“When you talk about bike shows, people think of a bunch of bikers standing around a Hooters parking lot,” says Randall Noldge, founder and curator of Cycle Showcase St. Louis. “As much as I love a Hooters Parking lot, this isn't that. It’s more like an art gallery.”
Randall started Cycle Showcase St. Louis as a creative outlet for ideas he'd stored up since discovering his passion for motorcycles years ago. “I started it to release the creativity trapped in my head and share it with people.”
He says “The Art of the Motorcycle,” an exhibition of 114 motorcycles displayed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in late 1998, opened his eyes. The display spanned a century of motorcycle production and the technological progress and cultural, sociological and economic factors that define and are all manifested in the components and form of the motorcycle.
He told his mom, Dolores Fishback, about his ideas for a show in 2012. “She said, ‘Well, are you going to complain about it, or are you going to do something?’”
After attending European and vintage bike nights and hanging out with chopper guys at bars, and loving each subculture, Randall decided to take his mom’s advice.
Now entering its fourteenth year, Cycle Showcase exhibits some 40 works of two-wheeled art at The Pageant in St. Louis all brought together “to display a range of bikes with an emphasis on the beauty in the design, engineering and personal flair of motor-driven transportation. The allure is that a bike could be a completely stock, and rare European machine, where there were only 20 of them made in 1943, or a $100,000 custom bike, dripping in one-of-a-kind paint and covered in gold plating. Everything is welcome.”
Randall works at The Pageant as a sound engineer, production designer and stage manager. Over the years, he has toured with such notable musicians as Tony Bennett, Little River Band, Kenny Loggins, Charlie Daniels, Loretta Lynn and others.
Randall's years of production experience are evident as each motorcycle sits, specially lit, atop its own platform. “There is a heavy emphasis on lighting and video, kind of like a concert,” he says. “Everything is well lit and every 15 minutes all the lights dance to the music, everything from Willie Nelson to Nelly. I have good 'ole boys from Texas and city girls from New York travel to see the show. They all get along because of their love of the motorcycle.”
“I thought, ‘We could do something great here and include everyone, not just bike people, from little kids to grandparents, everyone can be inspired,’” Randall explains. The show also features ice cream, motorcycle-related artwork, a tattoo artist and a puppy kissing booth to raise money for the dog rescue, Dirk’s Fund.
“What it'll become will be decided by the people,” Randall says.
The next show will be held the weekend of Feb. 14, 2027.
“What it will become will be decided by the people." ~Randall Noldge