Houston Chopper

There's only one thing that sets Roman off: racial intolerance. He knows the prevailing image of biking is white and male. "The old-school biker society is all about white supremacy," says Roman, who grew up seeing Confederate flags on the backs of T-shirts at bike meets.

"Yeah, I've got a black guy and a Mexican guy in my shop, and a woman running the store," says Roman. "If you don't like it, you can get the fuck out of here, because that's not what I'm about." There's Charles -- a wide-bodied African-American guy who sports rectangular glasses and a hybrid Mohawk -- Roman's best friend and right-hand man. Then there's John, a goateed, burly Mexican man who looks like a roadie for Slayer and is a key player in the shop. And then there's his wife and office manager Silvia. Not exactly the stereotypical white, Dixie-flag-shirt biker set. Only Roman and Jim, a white-haired, bearded gent who could pass for Kenny Rogers's stunt double, look like your typical bikers.

Charles, who's known Roman since the seventh grade when they'd skateboard together, knows the scene and gets it. "I've been to hundreds of bike shops," he says, "and I've never seen a black guy working in one." The bike craft is a trade, one that's protected, he says, and a black guy is an outsider. "People don't want to give the trade away. But man, you do what you do, and you do it well, and color never comes up."

"There are two types of bikers who come in here," says Roman, "the RUB [rich urban biker] who comes in who's naïve to the situation and just wants to buy a bike from anybody, and then the guys who come in who say, 'Y'all got a black guy working in a bike shop?'"

Roman can tell hatin' customers to eff-off because he can afford it. RB Choppers is in high demand: One of RB's bikes, a sexy, baby-blue number, just won first place in the Houston Autorama Vintage Custom Class division. Roman says it gives him "more cred. You win some awards, you get a TV show, it all shows that you're for real and know what you're doing." He can fetch a minimum of $40,000 per bike, and he's got several in production -- on top of his reality show pieces.

With success, Roman has earned the luxury of picking and choosing his jobs; he and Charles figure they decline 30 percent of their walk-in business. They've turned down offers for Pepsi-bottle-shaped bikes, three-wheeled goofy numbers and even a motorcycle shaped like a "weird Pegasus thing," he says. "You want to spend $75,000 on a mid-range Harley and look like everyone else, cool. You want something that'll start up and last forever, and is like nothing else on the road because it was built from ground up just for you? I'm your guy. But I'm not everybody's guy."

He vows he'll never build "trailer queens," essentially, big, crazy, over-the-top machines that are all the rage these days and make for good pictures and video, but for practical purposes, are unridable. To Roman, who loves to pop wheelies and ride them for about half a mile on his own bike, trailer queens are pointless.

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It's after 11 p.m. at the Ft. Lauderdale hotspot Automatic Slim's. Hundreds of people have shown up for the "big reveal" of Roman's bike. The chopper was made specifically for Platinum Productions' head honcho, Doug Scott. Roman's a little tense: His wife and crew are here. The media is here, and cameras are rolling. He's already had to adjust the carburetor and make sure it "lopes" (creating that familiar idling chug) just right, since Florida's barometric pressure is different than Houston's. This is the moment that could make him a star or make him that reality series staple, the Tragic Figure. This thing had better start.

There's a countdown. Dancing girls standing on the bar hype up the crowd. Roman snatches back the shroud, and the glorious silver chopper gleams in front of a wowed audience. Scott is agape, then in glee. He nearly blows his wad as Roman turns the key. Ba-boom! The engine roars and rattles everything around it. The crowd shrieks, and Roman and his buddies high-five each other. Suddenly Roman, who has held Jesse James in contempt for "selling out and becoming a star," is starting to relate to the man. Maybe this TV celeb thing could work. "Yeah, maybe I could become the next big reality star and go Hollywood," he says later. "But then I'd become a sellout."

And that's not the way he rolls.