J: How would you describe London biking culture at the moment? Have you noticed a difference in the amount of women riders?
G: Slowly I’m seeing more female riders here in London. It’s still not super common that you see lots of women riding by on a motorcycle in London even now though. It would just be nice to see more giving it a go because it’s so much fun! I mean we don’t claim to be the first women to ride a motorcycle in London for sure, but were hoping that what were doing by helping a few people take their first steps in riding is doing its bit to inspire more to give it a go. Everyone has to start somewhere! We’re just trying to make it a little more accessible to get into if you want to.
Although we support a lot of women to start riding to be honest I’m very much of the mind that I don’t think you have to be boxed in with a “ female ride/ male rider” tag. To me I’m just a motorcycle rider who enjoys riding with everyone or anyone, disregardless of what bike they ride or how long they’ve been riding. With VC we are just saying say hey, if you always wanted to give motorcycles a go then we can give you a hand. We’re women so we’ve just done things from a woman perspective with some of the challenges we’ve faced being women riding. We’ve actually given a few guys their first go at riding too recently which has been pretty rad!
J: Tell us a bit about how and why you started VC London?
G: The VC started as a bit of a joke really between a few friends. We’re not really a club or a gang, just a kind of collective of people riding, building, hanging & having a great time doing it. We’re a pretty mixed bunch of riders and bikes from 125s, bobbers, cafe racers, Triumphs & harleys to dirtbikes .The 4 of us who are the sort of main people who run the VC ( Myself, Namin, Mai & Jo) all hang & work out of The Shop Customs in East London, where we allwrench, ride & hang together with a bunch of other guys and girls. In the beginning I was just kind of using our Instagram to document all that we were doing, learning about bikes, wrenching etc & it just seemed to catch on.
J: Are there any women biker groups or individual riders who have really influenced you?
G: Argh! There are too many to mention! Since we started the whole VC thing I’ve been lucky enough to hang & ride with some incredible women from all over the world.
Anya & Ashmore of Babes Ride Out are a pretty inspiring pair of ladies! Jaime Dempsey & Brittany Wood are also a total gems that helped us out so much when we went t LA last year! Closer to home there’s the lovely Sahra Lewis (@roxysunny ) from Warrs Harley Davidson- most smiley lovely, positive lady ever, Sami Graystone (@sami_graystone) – complete bad ass on the road or on the track & of course the other VC girls (well I had to say them didn’t I ?!). Jessie Gentry ( @jessiegentry ) of the Velvets, Joy Lewis ( @mouthfulofjoy) & the lovely Shelby Rossi ( @therippinkittin) of Scarlet headers are a few more ladies I’m pretty desperate to have a rip around with stateside.
J: You also offer CBT training now, how did this begin? Where do the lessons run and how do people book in with you?
G: We originally put a post out on our insta offering anyone that wanted to give riding a go to get in touch. We just thought that if someone didn’t know a friend or a partner with a bike where they could just take them along to a supermarket car park to give it a go then how would they be able to start? The response was pretty huge so we started teaching the very basics in some private land, nearby our workshop, to a few girls. The next natural step was to hook up with a local training school to get them a CBT certification & get them on the road. A few of us did our tests with London Motorcycle Training & we thought they were great so we hooked up to do all female CBT days with discounted rates for everyone. A lot of the women that have been on the CBT days have made close friends with each other, riding together & going away on moto trips, so that’s pretty rad.