Post & Images by Jack McIntyre

MICHELLE & THE WIZARD

Some motorcycles are built to be ridden, and some are built to stop you dead in your tracks. The Wizard was definitely one of those bikes. Fabricated by Johnny Mac at Johnny Mac’s Chopper House, the bike had plenty of attitude in the metal, but what really sent it over the top was the incredible paint laid down by Franny Drummond of Paint Zoo, just outside Philadelphia. Franny’s work had that unmistakable custom touch, the kind of paint you could stare at for an hour and still find another detail hiding in it. I’ll be doing a full shop feature on Johnny Mac soon because there are a hell of a lot of stories behind that shop, including some very cool custom motorcycles built for charity over the years. But for now, it’s about The Wizard and Michelle Laksh. Michelle was just an ordinary Jersey girl who had that extraordinary ability to make whatever motorcycle, location, or crazy situation I put her into look better through my lens. She traveled the country with me, rally after rally, shoot after shoot, always willing to climb onto another custom bike and help me create the next set of images. I could probably spend a month posting nothing but photographs of Michelle and still barely scratch the surface of what we shot together. So every now and then, I drag a few of these old images out of the archives, dust them off, and put them back where they belong, in front of people who still appreciate beautiful women, wild custom motorcycles, killer paint, and a time in the motorcycle world when all of it just seemed to fit together perfectly. Enjoy Michelle and The Wizard… There’s plenty more buried in the archives.

Jack McIntyre