Special Brew
Café racers, rock ’n’ roll and the resulting counter culture are all steeped in a long and fascinating heritage. It’s a vital and charismatic part of British motorcycling and social history and in fact I count that in the last year there have been at least two books published on café racers. The whole culture finds itself currently very much in vogue, and bike magazines are full of shots of gleaming aluminium tanked motorcycles here and shiny brand spanking new black leather jackets there.
On the other hand, for many people the culture of rock ’n’ roll, bikes and cars hasn’t been just a passing bandwagon but a lifestyle, for life, and Shane Venn is one of them, wearing his passions on his sleeve as boldly as the tattoos on his arms.
Shane shows me photos of him as a teenager with his mates, cool, rockin’ and looking the part. “The music came first for me,” he explains; “1950s rock ’n’ roll, Sixties stuff, I loved it all, and we’d go to clubs to dance and hear the music. By 1983 I was driving around in an old 1950s Vauxhall Wyvern, a lovely old car.”
One look around Shane’s fine double garage, which he purpose-built himself to house his
