Inventor of the Gunfighter seat Mike Corbin opens new Corbin warehouse outlet in Daytona during Bike Week

Friday 8th March 2002, American-V was lucky enough to be invited to a grand event to celebrate the opening of a brand new Corbin shop and warehouse situated on the North side of Main Street in Daytona Beach, Florida. The new pastel building is very impressive, much larger than it appears and built in the Spanish colonial style to blend in with the local Floridian architecture. In fact about the only thing I had against the building was that it had been built on top of perhaps my absolute favourite bar in Daytona. Which, in retrospect, is quite serious actually.

The shop inside, is very impressive: Rather than simply fill shelf upon shelf with their world famous after-market seats and accessories - how many other accessory manufacturers can claim to be represented in motorcycle manufacturers own P & A catalogues for instance - valuable floor space is in fact given over to elegantly presented custom machinery - bikes, trikes and even the Corbin 3-wheeler cars, driven by a transverse mounted S&S V-twin. All of which, fairly obviously, sport Corbin accessories.

The opening event itself was in the large open space created in front of the new building. Whether this space is intended to be a parking lot, or a very welcome plaza in which to sit and watch the world pass along the elsewhere quite narrow and even claustrophobic thoroughfair that is Main Street was unclear, maybe it is a bit of both. This evening however it sported some booths around the low perimeter wall, a mixing desk and in the centre, a stage.

A fairly shy man in person, the affable Mike Corbin was over to one side propping up a sunshade, happy to keep a low profile and watch the proceedings, leaving the stage work to the pros. A bloke who presents a well known American classic car show on cable began by promoting a new motorcycle show Corbin are supporting and hyping up the crowd for a PA. Free t-shirts were thrown out as it became clear that Wesley Snipes was to make the personal appearance, partly to promote Corbin and partly to promote his new film Blade II. In the film, Wesley rides a custom Ducati sports bike and Ducati USA, Corbin and the production company for Blade II were all jointly promoting the event.

The curtains finally opened and amidst buckets of dry ice, Wesley Snipes in full Blade costume did indeed spookily welcome everyone to Bike Week and the shop, then it was over. Perhaps what impressed me most, was not Wesley Snipes himself, nice enough chap that he is, but the fact that motorcycle custom companies like Corbin can wield enough clout nowadays to attract superstars like Wesley, and corporations like Ducati to help promote their businesses. For good or ill depending on your point of view, it was a lucid example illustrating just how far our lifestyle has progressed in such a relatively short time.