2007 Rallies & Events
One new group of builders from Canada entered the first custom bike built at their shop. They were painters mainly, and came from the hot rod car business. “We were overwhelmed at the show,” said Alain Michaud of Radical Customs in Quebec. “We definitely got noticed and got several extra jobs right after the show.” Dave Welch of Chopper City USA explained that standing all day with his bike was like having a paid booth at Daytona. Many potential customers would come up and talk. People were shopping as well as just looking at bikes. “I’m very happy with the show,” Dave said. “Ted runs it well. The bikes are in and out in an orderly fashion and the judges seem to do a good job.”
This show has been around for over three decades. Jerry Graves of Graves Custom Cycles recalled visiting the show as a ten-year-old with his father. “Seeing the most radical stuff on the planet is what it is all about,” said Jerry. Having won “Best of Show” eight times, Jerry discussed how each year he would have to try his best to improve, knowing that the whole world was fighting for that position. “The judging at Rat’s Hole is very good. It isn’t comparing bike-to-bike, but giving a points total in several different categories for each bike and adding the points up at the end. If you win, you win,” he said. All in all, as the following pages will show, the competition at the top is ferocious.
– Mark Barnett
Classes, Classes, Classes
There’s a Class For You
Ted Smith, the new guy in charge after his father Karl “Big Daddy Rat” Smith’s passing in 2002, explained to me on the phone that most of his shows have 25 different classes. These range from oddball stuff like “Most Unusual” and the “Rat Class” to the hardcore professional bike building classes like the “Over 1000cc Radical” and “Best of Show.” In between, there is the “Full Dresser & Touring Class,” as well as classes for Sportsters, metric bikes, and auto-engine bikes. In general, what this means is that the show is open to a wide variety of people. The guy working out of his garage doing expensive, but mechanically simple modifications can compete with other such home builders to get a trophy pretty much showing who did the best work to a stock bike. Sportsters compete against other Sportsters, and antiques against antiques. The breadth of the show is unequalled, though it does generate some expense, as the number of trophies required is huge. Jerry Graves of Graves Custom Cycles credits Ted with pushing this wide variation even further than his father. “Ted is running this show like a business. Guys in their home garages can compete, just about anyone can get involved in it, which I think is pretty cool,” said Jerry. That’s the Rat’s Hole Show in a nutshell, “the best of the best and all the rest.”
Anyone who knows bike shows will tell you, The Rat’s Hole Show is the longest running, one of the most prestigious, and for some, the most anticipated show in the world. It’s the creation of the late Karl Smith, a Daytona artist and biker who came up through the psychedelic Sixties and turned his twisted airbrushed T-shirts ¾ which he advertised as “perspiration shirts” ¾ into a business he ran out of a tiny shop called The Rat’s Hole. His first bike show, held in 1972, was a maverick event held in an A&P parking lot as a way to showcase the increasingly popular custom bike scene during the annual Run to the Sun Bike Week in Daytona.
Now, 35 years later, Karl’s little show is a monster event that couldn’t possibly fit in a supermarket parking lot. A major showcase for as many as 400 custom bikes, it takes place twice a year in Daytona, and also at the Sturgis rally and in locations across the US, Canada, and Europe. It’s attributed with launching the careers of many big name builders, and it’s for that reason so many new and unknown builders toil away at their craft with dreams of nothing less than at least one Rat’s Hole win during their career. It’s that trophy from Rat’s Hole that can change a builder’s life.
Karl was affectionately referred to BDR, or Big Daddy Rat, known in his own city as a colorful, civic-minded Daytonian who promoted both motorcycling and tourism, and in the motorcycle industry as a champion of new builders and innovative artists. He died in 2002 during Bike Week, and his son Ted, 44, now owns and promotes the show. To him, the show is at once everything and a singular thing, just a component of the legacy his father left behind. “There are so many things my dad accomplished that helped biking and got it to a point where it is now,” says Ted. “He didn’t just do a bike show, he brought a lot of people together over the years, he actively worked for motorcyclists to be welcome in Daytona. The show kind of overshadows the fact he was so much more.”
Ted’s dad and mom (Beverly) met while both were art students at the Ringling School of Art, in Sarasota, Florida. It’s apt that BDR would choose the art school founded by John Ringling of the famed Ringling Brothers Circus, as he was a bit of a showman himself. His first Rat’s Hole shop was painted to look like a block of cheese that was crawling with an assortment of deranged and drooling cartoon rats. Patrons were required to pass beneath a sign that read “Thru This Hole Pass The Grooviest Rats In Town” to gain entrance.
From that shop came The Rat’s Hole Show, which grew larger as word got around that it was the show to be at and be seen in. Custom bike builders and fans from far and wide were drawn to it, and with them came controversy, the kind that makes a city take notice. Ted remembers BDR brainstorming and working closely with the local police department to resolve issues around Bike Week, the Rat’s Hole Show, and motorcycling in general.
“There was a lot of fighting going on in the Seventies between biker gangs and the regular people who were into customizing,” Ted says. “He wanted to bring those people together and prove to the city, and to people everywhere really, that we could bring these people together to show off their bikes and not have trouble and havoc. It was a crazy time for awhile.”
But BDR, together with then-Police Chief Paul Crow, did get a handle on it. Ted says the pair drafted a letter promising a welcome atmosphere in Daytona, which BDR distributed to 250 publications around the world. “Bike Week started enjoying a smoother level of existence from then on,” Ted says. “It became a true celebration of bikes.”
Ted also remembers when BDR spent $50,000 of his own money to fight a hurricane curb on Main Street in Daytona Beach. “He felt it would kill Bike Week,” Ted says. “If it wasn’t for him fighting the six-inch curb they wanted to put up, and finally winning on a two-inch curb, there would not be a Main Street today. You wouldn’t have been able to back the bikes in. No custom bike can roll over a six-inch curb. My dad was adamant about keeping them from doing that. Bikes would have had to park parallel to the road, and that would never make it. You’d only get maybe ten percent of the bikes on Main Street, compared to how many you get by backing them in side-by-side.”
Growing up with Big Daddy Rat and all the little Rats must have made for a wild time. “We had a lot of fun,” Ted says. “We always had lots of cars and bikes growing up, stuff we liked to customize. My mom was real supportive. It was a fun time.”
Talk around the dinner table would often turn to the other Big Daddy, Ted says, referring to Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (1932-2001). “A lot of people got them mixed up, and still get them mixed up,” he says. “They looked so much alike. People in California would stand in line with pictures of my dad for Ed Roth to sign, and they’d have to tell to them no, Ed ain’t gonna sign that. The other big thing was that in their prime, Ed was real mad that my dad went and got the trademark on BDR. That was a little bit of a feud between them. Ed was in California, while my dad was in Daytona, and neither knew what the other was doing until Hot Rod magazine came out. It was kind of comical. Around our dinner table it got to the point where my dad would say, ‘Man, he’s been a thorn in my side all my life and all I wanna do is outlive him.’ ”
And that’s where the story gets kind of weird. While his family assumed BDR was kidding around and saying it in good fun, he might have been serious. “It was funny at the time when my dad used to say it,” he says. “But what made it eery is that he did outlive Big Daddy Roth, by six months. My dad died on Ed Roth’s birthday, six months after Ed died. It’s a twist of fate is all, but it’s weird how closely intertwined they were right up until the end.”
Since taking over The Rat’s Hole Show, Ted has worked to bring his father’s celebration of bikes to the next level. It’s been featured on the World Biker Build-Off on the Discovery Channel, Speed Channel, and in August of this year, the show was part of an hour-long documentary on Daytona Bike Week featured on the National Geographic Channel.
“You gotta work hard to win one of our trophies,” Ted says. “We’ve got a successful formula, and people wanna know what it is. I get emails every day from people asking for our judging sheets. They wanna know how we judge, what we judge on. Hey, it’s been thirty-five years in the making. No one’s getting our judges’ sheets. We’ve perfected it over the years to where we know exactly what works, and after doing probably four hundred shows or more, we’ve got it down. It’s what makes the difference between a bike that’s judged at our show and one that’s judged at any other show. It’s our niche.”
Rattus Prosperitus, Ted. And many more.
-Wendy Manning