Our Hooligans
Our fearless leader. Calm under pressure, deadly on curves. Wears wisdom like a jacket and rides like the road was built for him.
Mysterious and lightning-fast. Chino doesn’t talk much, but when he moves, you feel it. A shadow in the corners, always ready to roll.
Wild and untamed. Born in the jungle, built for speed. Tigre rides like he’s chasing a gazelle—and catching it.
Eyes wide, always alert. A fierce flyer with a loud beak and louder engine. Spirited, loyal, and always in motion.
Coiled cool and razor sharp. Snake slides through danger with a grin and a hiss. He’s trouble—and he likes it that way.
Loyal as the day is long. Calm, steady, and always watching. She rides hard, loves deep, and keeps the crew grounded when things get wild.
“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life… It is life that asks of Art what it is supposed to be.” - Oscar Wilde
Before I ever threw a leg over a motorcycle, I was painting skateboards in my garage.
Back then, the deck was everything. It wasn’t just something you rode—it was your flag, your voice, your rebellion. We didn’t buy boards for the brand. We’d scrape off the factory prints, sand them down, and paint our own. Bones, flames, wild animals, skeletons grinning through cracked teeth. Whatever came out of our heads ended up under our feet. We rode it until the wheels cracked and the tail was splintered. Then we did it all over.
So years later, when I realized that the FTR’s tank cover could be swapped like a blank skate deck, it hit the same nerve. I didn’t just want to ride it—I wanted it to say something. Not in a corporate, paint-job-for-sale way. In the way a skateboard said something. Personal. Unhinged. Real.
I reminisced on old skateboard friends- chaotic, fast, full of attitude—and brought those memories to a very close to me, who gets what it means to build a story with your hands. We talked about linework, composition, color. But mostly we talked about attitude. What it should feel like when someone walks past it and wonders what they had just seen.
What they gave back was wild and alive. One side of the tank exploded with a skull in a bandana, eyes wide, mouth open in a laugh or a warning, holding a rose like a challenge. Around him, a screaming bird, feathered and fierce, tangled in motion. On the windscreen a tiger mid-roar, a serpent wrapped tight, sun and cloud and jungle pressed into every curve of the plastic.
It wasn’t just artwork. It was ignition. The moment that bike was reassembled, it felt like something bigger had been set loose.
I started seeing stories in the paint—personalities, dynamics, conflict, loyalty. They weren’t just characters. They were riders. Not in some mascot kind of way, but in the same way our skateboards used to carry pieces of ourselves we didn’t know how to say out loud.
So I gave the chara space. I let them show up at campfires. On signs. On shirts. On the side of a helmet. They didn’t come from a marketing plan or a branding session. They came from the same place the tank did—grit, imagination, and the impulse to turn a machine into a message.
That tank art came first. Long before the name, the camp, the patches or the posts. It’s what gave life to the world we now call Dug Hill Motorcycle & Outdoor Shenanigans. A world of fast rides and wilder stories. Of late nights and hand tools. Of the kind of friendship that lets one person hold the brush and another hold the vision—and both know exactly where it’s going.
The FTR still rides with all of them on board. The skeleton. The tiger. The bird. The snake. They’re not just painted there. They belong there. Just like they belong in this weird, wonderful family we’ve built around the fire.
Because when you come from skateboard art, you don’t just paint things to look cool. You paint them to mean something. And where the paint goes, we follow.
