Top 10 Hipster Motorcycles

I love motorcycles. My motorcycle style defines me. Motorcycles can charge ahead with grace and speed and you can maneuver through traffic jams with ease. Yup, trendy motorcycles are a sign of urban pop culture. To help you with your bike selection journey, here's my non-expert, non-specialist guide. The only bike missing is a Scrambler of some description. 

#10 The Honda GL500 Silver Wing

Yes, it's a Gold Wing and it not your grandpa's motorcycle any more. These bikes run far and long and with a little craft are being stripped down, sans-fairing going from this.

To this

#9 The Moped

Guys and girls with DIY skills are souping them up, with café style and pinstriping. Relatively low maintenance and low speed, these mechanical oil and gas rust-fund mopeds are ridden by crews turning trash heap finds in to sweet rides. Respect.

#8 Royal Enfield

The Enfield continues to blow up all over the world with the GT and the Bullet. Its retro look and great price go very well for the hip and adventurous. While its reputation is iffy, the brand’s mechanics improve year over year and is sure to increased your macho-ness. The Royal Enfield isn’t just all iron and steel put together, it's a hard-core manly ride.

The GT is owned by @nitinbasra

#7 The Ural

Ural is pushing their soviet-styled buckets and people are buying. Yes, you can ride it anywhere, like snow, like gravel, like desert but you've got to deal with the Russian marque ride-ability factor. It's hipster to ride your bike anywhere and when you add a sidecar you prove that 'hip is in the eye of the be-hipster'.

Once the Ural has made up its mind it wants to go somewhere, your chances of changing its course are slim to none. L.A. to Barstow to Vegas is a (about) 500-mile off-road ride held by the AMA’s 37th District in Southern California. Here's the story of a Limited Edition 2017 Ural Sahara 2WD, on the side of a mountain in the desert north of Palmdale, trying to figure out how to arrive alive.

#6 Motorized Bicycles

The Whizzer was an engine kit that could transform a regular push-bike into a motorcycle. Originally it had an air-cooled, four-cycle 138cc engine that was capable of producing 1.375 horsepower, it also came with a 2/3 gallon fuel tank. They were made in the U.S. between 1939 and 1965 but the style evoked an older design. Today, you can make your own gas bike or spend up to $7,000 on a vintage-style electric bicycle.

#5 Triumph Thruxton

It was good enough for the King of Cool, Steve Mcqueen. The jacket, the sideburns, the attitude is hipster gold. The iconic Bonnie is still not the smoothest nor the most reliable, but few motorcycles have aged this gracefully. Recently re-imaged at the Truxton in a new-millennium renaissance. Triumph’s rebirth started with the Bonneville’s reputation. It's hipster but you can’t fault fans for loving an old-school Trumpet, be it a McQueen-era TT or any of the Bonnie’s current forms.

#4 The Grom

Honda’s 125cc Grom with 4-stroke engine packs a punch and is a nice upgrade from the hipster-friendly Ruckas, popular in urban centres. Crazy cabbies, crappy pavement, incalculable potholes, and texting pedestrians require survival scooters. The Grom qualifies as multi-purpose hipster bike you can customize the hell out of. You can burn them out, bore them out and ride them anywhere. This is a bad-ass machine you can have some fun with and you won't lose your license pushing to the limit.

#3 The Lambretta

Whether a vintage two-stroker or a modern fuel-injected four-stroke, Lambretta and rival, Vespa, offer charismatic charm that endears them to hipsters and regular scooter aficionados alike. Enough said.

#2 The Harley-Davidson Seventy-Two

The Motor Company nailed the Hipster’s bull’s-eye with the 2012 release of the Seventy-Two. Need evidence? Admire the hand-held cinematography, the plaintive music and the flannel-clad actors in H-D’s official marketing video here. The chopper-esque XL was such a demographic hit that in 2013 the entire H-D line was available with the same Hard Candy metal-flake paint option. With the 72, the custom-look is done for you. Nothing says “hipster” like having someone else do the work. The chrome, the controls, the ape-hangers - brilliant. While some may go into a rant about how “Harley sucks”, but I protest. I love my Harleys and the company knew what they were doing when they introduced the Sportster Seventy-Two.

#1 All 1970s-era Honda CBs

This CB750 re-born was the first modern four-cylinder machine from Honda. The "superbike", known as the Hondamatic had a full automatic transmission.

The CB leads the charge in the fashion-focused hipster moto-scene. It's a rat-bike that's inexpensive, easy to find, simple to work on, and fun to ride. Any CB from the 70s and early 80s qualifies. It doesn’t matter if it’s 350 or the 750, as long as it’s been rebuilt (usually by someone else) and restored (even hipsters know how to buy a replacement part) to either cherry original or blacked-out.