Sounds like a crazy question but there is reason behind it ...
I'll explain ...

<rant begin>

The parts I live in were once an industrial hub but it has suffered both from gentrification or "hipster-ification" and immigration.

What that means in practical terms is, I can get a nut and bolt tattooed on my *** in 20 odd "parlors" ... but I cannot actually go down to a local shop and buy one for real any more. Basically all of the old tools shops and engineers have died off/retired/sold out their properties to become trendy coffee shops, and what's left of industrial zones are, unbelievably, filling up with African churches.

I cannot understand it ... "trade" cannot afford the rent any more and is moving out further and further or just packing up shop and yet these 'get rich quick ministers' are taking over the same units and running around in Mercedes.

We are obviously using the wrong approach in business and should be opening "Holy Churches to the Great Spirit of Milwaukee".

So, I am looking for a place which has a buffer of becoming "cool" and then destroyed by real estate developers of 5 or 10 years where there still are trade/service companies within a 'reasonable' drive or even walking distance, you know, just generally stuff like; paint shop, powder coating, specialist engineering and machinists who have half a brain, comprehend English, and a little sensitivity towards bike stuff.

A real 'industrious' zone.

Now, I know a few of you might do much of this inhouse for yourselves already but I am looking for a place where I can explore building up a small niche business for myself. I'm not looking to get into full on restorations or customs, just build "fixed" bikes.

"Getting stuff done" is becoming such an almost impossible hassle. I cannot be the only one experiencing this. The hours I waste - and cannot account for - just running back and forward trying to find or fix other people's f**k ups is consuming my life.

OK ... I even buying into the conspiracy theory that at some level 'The They' have decided that Asia is where production is and we are just meant to consume use-and-throw, tamper-free, "utility" devices ... but is there no one left?

Just give you some examples ... a local college wanted to hire someone to teach welding to students. They could not find anyone under 65 years old to do the job. There are two people with lathes within a couple of hours ride; one is 75 and the other in his 80s. The "average" age of the local Harley club is 64 years old.

And then you get all degrees of other careless stupidity that I won't bore you with now ...


Thanks.


Actually, forget the 'Holy Church of the Great Spirit of Milwaukee' ... what we need are reservations to protect our native lifestyles. Where neither the ATF nor the EPA can enter ... where we can have our own temples to combustion engines, and priest engineers can minister to our people ... and businesses cannot get shut down by the IRS etc ... where we are free to ride around on whatever pipes we like ... poison ourselves with whatever solvents we choose ...

Either that or we all give up now and just opened themed coffee shops (... which is already happening) and selling t-shirts of 'the last of the bikers' in the same way as they used to do with Geronimo on them.

</rant over>

 

lol good rant.. as far as shops go we have everything here. I never have to drive more than 20min to find what I need but the Mexicans now have a strong foothold in this area. when I moved to Indiana in the 80's from L.A. I was trying to get away from that environment. I think they followed me here.

 

today its way to expensive to hands on in a shop - i have or should i say had a 23 year old who showed up and told me he wanted to become the next jesse james i guess, fab bikes welding painting motor hop ups and alike - WOW sounds cool put me in coach

well what has gone on is not exactly what one could have expected

we throw up a 60s pan chopper onto one of the lifts and hey have at it - customer wants a motor trans re fresh and some go over as it has star wheel hubs and the springer is 30 plus so bushings springs what ever - little paint work little chrome some welding ect ect broken brackets

OK well the first thing that happens is i give him a jack for the frame bottom so removing what ever is made easyer -- wellafter 20 MIn on the phone texting all about what he is about to do with pictures and we are all watching this now ya know / he has no tools of his own and i am not talking they are home he does not have any - i let him use my box after a couple of min and one or 2 more texting calls later he comes up with the correct wrench 7/8 with maybe 10 on the lift that did not fit and than -- this is the best part -- he turns the bolt on the lifts sissor jack the wrong way and pulled it so hard he broke the bearing under the lifts jack bolt - pieces of china bearing all over the lift

this is what is out looking for a job in this field / we kept him for a couple of months just because he had so much want i thought Well Maybe someting will happen - to my surprise the only thing that happened is he got me crazy watching his focus go right out the door 20 times a day as his socal media was always getting his attenshion - it all ended when i said if you pick the phone up again i will hit it with a fuken hammer NEXT

 

There it is, right there!

I was out buying a TV last night and the first "salesperson" that came to "help" me kept getting and replying to text messages.
I tolerated the texting for a few minutes and then asked, " Do you want to sell me a TV or play with your phone?"

She stopped texting for about 5 minutes and had trouble answering my questions about the TV I was interested in, then started up with the texts again, at which point I just turned around a walked towards the door.
The manager saw me leaving and asked if he could help, I explained that I was trying to buy a TV and was gonna go somewhere that understands that my TV is more important than their texts.

He took over the transaction and by the time we were through I had spent a little over $4,000 on a new TV and surround sound system.

Until these morons that are addicted to their phones figure out that their job needs to come first, they'll fail at everything they do.


In answer to the O/P's original rant...We still have quite a few machine shops and such around here that we can get just about anything we want fabricated at.
Most of the guys running them are over 50, for the most part, the younger generation seems to lack the focus to master these types of trades.

 

They don't want to crank handles, they want to push buttons.....

 

Oh, man, excuse me lowering the conversation as usual but I can trump that ... everything from them coming in whacked every day until after lunch because they've been blowing their heads off on skunk the night before; to another taking regular, ahem, "stress relief sessions" in the toilet and then being unable to work for the next few hours. Another friend had one racked up many $10,000s of uninvoiced debts that almost brought him down; he thought he was "working on the computer" but it turns out he was just going Facebook, dateline and emails.

I would have a flat out 'no phone/surrender them at the door' policy and only keep anyone on who could make it through 8 hours cold turkey from social media.

And, no, I have nothing against "fereners" per se, I just prefer ones that have evolved as far as the industrial evolution. The problem seems to be they want to skip the era of dirty fingers and dial gauges, and go straight into the clean high tech era where the money is now ... phones, computers meaningless "service" jobs.

Me, I have no pretensions of greatness. I just want to build/renovate another Evo and it's not working where and the way I am doing it. It takes way too long and is costing far too much of my time. I'd like to be able to take a few months off, live in a workshop or trailer, and just do it all in one intensively.

I have a feeling though that a market for "new" (remanufactured) Evos could develop, and it's starting with the FXRs. I remember a couple of guys who used to do just that was Pans, may be 30 years ago when they were cheap, and the timing seems kind of similar. As EPA clamps down and high tech increasingly seems into motorcycles, I think, (I hope) there will be a little bit of backlash in some corners.

 

Dun Roamin I have the strong feeling you are talking about the NOLA area in your first post.

I recently came back here, and I can't find a phucking Indy shop for a 75 mile radius. I had to order a damn cam cover gasket online a couple weeks back. Thankfully I have a lathe and mill in the garage, and a buddy with a machine shop for the things I can't handle. The most aggravating part though is with no Indy shops is having to order normally stocked items and WAIT for them.

My ADD doesn't like to wait for *****!!! Hahahaha

 

I would have a flat out 'no phone/surrender them at the door' policy and only keep anyone on who could make it through 8 hours cold turkey from social media.

after reading that i am sure i heard crickets

 

Same thing here where I work, we hired a Folder Operator in our Print Shop, the Kid can make that Folder sing and gets the work done on time and it's quality chit, the problem is his Phone and the texts.
How he balances using the Phone to text and getting the work done is a mystery to me.
We do have a policy about unnecessary use of your phone while working, where this is headed is banning Cell Phones at work which they can do if they choose to do so.

We had another fellow that was in his late 40's and couldn't live without his Cell phone, he would run lift after lift on the Sugano Die-Cutter with cuts not going all the way through the paper or missed scores in the paper, the reason was he would watch Movies on his Cell Phone while the press was running.
We finally fired him after 4 lifts were screwed up @ 2,500 per lift, that's 10,000 sheets of paper screwed up, the job had to be put back on the Offset Press to make up the run, I dealt with that every morning when I came into work having to check what he ran the night before.
I was frustrated, the Supervisor was frustrated, the cutter operator was frustrated, because he had to take extra time to sort through the sheets that were basically junk.

 

I think we all hate having to wait for parts, however Indy's can't afford to carry alot of inventory. Even going to (various) Indys, it seems they still need to order my stuff. I'm either looking for a part that's for too new a machine, or too old. Stopped by a shop in Dallas a couple weeks ago called "Ye Old Bike Shoppe" looking for an exhaust bracket for my 80 FLT. Showed him the part I carried in with me and he just shrugged his shoulders...didn't even have any books or resources to even look it up ! The shop had one EVO and the rest were a bunch of Twinkies getting worked on.