My name is Shad Bolosan. I live on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, and I am lucky to be able to say that I was born and raised on the beautiful North Shore.
A few years ago, my wife and I bought our first house. As many of you know, when the time comes for that really important purchase, you often have to sacrifice some things. Unfortunately for me, that meant selling my beloved Hardlife Custom that my friends and I built. It was a really nice radical custom bike, but I did what I had to do. Luckily, my wife is very understanding, so she was cool about it when I told her that I’d sell it, but I wanted to at least get a good secondhand Harley to still be able to ride, sort of a downsizing, so to speak. So that’s how I came about owning my ’06 Deluxe. It was only a year old when I got it, and only had about 4,000 miles on it. It was still in perfect shape, and I got it for a really good price.
My original intention was to just do a few things to the bike to make it look cool, nothing major. But as anyone who’s into bikes knows, it’s only a matter of time until you get the bug and want to really do some serious work to your bike. The Deluxe is a very popular bike here in Hawaii. One of my bros, Ryan Lau, is the president of a local MC here, Tattoo Krew. The majority of the members have some really cool Deluxes and they do a really good job of customizing them. So after a few years of seeing them cruising around, I couldn’t fight the urge anymore. I gave in to temptation, deciding to dive in head first and totally re-do my bike.
The game plan was to take a little of all the things I liked from bikes and put it together with my own twists. Staying true to what I first learned about building bikes from my good friend, Nui Kauhane, I decided to build my version of a Hawaiian Beach Boy. The Beach Boy and the Local Boy are the two styles of bikes that are unique to Hawaiian builders. Though it is similar to the Lowrider style that has been made popular by the Californian builders, there is a difference between the two. Hawaiians have been building Beach Boys and Local Boys here for a really long time, and I think there is no one better at it than Nui. I am also a really big fan of Matt Hotch, I just love how clean his bikes are, so I wanted to try and keep everything as clean-looking as possible.