2007 Iron & Lace
Custom Bikes & Centerfold Model Calendar
Featuring the top bikes of the 2005 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show
and the beautiful FastDates.com Calendar Kittens
sponsored by Mikuni American, Performance Machine and Jardine Performance

 



Above: Our British model Gemma Gleeson on location with the Jesse Rook / Russell Mitchell X-1 Build or Bust bike at the Queen Mary. This photo was also used in our adverting campaign for the 2006 Los Angeles Calendar Motorcycle Show.

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Shooting the 2007
Iron & Lace Calendar
By Jim Gianatsis

As fate would have it, the very first bike I photographed in June 2005 for the 2007 Iron & Lace Calendar would go on and win the coveted Performance Machine Best of Show trophy and a $4000 cash prize at our 2005 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show a month later.

The radical Dreamcraft Studio's "Saga" built by Larry Nagel and Paul Yang featured an incredible number of unique design features and firsts for a custom bike. The first of which was its 1-piece billet frame which took 2 days to machine on a computer mill from a 2,000 pound brick of solid aluminum.

Some other really unique features included the quad-tube front telescopic front forks, the special modular wheels, and the twin tube aluminum single sided rear swingarm which also had the engine's exhaust system running through it and exiting in front of the rear wheel sprocket.

Our beautiful cover model is "Rockin' Robin" Cunningham, a former Miss texas, Miss Harley-Davidson and Hawaiian Tropic International Pageant winner. Robin also served as spokesmodel at our '06 Calendar show where she hosted SpeedTV's American Thunder coverage of the Calendar Show.
Robin is also featured in the 2006 and 2007 editions of the Fast Dates Racebike Swimsuit Calendar.

This year also marked the first year we would shoot the calendar digitally instead of on film. We made the move from our classic Hasselblad 2 1/4" frame film camera to the all new Hasselbald H2 Digital which cost $25,000 and is tethered to a battery powered hard drive to deliver the huge 80MB files needed for out big, high quality 15 inch calendar format.

Other builders featured in the IL07 Calendar include:

• John Franco of Wicked Brothers who's "Lethal Strike" won 1st Place in our Pro Builder class.

• Roland Sands of Performance Machine with our Calendar sponsors 2 beautiful bar hopper show bikes, "Cafe Mocha" and "Glory Stomper".

• Bob Phillip of Wizard Cycle Creations with 2 of his renown wacky bikes, one of which was built for film star Brad Pit.

• Mike Stafford of MGS Customs with his 2 multiple show winning bikes "Dragon Slayer' and his wife "Paula's Chopper".

• Shinta Mikura of Zero Engineering with one of his famous retro hot rods.

• Harold Pontarelli of HD Performance with his show winner "Toxic" who was also featured in a multiple page pictorial in Robb Report Motorcycling.

• Yasuyoshi Chikazawa of Chica Custom Cycles with one of his trademark choppers.

The Other Models:
• Now we couldn't call this a centerfold model calendar without at least one centerfold model! Our featured centerfold this year is Heather Carolin who was Playboy Playmate Miss April 2002. I was enchanted with Heather when her feature pictorial first appeared in Playboy, but it wasn't until I saw our barely legal looking, fiery red head cutie doing girl-girl pictorials on her website that I knew I had to work with her, both for the calendar and to get her naked for Member's Corner. Heather also appears in the 2007 Fast Dates and Garage Girls Calendars.

Making her return to our 2007 Iron & Lace Calendar again this year is another beautiful model from Texas, Andra Cobb. Later after our shoot, Andra moved back home to Texas and worked with the Red Cross to help refuges from Hurricane Katrina.

In this year's Calendar you will find Andra playing doctor with another very sexy model from Las Vegas, Candice Curtis who won our LA Calendar Motorcycle Show Pageant, and is a vender at the Show with her clothing line Little Diablo.

Another knock out beauty in this year's Calendar is the tall, long legged,raven haired beauty Cora Skinner who actually works at a Hooters Restaurant to pay her bills between modeling gigs. One of those exceptional models who doesn't take a bad photo, we had to have Cora come back a few months later to shoot the 2007 Garage Girls calendar.

Joining Cora in this year's 2007 Calendars including Garage girls and Fast Dates is Irish supermodel Gemma Gleeson who we first booked over the internet to shoot at the 2005 Brands Hatch World Superbike in August. We liked working with her so much, we brought her back over at the end of the year to spend the Christmas holidays with us and shoot Iron & Lace and Garage Girls.

All and all, it was another great year of incredible bikes and models. I hope you enjoy looking at the pictures as I did in shooting them!

Jesse Rooke & Russell Mitchell / Exile Cycles X1
2007 Iron & Lace Calendar Bike

One of the hottest bikes ever from our famed Iron & Lace Calendar builders Jesse Rooke and Russell Mitchell, the X1 Kali Racer is a modern era retro board track racer for the street which looks very mean, nasty, clean, basic and functional. We love it as one of the most exciting bikes ever featured in the upcoming 2007 Iron & Lace Calendar, and in our advertising campaign for the 2006 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show. Based on a Jesse Rooke Kali Cruiser chassis with a single sided rigged swingarm, the front end features a unique pivot suspended solid front fork. Various Exile contributions include the now hidden trademark Exile rear sprocket disc brake, slash exhaust pipes, a clean brushed aluminum oil tank and a mountain bike shock assembly under the saddle.

And the X1's history is as unique as its looks. Jesse and Russell where brought together by Build or Bust TV Show producer Scott Gillen to guide an amateur builder to construct from parts a completed bike for the show within a 1-month time frame, using a Jesse Rooke chassis kit with Exile components. Well, the guy didn't make it past the first day when it became apparent he had no mechanical aptitude whatsoever, and the bike wasn't going to be completed in time, particularly as anything half decent. So they amateur builder was kicked to the curb, and Russell and Jesse were asked by Gillen to complete the bike together for the Show....

It's here we should tell you that a condition of the builders being invited onto Build or Bust for the TV publicity exposure is, they don't get paid a penny for their time and a lot of the parts they provide, nor do they get to keep the bike if it doesn't go to the amateur builder. By default the bikes go to producer Gillen who uses them for publicity at events like out LA Calendar Motorcycle Show, and some bikes eventually get sold off and the money pocketed by Gillen.

Well, to make a long story short, the collaboration between Jesse and Russell got a little heated at times as Jesse likes flashy paint and a high tech look, while Russell likes everything solid flat black and low tech. Just getting Russell to agree to have the painter add matching brushed silver graphics with an X1 logo on the black tank and bodywork to match the silver brushed finish on the rest of the bike's components was like moving a mountain. But when the finished tank and body work came back from the paint shop it was obvious to everyone (but Russell of course), that this was indeed another Jesse Rooke "Best of Show" winner.

Jesse sat back and pondered the unfinished bike for a day during filming, visualized its complete glory, and essentially said, "Fuck it, I'm not going to finish this bike and give it to Gillen." It was there that Jesse picked up his marbles -in this case the unfinished X1, and went home. Gillen was furious at the thought of loosing the best bike from the Show, ever, and Russell just sat back with his arms crossed and his mouth shut as not to piss off anybody. It was the best Build or Bust TV show ever. Hopefully you caught it.

Jesse brought me the beautifully finished X1 in all it glory about 6 months later to photograph it down at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA for the 2007 Iron & Lace Calendar and our advertising campaign for the 2006 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show. Or beautiful model was 20-year old irish supermodel Gemma Gleeson, also featured in our other 2007 FastDates.com Calendars, who came over to Los Angeles to hand with me during her 1-month University school break over the Christmas holidays. Yes, that is what dead of winter looks like in Southern California!

You'll find a pictorial of the Build or Bust X1 Kali Cruiser in the Iron & Lace Garage.