So What Happened To Super Sixties?

About 5 or 6 years ago Super Sixties was quickly becoming known everywhere for their metal flake grips. They were a budding company of friends that was going to bring something new to a biker-bro filled industry full of flamed bandanas and iron cross logos. Unfortunately, their demise was a hard one. There was all kindsa stories on the street as to what exactly happened.




Just a couple of weeks ago I had located Tristan Hara, the main man behind Super Sixties. On the day we were supposed to have lunch and do a quick interview for all you here at the Church Of Choppers, Tristan had stopped answering calls. Again. Then just minutes later to my surprise we ran into Tim Hendricks (tattoo artist, Miami Ink fame, etc.) who was a partner in Super Sixties.






We sat with Tim at Gold Rush Tattoo in Costa Mesa, CA and he gave me the scoop on how it all really went down with Super Sixties:



We were sitting in Tristan’s Garage. We were trying to get old Schwinn metal flake grips onto his bike so we were trying to boil them. We kept peeling through like four pairs of them and finally we were out. We couldn’t get the throttle side on, just getting pissed.




Then Tristan just says, “we should just make these, dude, they should already have these made for 1” bars.” He sparked the idea and we just started making metal flake grips.


We first found out how things were done and then we came across this contact in San Diego that was a little too expensive. We got hooked up with the Fletcher family, you know the surf family, and they gave us their contact in China that manufacture practically anything. It was really kind of the Fletcher family to hook us up like that.




So we started dealing with this crazy major manufacturer in China, this big Fortune 500 guy, and we got to deal with him directly. He just really liked doing this kinda stuff and we started sending him samples of grips we liked that we had modified and he started sending us samples in return as well.



Sample after sample, this and that wasn’t right. We were also trying to get pegs made, injection molds weren’t working, but things were moving along… but while all this was going on I didn’t know that my partner Tristan developed up an old habit – opiates. Which I’m not one to talk because I’ve battled with opiates my whole life. But his habits got the best of him.








As partners Tristan had the most say so. He was the main guy; he owned the majority of this business. I provided the credit and he provided the dough. So I got some credit cards for us to use… and well I grew up with dope fiends, I thought maybe I could deal with all this, but when I thought I had canceled all the credit cards there was one left with $3500 on it after a one week spending spree. Everything on there from groceries to nice meals. $200 meals with $500 tips, it was a real slap in the face.


I reported the credit card stolen, which it was, cause it definitely wasn’t in the hands of the same man I knew. Weird thing was while he was in, I think Theo Lacey for a few weeks, somebody used the credit card to buy a bunch of groceries again. Because he was in jail and I reported stolen, I got refunded some of the money. But total I got robbed out of was $7500.







When I was young I did terrible things to people for $5. I lost my mind. I was so mad. After it was all said and done, he got out, got clean and tried to get a job at a local tattoo shop by my house. I found out that before he started working there, I called down there and had him fired. Just so he knew that if I wanted I could take his livelihood cause he took mine. I don’t even know what he went to jail for come to think of it.







He spent a lot of time making it right with a lot of people and I heard he took some beatings to do it, which I gotta respect that, cause he’s back in the neighborhood among all the people that he burned. You could set things straight and take the beatings, but you can never take back the things you did.



I got all my money back through Super Sixties; I just sold grips. Chica helped me a lot, he helped me so much, he was real sympathetic to what I was going through. Plus he was making money off of them too cause he was selling ‘um. I collected money from him, I was getting checks, I just wanted to recover my money.







Jen McMillan was also helping us out. She had the product locked up in a container somewhere and I’d get it from her and sell it to Chica. The whole scheme of Super Sixties, the designs, the shirts, the products, it was real different back then. It was coming out of that whole West Coast Choppers era, you know? There was a movement happening of not just “chopper guys” but more motorcycle enthusiasts, you know? The timing was perfect. Everything could have gone perfect. Like the same tale of so many others, the drugs did it all.







The actual people that were partners on paper were me, Tristan and Jen who had a little piece of it… and Tristan also brought in his wife.




So I sold all the grips and got all my money back. It was two years of hell. I was so over it. Ever since then I had never done any business like that with friends. I always told myself ‘nah, not MY friends’ but that’s the only friend I ever got so burned by in my life.







At the time we had kicker pedals, foot pegs, brake rubbers, shifter pegs, metal flake seat covers and seats. Nobody else was making these at the time. Now when I see Super Sixties grips or someone else’s new metal flake grips or a seat or seat cover on a bike, I’m kinda stoked. Just the fact that something we did that affected others.







We also had this advertising scheme that we were going to have sponsored riders, like in skateboarding and surfing. Everyone on the team was going to have their own color. I remember ChopperDave wanted blue, that was going to be his color. So you know, it would’ve been cool.







So now it’s just cool that I was one of the two people in the garage that sparked an idea . It was such a nightmare. There was a lot more to it. My life now is so simple and easy. I wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world.




After it was all said in done, Tristan called me and wanted to have dinner. We went and had Mexican food somewhere. I think after doing some time in prison, he had a real long time to think about all the shit he did wrong to people so he wanted to apologize and he did. I told him I forgave him but I was definitely a changed man after that, a lotta gray hair. It kinda made me realize what a divorce would be like.