Banners Up: Vintage Triumphs and Desert Sleds in Laguna Beach

Old British iron, desert sleds and a parking lot full of Southern California motorcycle history

For a few hours on a Saturday morning, a little parking lot off Coast Highway looked more like a snapshot of Southern California motorcycle history.

Knobby tires. High pipes. Number plates. Sun-faded paint sitting alongside immaculate restorations. And enough vintage Triumphs packed together to make you wonder if you’d somehow wandered into a desert racing paddock 60 years too late.

This was Banners Up, the inaugural vintage Triumph gathering held March 28 at Willbo’s Ocean Clubhouse in Laguna Beach, California.

The formula was refreshingly simple: old British motorcycles, food from Ahba, music from KXFM and a parking lot full of people who wanted to talk about them.

Built for the Desert

Southern California and old Triumphs have history.

Long before purpose-built off-road motorcycles took over the desert, riders were modifying British street bikes for competition across the wide-open terrain of California and the Southwest. Triumph twins became part of that landscape, stripped down and adapted with bigger tires, increased ground clearance, high exhausts and whatever else was needed to survive.

The result was the desert sled: big, simple, fast motorcycles built for going very quickly across very rough ground.

That influence was everywhere at Banners Up.

Some bikes looked like they could have rolled straight out of an old race paddock. Others were beautifully restored examples wearing period-correct tanks, chrome and paint. There were pristine machines, well-used survivors, and bikes somewhere wonderfully in between.

And almost all of them looked better on knobby tires.

A Parking Lot Full of Triumphs

One of the coolest things about the morning was simply seeing so many variations on essentially the same theme lined up together.

Blue and silver. Gold and white. Candy red. Magenta. Polished alloy. Faded paint.

Look closer and the differences kept coming: bars, pipes, tanks, seats, tires, forks, and all the little decisions made over decades of riding, racing, restoring, and rebuilding these motorcycles.

Some had been restored until the chrome looked almost too good to get dirty.

Others very clearly had stories.

Those were probably my favorites.

There’s something about an old motorcycle that still wears its age proudly. Scratched paint, oxidized aluminum, worn hardware, and a little grime can tell you more than a spec sheet ever will.

These weren’t all museum pieces.

They were motorcycles.

From Desert Sleds to the Track

Among the standouts was this 1970 Trackmaster Triumph, a purpose-built flat-track machine with a very different interpretation of the Triumph twin.

The bike’s display card tells some of the story: a Trackmaster frame wrapped around a heavily modified Triumph engine, Ceriani forks, Barnes wheels and the unmistakable No. 6Y number plates.

Owned by John Stein and restored by Mark Henry, it was one of those bikes that stopped you for a second look.

Low, narrow, and almost completely devoid of anything it doesn’t need, it’s a reminder that these old Triumph motors didn’t just earn their reputation in the desert.

They raced everywhere.

Old Bikes, Good People

But Banners Up didn’t really feel like a concours or traditional motorcycle show.

And that’s probably what made it good.

People rolled in. Bikes got pushed around. Someone inevitably crouched down to inspect some obscure mechanical detail. Stories got exchanged. Food disappeared. More motorcycles showed up.

There wasn’t much separating the people displaying bikes from everyone who had simply come to look at them.

That’s the sweet spot for events like this.

Enough special motorcycles to give you a reason to show up, but casual enough that you can spend the morning drinking coffee, wandering around and talking shit about old bikes.