he official press release reads like this: “The mostly true, totally unreal life and twisted times of Rick Fairless. ‘Texas Hardtails’. It takes one to ride one. Tuesdays at 8:30 EST on the SPEED Channel.”
     “Oh yeah,” Rick Fairless says, the excitement bubbling over in his voice. “We have a TV show now. ‘Texas Hardtails.’ It debuted June 28th. We’re doing a weekly 30-minute show, it’ll be on every Tuesday night. Right now we have a contract for 10 episodes. Hopefully that’ll turn into 10 more, and then 10 more after that. And then who knows what? This thing could be huge, a very big deal for us.” There’s an understatement.
     Rick Fairless, needless to say, is pumped. “Strokers Dallas” and “Strokers Ice House,” the combination bike shop/bar-and-grill he opened 10 years ago, is going nationwide–just like that little band from Texas, the guys with the beards and the soul of the blues and rock’n’roll, ZZ Top. Texans have a knack of doing it up big.
     You’ve probably seen Rick on the small screen already. He’s been featured in those Discovery Channel “Biker Build Off” shows. Rick would be hard to miss, too. He’s the guy with the long hair, the tie-dyed shirts, the crazy-painted bikes and he’s the one builder who dared to compete with a Triumph-based chopper. Rick Fairless is stuck in the ‘60s and loving every minute of it. Well, the premise of the new show, Rick says, is “the three B’s. Bikes, Babes and Beer. I’ve been asked what the show’s going to look like, is going to be something like that OCC ‘American Chopper’ series, or ‘Build or Bust,’ or ‘Monster Garage?’ I thought about that for a second, then said, ‘It’s going to be like none of the above.’ This one’s going to be more like ‘Seinfeld.’ We’re swinging for the fence here–it’s all or nothing. The show will be different than any other moto-show on TV. It’s pure entertainment, and plenty of comedy. It’s not about bike building, but there’s bike building involved. It’s a behind the scenes look at all the craziness that goes on around here, and believe me, after 10 years there’s been plenty of it!”

     Rick’s been working on this concept for two years. His twin businesses–Strokers Dallas and Strokers Ice House–are so different than any other bike shop/beer joint in the country he originally shot some video to show off all that. On any given weekend there will be 1,000 to 1,500 bikes in the parking lot at Strokers, there will be live music pumping on an outdoor stage, the beer and the ‘burgers will be coming from the Ice House at a steady clip and the shop inside Strokers Dallas will be building, servicing, tuning and customizing bikes all day and all night long. A couple times a year Rick says they throw some real parties, too. Like the annual Anniversary Party. 5,000 people will show up for that one. Looking back on 10 years of all that you have to know Rick Fairless has story lines to spare!
     “We made some connections with that first video we shot,” Rick goes on. He finally wound up showing it to a SPEED Channel producer who liked what he saw. “We hired a professional cameraman to come in and film a bikini contest at one of the big parties, along with a whole bunch of different things going on around here. We edited that down, put it to music and that’s what we showed to the producers. And they loved it. That’s hitting a home run! Just getting someone to look at a show to air, hey, it’s like winning the lottery.”
     Strokers Dallas/Strokers Ice House has been open for a decade now, and the place just keeps getting bigger and better. “I’m one of those guys who’s never happy with what I have,” comes Rick’s explanation. “I always have to add something, take things to the next level. It’s been that way all my life. Once I get something accomplished I think, okay, what’s next?” Both businesses are right on the same piece of property, just outside downtown Dallas. The whole complex covers two acres, and that includes the Ice House. Rick started the business as Easyriders Dallas, an Easyriders franchise store. Two years later he opened Strokers Ice House, initially planning to do an Easyriders Dallas bike shop and an Easyriders café. “But when I was ready to go, they weren’t,” he says, so true to form he went ahead and did his own thing. Strokers Ice House is mainly an outdoor deal–the 2,000 square foot bar-and-grill has roll-up doors opening out to probably 30 picnic tables where most folks end up hanging out. The Ice House is a neighborhood favorite, too. “We’re right next to Love Field,” Rick says, “the corporate headquarters of Southwest Airlines. We get a lot of airline industry people all week long.”
     And Strokers Dallas, the bike shop, draws them in all week long, too. Rick and his 35 helpers sell Big Dogs and American Iron Horse motorcycles. They build full-on customs. They have their own fabrication shop. The service department is huge, doing everything from routine service work to those full-on customs. The parts department carries and stocks it all. There’s an accessory shop with a full selection of clothing, and on and on it goes. Strokers is a one-stop bike shop. A guy can come in for an oil change and a tune up, and get a ‘burger and a beer while he waits. Even on Saturdays and Sundays the service department is going full-tilt. Those days it’s first come, first-served. “Guys who come in the morning end up hanging out all day long,” Rick says.

Sue and Rick Fairless, the proprietors of Strokers Dallas motorcycle shop, Strokers Ice House bar and grill and now stars of their own television show on Speed Channel “Texas Hardtails.”

With music, burgers and beer on tap, it’s pretty normal to have 1,000 to 1,500 bikes parked out in front of Strokers Ice House on the weekends. 5,000 show up when they announce a real party!

     From day one Drag Specialties has been Rick’s major supplier. For everything. “Anything you need, Drag Specialties has,” he’s found. “And without fail,” Rick says, “all the people there are great to deal with. Even oddball stuff that I might need is just a phone call away. I don’t think I could run this place half as efficiently without the help and support of Drag Specialties.”
     Between that bike shop and that bar, and the chrome-plating shop Rick recently bought (yeah, yet another business–Show-And-Go plating) and now the TV show Rick Fairless packs into a 24-hour day what most folks might accomplish in a month. So what’s next? Knowing a little something about Rick Fairless you have to know there’s always something new on the horizon. And there is. “We’re working on a line of custom sheet metal, tanks and fenders, for Big Dogs and American Iron Horse bikes,” he says. “We’ve already prototyped the stuff and we’re having the manufacturing part done right here in the USA. Up the road in Fort Worth, actually.” Rick figures this is a need that’s gone unfilled. “No one’s making custom bolt-on stuff for those motorcycles,” he says. “And as cool as those bikes are, what you see is what you get. They all look the same. We aim to change that.”
     But it doesn’t take Rick long to get back to talking about the biggest thing he has going right now, “Texas Hardtails,” that new TV show. “We’re definitely trying something different here,” he says. “We didn’t want to follow the same pattern all of those other TV motorcycle shows took, that whole ‘working against the deadline, our shop reputation is on the line here’ idea. That’s been beat to death. We’re going in a whole different direction. A character-driven show about nothing! ‘Seinfeld!’ And yeah, we have our Kramer. We have our George, we have our Elaine. We even have our Newman. We’ve got the beautiful beer babe, we’ve got the dumb blonde. And we have plenty of friends willing to help out, too. In one episode we brought in a couple professional hockey players we know, brought ‘em in during their off-season and gave them the job of washing motorcycles. It was hilarious!”
     Rushing off to yet another meeting about yet another project, all the while juggling the balls already in the air, Rick shouts back over his shoulder, “I tell my wife everything is going just great–as long as I don’t die of a heart attack making it happen!” Not likely. Rick Fairless is having way too much fun right now, and he sure doesn’t have the time to waste on anything like that. Be sure to check out “Texas Hardtails”, airing Tuesday nights on SPEED.