Gazpacho With El Solitario MC’s David Borras.
Un alma torturada.
My tragically hip-without-trying friend Paul d'Orléans knows and spends quality time with all the cool artsy moto kids, and one of them is David Borras, the Spanish conquistador co-founder of El Solitario MC.
Sideburn head honcho Gary Inman has profiled ESMC, and I had the pleasure of spending an entire day with Borras nearly three years ago while celebrating the Custom Revolution exhibit at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles, curated by d'Orléans.
Borras was there as proud papa of the ESMC “Petardo” (Spanish for firecracker):
Always smiling with an acid tongue tucked behind his pearly whites, Borras is a tricky one to navigate and define. And that’s how he likes it. He prefers coveralls over Cordura (ironically, cordura in Spanish means sanity), whisky over tequila, and anarchy over order. I recently checked in with him.
Q: Explain the intersection of chaos, cinema, literature, motorcycles and politics.
A hot motorcycle.
Q: You’ve said El Solitario bikes like the Baula had “broken a taboo, or secret rule, with our longing for real communication, and tested the fire of the angry public.” Explain that.
People don’t like freedom and they get violent when they sit in front of it. Do you remember Easy Rider? :)
Q: Another BMW re-creation, the Impostor, was coined “a sheep in wolf's clothing.” Decorated with insignias from pirates, the Trojan war or Russian prisons. BMW Motorrad described what you did to a stock RNineT as ‘dark and with a pinch of Borrásian gallows humor.’ Do you apply gallows humor to everything you design? If so, what or who inspired you to take that path?
BMW Motorrad-related questions bore me to death.
Q: Point taken. What’s the best music to listen to while drinking whisky?
Friends and family cackling. Which music is not good to listen to with whisky?
Bad music. On any substance! I can’t stand it for more than three seconds. Gets the worst out of me and I’d better leave.
Q: What music do you choose when you’re happy? Sad? Angry?
I am very eclectic—borderline sociopath—when talking about musical preferences. Also, I can find happiness where others only feel sadness. Can you celebrate with Nick Cave, Gorecki or Mahler? I can.
Q: If you were pitching El Solitario to your business partner and wife Val today, would the concept change from 10 years ago?
Not really; only that managing people got in the middle of everything.
Q: Why motorcycles? Why not dune buggies or Jeeps?
Because you could easily hide them from your parents in our bedroom closet or a friend’s backyard. At least this is why I started. That also, but the real reason—corny it might sound—is the danger of the wind on my face and the excitement of being on top of a wild powerful and unapologetic artifact to cut through bullshit FAST.
Q: Wheels & Waves dropped a pebble in the waters of an immersed motorcycle life. What happened? Why the recent divorce?
The fun was over; the suits got greedy and their egos blood thirsty. We were never there for the cash or the recognition, so we left.
Q: Which books will you turn your children onto when they’re ready?
Could easily begin with 1984 and Brave New World; once I have them startled, then would encourage them to memorize the Tao Te Ching. Never read something so enlightening before.
Q: Let’s circumvent the current pandemic; who do you want to ride with and where?
I’d love to circumnavigate the world on old heavy jap 650 thumpers with the crew
Q: What did anarchy actually mean in 2020?
Political correctness is the new totalitarianism and it frightens me. Eradicates individual thought and the very founding principles of our civilization. Anarchy? What a divine word with so many wrong connotations. I prefer common sense, ‘the least common of the senses,’ as Voltaire observed.
Q: Explain your credo ‘only outlaws will be free’.
Think I’ve already told you once. I’m very pessimistic. I see no hope for motorcycles and see them as an anachronistic glitch of the establishment. We live in the era of control and motorcycles don’t abide. They want us gone, but they’re slow, and although they’re constantly legislating against us they still haven’t figured out how to make it final. At El Solitario we are stretching our outlaw conditions as much as we can while it lasts. Only outlaws will be free!
Q: Ten years on, is El Solitario still ‘a holy tribe under a divine mission,’ as you’ve shared in past interviews?
Still keeping it core and fresh. Making it a sustainable business without betraying our roots; it’s always the biggest challenge of all, but hell to the yeah!
Hell to the yeah! I love this guy! “BMW Motorrad related questions bore me to death.” Nick Cave, whisky, and friends and family cackling. Sign me up.