By Jason Britton
Our roving executive editor isn't settling down quite yet, but he did stop traveling long enough to host a huge open house for his new shop.
Jason Britton's No Limit Motorsports is now open for business! As if I didn't have enough going on, I figured it was a good idea to open a motorcycle shop. I figured if I can do handstands on a motorcycle, then I could open a motorcycle shop. Wow, talk about challenging!
Motorcycle stunts are easy compared to this. Getting a full-blown shop set up, getting parts stocked, pricing, obtaining the necessary permits and licenses, getting credit card machines set up and paying employee insurance… there are so many hoops to jump through. It's quite an undertaking. Even getting display cases, and knowing how to build the cases so they're aesthetically pleasing, is a challenge.
Then, of course, the whole world doesn't stop just because I'm opening a motorcycle shop. I've still got all my shows and everything else going on. I was actually out of state three days before my grand opening, and we didn't have the entire inventory stocked until a day before I got back into town (our new No Limit shirts didn't even arrive until the night before the opening). So the shop manager Adam and I had two days to get everything ready. The wonderful people at Parts Unlimited and Icon came out and helped me set up displays the day before, and Leo Vince came out to educate Adam on their exhausts, and they stuck around for the grand opening.
The day of reckoning came quickly: the Grand Opening! It was a total scare for me because I didn't know how many people were coming. I was expecting anywhere from 20 people to 500 or even 1,000 people. Saturday morning rolled around and we were at the shop at 8 a.m. setting up Kawasaki tents and just winging it. We didn't have a layout, we didn't have a plan, we didn't even have permits from the city!
We got the whole building looking really professional, and the DJ got set up in time for our 11 a.m. start. One guy showed up at 10:45 on a Hayabusa, walked around, and left. I was totally starting to panic. At 11:00 we got four or five bikes: personal friends who rode in. By noon we had a couple hundred bikes and I was thinking it was cool. By 1:30, we had 2,000 people! We went through 50 cases of NOS energy drinks: 2,000 people and everyone was on a NOS high! We'd have groups of 200 bikes coming in for every 200 that left. We had people all the way from San Francisco, and some people from the East Coast even flew in for the grand opening. It was more people than I could have ever expected.
Then the Westminster city inspector pulled up in front of the shop. They talked about shutting us down because I didn't have a permit, but instead they just told me to turn the music down some and keep everything under control. I would have to deal with the city on Monday. Luckily, after filling out paperwork for the city, I just got a letter saying that next time, I have to get a permit in advance!
The shop is 2,000 square feet, and the idea from its inception was to be an experience more than anything. I didn't want it to be like you're walking into a motorcycle shop that's just "sell, sell, sell." Come in and hang out, watch videos, grab an energy drink. And if you need parts for your bike, we can do that for you. We want to be a motorcycle shop by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, not a motorcycle shop by a dealer for consumers.
I can't always be here, and I only have one guy running the whole show, so I'm accepting resumes! If you want to send one, or if you want to come hang out at the shop, our address is 14726 Goldenwest Street, Unit G, Westminster, CA 92683. If you want to call and check on a part, our number is 714-891-8600. So stop by if you want to be a part of the experience.
