Hogs and Rice Motorcycle Improvement - A Full Service Shop Specializing in Motorcyle Improvement, Fabrication and Polishing, Leather Jacket Painting to Match.
Hogs and Rice Motorcycle Improvement first came to be in 1988 in a small shop in down town Dayton, Ohio. Joel Anthony, the sole proprietor, began the business by fixing motorcycles of all types and hand painting artwork on leather jackets.
After realizing that Ohio sucks a bilge rats ass and it is the best place in the world to be from, he sold everything he owned, gave away the rest and got on his ‘82 Yamaha Virago 920 and started riding West, leaving behind many life long friends and all of his family.
Three-hundred-fifty dollars and Thirty-Five-Hundred miles later he was in Boise, Idaho, broke and hungry. Not that it is Thirty-Five-Hundred miles to Boise from Dayton, but Joel never goes straight anywhere, he always finds an excuse to turn a short ride into a major road trip.
Realizing he was never going to get anywhere framing houses with a guy he met at a truck stop, Joel decided he better ramp up the bike building business and moved from his eight-by-ten “shack” into his current shop which has grown from eight-hundred square feet to its current size of fifteen-hundred square feet. Though this is not a large facility as bike shops go, it is still nowhere big enough for what he needs. He still manages with his total lack of organizational skill and is able to turn out some phenomenal work.
While Joel’s real love is being on the road, he does find great satisfaction in bike building, custom paint and fabrication. Bring Joel a problem, he can fix it. Because it does cost money to maintain a bike shop, and he and his wife like to eat, he does have to dabble in basic motorcycle maintenance and repair.
Several years ago, while on an afternoon drive, Joel came upon some vintage gas pumps. Now Joel is not that old, but he has a real penchant for anything old …including his wife, but that is another story, be it old cars, bikes, or gas pumps, Joel is hooked. So, over the next few days this chance sighting bothered him as he had been looking for a vintage air meter. Problem was, Joel couldn’t remember where he had seen the place, so he spent the next several months, (again, he will turn anything into a major road trip,) riding around the Boise valley, “looking” for the “guy with the gas pumps.” He couldn’t find him so he finally decided to just call around and see if he could locate him.
Joel finally found Warren, an X-Swabby, whose’ passion is acquiring vintage gas pumps for restoration. Warren at the time was a copier repairman; now what guy wouldn’t want to get out of that line of work and into gas pump restoration. “Permanently. “ Joel and Warren made a deal. A gas pump for a paint job, and they have been busy ever since. Warren and Joel often have fabrication or “fit” problems, but again, Joel is right there with the solution. They are a great team and have restored some beautiful gas pumps.
So…for the last twenty-years, Joel has been found most days, from Noon until at least 2:00 A.M, fixing a bike, painting something, or even throwing tools, but he closes the doors to the public at around 8:30 P.M. He is known as the guy from Boise, who can fix just about anything you might have go wrong with a Yamaha Virago or any other motorcycle for that matter.
The shop, located at the corner of Victory and Lindsay, between Vista and Broadway just off I-84 in Boise, is in and of itself a sight to see. What with Joel’s’ many “handmade” tools and other devices it may be worth the trip just to see what he may have going on.
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