Class encourages women to take the handlebars

O School Choppers offers tutorials targeted at female riders

photos by dale dombrowski/viewAbove, Santana gives O School Choppers owner Rob Wilkinson some affection in the front of the shop. Right, Adam Wilkinson adds a license plate bracket to a bike he is customizing for a customer. O School Choppers is located at 8885 S. Bronco Road. photos by dale dombrowski/viewAbove, Santana gives O School Choppers owner Rob Wilkinson some affection in the front of the shop. Right, Adam Wilkinson adds a license plate bracket to a bike he is customizing for a customer. O School Choppers is located at 8885 S. Bronco Road. Advertisement

The common image of a motorcycle rider is of a man at the helm, with his lady on the back. Nothing could be further from that image at O School Choppers, where, more and more, shop owner Rob Wilkinson is noticing women taking the seat behind the handlebars.

O School Choppers, 8885 S. Bronco Road, opened four years ago when Wilkinson retired from a lifetime at his first career. At first, he started the bike shop to earn some extra money and have a good time. At that time, the warehouse totaled 300 square feet.

Today, it sports 5,000 square feet, a bar and a brand name.

"We are a brand. If somebody wants an old-looking bike and they want it flat black and they want white walls on it and they want ape hangers on it, they don't say 'Gee, can I have an old flat bike with ape hangers and white walls?' They say 'I want an O school chopper,' " Wilkinson said.

Roughly 15 weeks into his new business, Wilkinson was joined in his venture by his oldest son, Adam. The first bike Adam built won the Old School Division in the Discovery Channel Bike Build Off.

"That was good for my first bike, and I kind of took off after that," Adam Wilkinson said. "Now, I'm building all the bikes here."

Attached to O School Choppers is the BurnOut Bar. It opens to the bike shop and has a separate outside entrance.

The whole area has a clubhouse kind of feeling. The barstools were given to Wilkinson from various bars in Las Vegas, and the art than adorns the walls was created by David Mann. Wilkinson attributes a bit of his motif to the artist, saying that they "try to keep a kind of David Mann flavor throughout the whole place."

While O School Choppers has solid client base -- it has sold more than 40 bikes this year, with 11 more in the works -- it always is looking to expand.

""The biggest growing market in the motorcycle market right now is the female market," Wilkinson said, describing his latest endeavor -- a maintenance class designed to educate and help female riders take better care of their bikes, themselves.

"I don't care if you are a rider, want to be a rider or are a mature rider. The course will cover all the aspects of things you should know," Wilkinson said.

The class, which will begin Jan. 15 and run for six weeks, will be able to accommodate 12 to 20 students.

The Wilkinsons got the idea for the class from a longtime customer whose bike Rob Wilkinson originally customized and later repaired.

"Rob and his crew area amazing," Debbie Bielak said. "And they are amazing at putting my bike back together."

From what Bielak sees on the road when she's out touring, it seems like one in 10 riders is a woman, and she congratulates every one of them.

"I hope that more women will have the courage to get off the back of the bike and on to the front of the bike," she said. "It's an amazing thing."

As a rider, Bielak told Wilkinson that she thinks women should learn how to take care of their bikes.

She is most interested in learning the simple things, like how to change the oil and how to tell if her bike has a problem.

"If I'm out on the road and the linkage breaks on my bike, I need to know how to fix that," Bielak said.

The class at O School Choppers will teach ladies just that. Wilkinson says the class will give them an idea "where and how (choppers) evolved," and will be a hand's-on class. Instruction will be structured to give each woman a chance to work on her own bike, under the supervision of Rob and Adam Wilkinson.

According to Wilkinson, women not only will leave the class with the knowledge to care for and fix their own bikes, but they also will receive a discount card that they can use at O School Choppers in the future.

"And, no, their husbands can't come," he said.

Registration for the class is $150 for the six-week series.

For more informatiion on the maintenance class, call 837-5287.