Stock
Sucks!
L&L MIGHT AS WELL STAND FOR LAVISH & LEGENDARY
By Steven Blackburn / Photos by Jeroen HoebeT
HE FACT THAT SJAAK LAAN UTILIZED
the available space on his company logo to relate
his utter disdain for stock using not one, but two
expletives probably means he doesn’t like stock
bikes all that much. It’s a pretty good thing then
that Sjaak owns a custom bike shop where he can put an end
to all that—Netherlands-based L&L Choppers.
And as a builder who customizes bikes in “every differ-
ent style imaginable” and proudly proclaims “the customer is
king,” Sjaak’s shop can assuredly be found on many motor-
cyclists’ radar across Europe (and it can, because it is).
But the number of radars with L&L blipping on their dis-
play screens rises exponentially when you consider the sheer
amount of people who make purchases from Sjaak’s parts
catalog (it’s a global demand).
Sjaak has a larger parts clientele in part because he
began his business 30 years ago by exclusively selling—not
building with— so-called chopper parts in response to the
Swedish chopper craze, a frenzy that, Sjaak admits, he and
his buddies also succumbed to. “There was a big love for all
chopper stuff that came out of Sweden,” he remembers. As
a result, L&L was “a big hit” almost immediately. “We sold
parts all over Holland and Belgium.”
Sjaak later added bike builder to L&L’s list of services
due to customer demand. It made sense. As a parts manufac-
turer, Sjaak had already fabbed years’ worth of components
for other people to install on their customs, so the only thing
that really changed when becoming a bike builder was that
he had years’ worth of components for his team to install on
other people’s customs. Luckily, Sjaak prefers building with
what he fabs, so it worked out pretty well.
“We love to make things by hand,” he says. “Big things
like pipes and small things like all the brackets on this bike.”
By “this bike,” Sjaak was referring to this 1971 Ironhead
Roadster owned by a guy named Jan who traveled all the
way up from his home in Belgium to Sjaak’s shop in the
Netherlands. (That’s almost like someone traveling from
Boston to New York City.)
“This bike” now features many of L&L’s handmade parts.
In fact, the entire build revolves around one in particular.
“Jan wanted a stock front end but a frame that would56 / American Iron / Issue #379 AIMag.com