Raduno Italia: Dancing With Ducs At Deus Ex Machina

Michael “Woolie” Woolaway, Deus ex Machina’s in-house bike builder, was launching his new “Dreamliner” Ducati hypo-custom, so what better reason than that to throw an Italian Day at Deus, the party complete with opera virtuoso singing Pagliacci. In any case, the bevy of well-tuned classic, vintage and race bred Italian bikes literally filled the parking lot and the adjacent sidewalks to overflow capacity. The event? Deus called it Raduno Ducati.

Good luck on finding any parking spaces, bikes were filling up all four sides of the building, snaking around corners and blatantly kissing pedestrian-land which, at one point, brought out Johnny Law who seemed worried that someone would trip over a bike on the sidewalk. Gentle threats saw most bikes moved, thus avoiding any SWAT enforcement. Meantime, the entire back area of DEM was showtime for a wide spectrum of age, displacement and purpose of Italo-machines. While the main color was Ducati red, both vintage and modern, there were reps from Moto Guzzi, Aprilia, and Cagiva.

“The only problem is that there may be too many bikes,” said Deus crewmember and event organizer, Nevin Pontiouf. “We’ve got a really eclectic group including race bikes like the Rossi GP bike displayed inside. There’s also been a lot of buzz about Woolie’s new Dreamliners plus the new Ducati Scrambler, so it made sense to launch the bike and have a gathering of Italian bikes. We’ve got hard-ridden bikes in original shape as well as restored bikes. Deus celebrates the L.A. lifestyle, including bikes. Every third Sunday we do an afternoon barbecue and music, basically a free-for-all for anybody out riding to stop by and have a get together. Today’s event for sure has been one of the biggest.”

The rest of the story is best told with photos and captions, so please scroll down to see what else Garson spotted at the event.