Anybody that knows me understands that I'm a total racing gear whore. I love the baller stuff. Once you start doing enough track days you reason to yourself that its worth it to buy really good stuff, but part of the appeal is that you've got something cool, you can show it off.I had been rocking an open faced helmet for a few years, and it had served me well. It was a great gift from my sister for Christmas about five years ago, and I wore it through most of my early years in road race and open track events. Even did 2 rounds of 24 Hours of LeMons in it! I was starting to want a closed face helmet to use at drift events since debris would always get in my eyes. I still use the open faced one for hot days, but decided to invest in something high quality and of a closed face design. Shortly there after, I purchased a Bell K1 Sport.
Ever since I became interested in world motor sports, I've been fascinated with driver's custom suits and helmets. I've always wanted something to help put me apart from the rest (how many G-Force white helmets do you see at the track?) and also something that was custom. I like to integrate styling from different car cultures, and often times look to things far from drifting and typical racing to get inspiration. I started looking around and ended up viewing some hot rod photos with pinstriping. The only helmets I saw were for bikers, and were essentially small, skull cap type helmets. This is when I decided that I wanted a pinstripe job as well as some sort of hot-rod influence on my motor sport helmet.
After lots of internet research, I found a sample photo of exactly what I wanted. That sample photo came from Sam Boeger's website, www.bogies.biz. She's an amazingly talented artist, and also in California. Check out her pinstriping photos to see what photo I'm talking about! Anyhow after a few emails back and fourth with a rough outline of what I was looking for, I had shipped the helmet to her and she began work. What you see is the finished product:
As you can see here, there's a fully detailed pinstriping job running over the top of the helmet with a pretty aggressive design.
After I saw it on her website, I knew I had to have this chick on my helmet. Part of its appeal to me is the hot-rod style, and also another influence came from drag racing. Drag-racing guys love to have chicks on their helmets. Its difficult to see, but the "tramp stamp" on her back says "The big Korean". Yeah, that's me.
You'll also notice the name near the front chin area. That's just straight up from racing. If you've got a custom helmet, its got to have your name on it somehow! I also loved the color combination she used to achieve a sort of neon effect. It constrats nicely with a dark helmet. Now I've got to just get my iriduim visor and I'm done!
Anyhow come say "hi" sometime at a track event if you'd like to take a look at it. I highly recommend Sam's work to any of you out there looking for custom work on, well, just about anything! She does more than just pinstripe too, if you wanted something else done. Anyhow, I hope more of you start doing custom cool stuff too!
