up in Strugis together. We didn't really know anyone and neither did they out there. So for the next 10 days we all hung out and tagged along to each others events. I'll never forget our first meet up. I met him in front of some big camp area. He pulled up with a little person on a mini bike led us into the venue.
I am getting into detail with this because as this wild weekend in unfolding all of us are blowing up our instagram pages with all these wild events happening. Our first of I think 3 races happened at a AMA track. None of us had ever ridden a big track like this and damn was it fast! All the races went decent and I can't even remember what places we got as we were faking being rockstars out here and people watching. haha
On top of all the fun HD let me take over their instagram for the first time. Getting the keys to the city and logging into the Harley Davidson instagram was fucking wild to say the least for a washed up high school dropout. haha Below is one of the photos I staged and took for their gram! This was almost all of the original hooligan HD teams that came to Sturgis that year.
By the time we came home everyone had FOMO from all the crazy ass things we did that week. We attended 3 Yelawolf shows side stage and even filmed a music video with him inside of the wall of death. Raced 3 races, partied and came home feeling like a million bucks. After this the Hooligan movement online looked like we were fucking rockstars and honestly for the first time in my life I felt like it. We forged some friendships out there that will last a lifetime. After this trip I feel like the hooligan movement got the momentum it needed to shoot to the sky which it started to!
