The Ultimate SE Bikes Garage!?
We love seeing SE riders trick out their bikes, garages, and houses with SE gear, and Ronnie Gomez (@lv_local) took an awesome approach with his SE Garage Wall featuring artwork from SE bike boxes! We take a lot of pride in each box design, so this really hit home. How did this precise work of art come to be? Here’s the story from Ronnie:
The wall was a vision that came to me when I first walked into the new home my wife and I purchased. As soon as I saw the huge wall, I remembered pulling up to the Sullins' first Mike Buff Halloween ride in Porterville, CA. Rick and Sandy had a stack of boxes set on the outside of their mega SE garage, and I thought that was the coolest idea. SE puts a lot of time and effort into designing not only the bikes, but also what the bikes are shipped in.
I started with a preliminary idea of putting the exact box size on a print so we could eventually get it to print out on a huge vinyl wrap. I sent it to Mike Buff for his thoughts, and he told me I should reach out to Todd Lyons to see if I would be able to get actual art files of the boxes so it was better quality when printed. After getting Todd’s approval, my next step was to get connected with my Volkswagen brother Erik Black who owns @sunkistgraphics out here in Vegas. He saw the preliminary sketch on my phone, understood the potential, and he agreed to jump onboard with a smile and handshake! Erik and his staff nailed it on the first draft, and the SE Garage Wall was in production.
As the vinyl was in production, my attention shifted to how I was going to display my current collection of SE bikes. I purchased 50 horizontal pedal hangers, and that was how I wanted to secure and show the bikes on the wall.
Installation of the vinyl was completed within a day with Sunkist’s lead installers Andrew and Dillan. These guys paid precise attention to detail on each of the eight total sheets that had to line up for this 16’ tall, 35’ long vinyl wrap.
Upon completion, my previous idea of drilling and installing 50 pedal hangers through this awesome SE Vinyl Wall was scrapped. I was not going to risk not only damaging this work, but now I don’t want to cover the wall up with bikes. For now, I have custom hanging metal plates in fabrication so I can hang my SE collection freely throughout the garage.
Currently I have about 50 SE bikes and growing. The complete Vans collab collection, old fixies, several nice one-offs that dropped through the years, and ones that I have custom built. My favorite go-to bikes for my family and myself are the Mike Buff bikes. Mike was someone I looked up to as a young kid, seeing him in magazines and throughout the circuit putting freestyle BMX on the map. I always tried to duplicate what he did on his SE and I always fell short. I blamed it on the fact that I didn’t have the same branded SE bike.
Currently, I have a custom Mike Buff Fast Ripper being built alongside Mike’s with Rob at @switchback_ebikes. My family and I met Mike about four-to-five years ago, and our friendship feels like we have known each other for years. My youngest son Noah (@noahlv427) clings to him like family when he’s here with us in Vegas, or when we are out with him in So Cal. SE Family for life!