“Ride now, die later.”
Those are the words emblazoned on the wall at Off Track, a year-old motorcycle shop owned by Eric Sy and Dustin Wise-Tylek: a pair of longtime motorcycle riders and best friends who migrated from the East Coast to Long Beach and set up shop in the Zaferia neighborhood.
At Off Track, it doesn’t matter what kind of motorcycle you’re riding—as long as you’re riding.
“Our biggest goal with our shop here, when we put it together, was to create a home where any bike, any person can come and feel like it speaks to them,” Wise-Tylek said. “We want to have anyone roll up on anything and be like, ‘Oh this is a cool place. I’m supposed to be here.’”
Though motorcycle sales aren’t their specialty, the shop caters to everything a rider would need to get started: padded clothing for men and women, helmets, gloves, bags, accessories and apparel.
“A lot of [new riders] go to a dealership, work with somebody who may or may not deal with the product and buy it outright, and spend a good deal of money, because motorcycles are, you know, a luxury item,” Sy said. “We offer discounts for new riders coming in, so the barrier of entry isn’t so high.”
Sy first got into riding after a not-so-graceful test run where he almost dropped a friend’s bike.
“At that point, I said, ‘I’m definitely going to get one,’” Sy said, noting that he went to the bank to get an unsecured loan to purchase a Suzuki GSX-R sportbike. “Sure enough, took the class, got a motorcycle, brought it home, showed dad and that was that. It was history.”
Wise-Tylek’s foray into riding began at a Creedence Clearwater Revival concert, which he described as “road trip music.” Band members played in front of a screen displaying a video of a man riding a motorcycle.
That was all it took to convince Wise-Tylek that he needed a motorcycle. He went to Craigslist and shortly after he was racing towards New York’s Williamsburg Bridge in nothing more than regular clothes and a baseball helmet.
He stalled at every red light along the way.
“I’m like, ‘This is the dumbest thing ever,’” Wise-Tylek said. “‘Why did I do this?’”
Then, he got to the bridge.
“I get into second gear, third gear, and I’m in the middle of the bridge,” he said. “I’m looking out and I’m like, “F—, this is why. This is the coolest thing, hell yeah!”
Shortly after crossing the bridge, he smashed his bike into a concrete divider. Wise-Tylek picked up the bike, whose bent pedal was now stuck in the first gear, and rumbled his way to Greenwich Village.
The accident didn’t deter Wise-Tylek from riding. Years later, as he was building a motorcycle in New Jersey, he would watch the beginnings of a motorcycle shop take form right across the street from his garage.
That shop was owned by Sy. And, once fully open for business, Wise-Tylek would become a regular.
“It was history from there,” Wise-Tylek said.
The Jersey shop was a gathering place for bikers of all different types. Typically, Wise-Tylek said, motorcycle owners ride in packs with other similar bikes.
At Sy’s shop, that couldn’t be further from the case. BMWs would sit next to Harley’s. Hondas rode with Yamahas.
Wise-Tylek remembered riding his “sketchy” bike with the owner of an expensive Indian-brand motorcycle, “clearly a wealthy guy” who “had no reason to ever talk to me.”
“He was probably 15, 20 years my senior but we’re able to kick it because we have this commonality,” Wise-Tylek said. “It creates this really foundational middle ground of bikes. Nothing else really matters.”
The shop was only two years old when Sy found out that Wise-Tylek was moving to California—the land of motorcycle gangs and expansive scenic views. At first, Sy planned to stay in New Jersey. But as more friends announced their own moves to the West Coast, he relented.
Near the end of 2018, he shut down the shop, jumped on his bike and rode nearly 3,000 miles across the country.
Once he got to the West Coast, he planned to open up a new shop, but couldn’t find a building with the right fit.
It wasn’t until April 2020—that period of uncertainty when COVID-19 first gripped the nation—that his wife found the shop’s current location—a no-frills building in Zaferia with a garage door, sandwiched behind Commodity LB.
The two worked together to build out the shop’s interior, using ratchet straps to hold up the ends of industrial metal poles, now hung with padded riding gear, leather jackets and apparel.
The building has the duo’s personal touch: Wise-Tylek’s modified 1978 Harley Shovelhead sits next to Sy’s 1979 Honda CB 750 in the center of the shop, a plastic skeleton holding a can of Heineken lords from above, an industrial chest made from salvaged pieces of a Dodge Dart Swinger sits at the entrance.
During the pandemic, the shop took after its New Jersey predecessor by becoming a gathering space for riders.
“During lockdown, riding was one of the key things that people loved to do to go out. It’s socially distanced, you’re on your bike, you’re spread apart, you’re in the middle of nowhere. So people took to the roads,” Sy said. “And when they wanted a destination spot to go to, ‘Yo, is Off Track open?’”
Despite the fact that the shop wasn’t officially open, the space hosted groups as large as 50 riders through word of mouth. A text would come to Wise-Tylek’s or Sy’s phone and they’d pull out the grill.
“We almost ended up being open every other weekend,” Wise-Tylek said. “We became the middle ground for a lot of people mid-ride.”
Now that the shop is fully operational, the two hope it will become a stomping ground for local amateur and experienced riders alike.
“We try and offer as much as possible to new riders to feel comfortable and be able to get the proper stuff they need,” Wise-Tylek said. “I crashed my first day, wearing a baseball helmet, no gloves, nothing. I mean, it’s not smart. Right? A lot of people shouldn’t do that.”
The two have already begun community-building in the neighborhood, holding canned food drives with the Long Beach Rescue Mission and even offering new riders their parking lot to practice in during off-hours.
“That’s what I love about motorcycles. It doesn’t really matter who you are, what you are, what you do, you share this love, this bond of something that you love,” Wise-Tylek said. “That’s all you need really.”
Off Track is located at 1322 Coronado Ave., Long Beach, and open from Thursdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends. To keep up with Off Track, follow them on Instagram at @rideofftrack.
