If vintage and custom bikes are your thing, you might like Iron & Air magazine of New Hampshire as much as us.
Oh hey, check out this groovy indie mag dedicated to vintage and custom motorcycles. It covers bikes and riding culture all over the U.S and the world. Where is this great-looking, save-worthy publication produced? California? London? Nope – Manchester, New Hampshire.
Iron & Air Magazine, Issue #22
Granite State native Brett Houle launched Iron & Air in 2012 after selling his email marketing company, SendLabs. The concept started out as an Instagram feed, then a Facebook page that attracted thousands of likes. Houle and his partners soon realized that there was no print publication dedicated to the concept they were cultivating digitally, and the magazine was born.
“There was no grand plan,” Houle said in a 2013 podcast with Hold Fast Motors. “We saw what we liked, and we wanted to share it.” The magazine came out of a desire to “do something really fun and cool that has longevity.”
His love for vintage bikes started early, when the man who would become his stepfather began wooing Houle’s mother. “He would ride over, James Dean-style, on a chromed-out BSA Lightning. He always had a pizza strapped to the back of it for us kids. How does a seven-year-old kid not completely fall for that?”
The location of Iron & Air’s headquarters makes perfect sense — New Hampshire boasts both the oldest bike rally in the country, Laconia Bike Week, and the oldest vintage motorcycle race, the Loudon Classic. Plus, Houle, who rides motorcycles all over the world, extols the particular pleasures of the open road in New Hampshire, with its “mountains and twisties.”
But what about the fierce winters? Please. “We’re New Englanders,” he said. “We throw our snowmobile gear on and go for a ride.”