Profile: Martin Leugers
15 October 2006 | culture, interviews | No Comments
I don’t know if I’m supposed to say anything about this, but my best friend is a lawyer who is defending a bicycle company from a rider who has sued the company for using quick releases on his thirteen year old’s bike. I feel for the kid, but come on! Let’s take pride in our machines learn all about it and not sue because you don’t understand how the bike works. Take some responsibilty for Christ sake.
Fortunately, some real pioneers are not detered by lawsuits. Their moto is tinker and drink beer. They void their warantees and take cycling to the experimental brink. I’m talking about CRUD (Chopper Riding Urban Dwellers). If you don’t know them, they chop bikes. They make junk into envy. Recnetly, I interviewed the founder of CRUD, Martin Leugers, and we talked a bit about how he got into choppers.
BC: How did CRUD begin? How long has the group been around?
ML: I guess we started in 1994. My friend John and I were in our senior year of college working our asses off, and needed a little diversion. Somehow doing more work in the midst of already doing more work than we had time for seemed like a good idea, so he made a chopper, and I made a lowrider. We didn’t officially name ourselves until 1996
BC: What’s your background? Metal fabricator? Industrial designer?
ML: I’ve always worked with my hands, but really got into metal work while in Industrial design. I had a contract job after college at huffy bikes in Dayton to make a dream lowrider for the New York toyfair. I got tons of experience welding, and general metal working in their shop.
BC: What’s the process for coming up with such fantastic bikes? Tinkering? Initial brainstorming?
ML: I do some sketching, and drunken brainstorming with friends, but mostly just cutting up bikes and seeing what comes out. I try to use as many recycled bikes as possible. I never chop bikes that are in good working condition, either. I try to donate the good ones to someone I Know who needs a bike, or donate them to the pedal revolution. Pretty much every chopper that I have made has been trash picked. Some are clearly more aesthetically challenged than others. In the beginning my motto was “volume is job #1” but now I try to take more time. The need for large volumes of bikes was driven by the desire to give chopper to all of my friends so I would have a gang to roll with, but now that they all have them, I’ve slowed down.
BC: Do you have a favorite ride? And if so, which is it and why?
ML: I guess it would be my road bike, although I like all of my bikes. The unfortunate downside of loving all bikes equally is that I have 20+ bikes right now. The weird part is that somehow, I’ve only actually bought about 4. The rest are all scavenged from the garbage. The cruise master general is probably my favorite custom ride, but Huffy still owns it. Sadly, I only got to ride it once.
BC: Which bike was the first you built?
ML: It was an unnamed lowrider. The last time I saw it, it was in a dumpster at the University of Cincinnati. It really wasn’t worth saving. I made the cruisemaster general I and II at the same time in 1995. One is a lowrider, the other one is the first chopper I built.
BC: If anyone wanted to get involved, how would they do so?
ML: I’d probably take a metal working class at city college. It’s cheap. Other than that, I’d get a hack saw and a welder and go for it.
BC: Are there any rites or rituals that you can reveal to the general public?
ML: Let’s just say that most crud members have intimate experience with sheep, butt beers, mild electrical stimulation of the genitals, sucker punches to the kidneys, fisting, and eating broken glass. Actually, we don’t have any. I guess we do drink beer on a semi-regular basis. If you can think of anything else we should be doing, let us know.
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