Five years ago, I bought my first street bike helmet. After looking at all the options available, I stumbled across a nice-looking British racing green, carbon fibre, Bell Bullitt. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I chose a Roland Sands Design lid and later I would interview the legend.

Some may know Roland as the 1998 AMA 250GP National Champion, the famous bike builder, an aftermarket hard part designer, establishing Super Hooligan racing or bringing motorcycle riding to the beach. However you know him or his brand, he is an innovative thinker looking to pioneer his way through the motorcycle industry with everything he does.

I got to sit down and chat with Roland in his groovy-looking office to talk about all things motorcycles. When I asked him what is the best piece of advice he ever was given, without hesitation, he replied, “What you think about, you bring about.” Let’s take a leaf out of his book and add this motto to our repertoire to start doing some exciting things for ourselves!

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: You and Redbull came together to bring nostalgic 2-stroke motocross racing to Moto Beach Classic for the first time. Tell us how this collaboration started?

Sands: Jeremy Malott is the one who came up with the idea for Straight Rhythm and pitched it to Red Bull. He was Red Bull’s marketing manager or athlete manager at the time, I think, I might be screwing that up totally. But he and I are good friends. We hang out outside of work and our kids [hang out]. We were shooting the idea across. I’ve been throwing the Moto Beach Classic. We’ve done some really big events on the beach. We did a huge music production at the same space with 25 bands. It was huge. We kind of had this experience of putting on a really big event on the beach and I was like, “Jared, this could make sense for Straight Rhythm.” He was trying to figure out how to do something new with Straight Rhythm to make it bigger, better, more fun. They’ve done two strokes, they’ve done nostalgia. They’ve done all that stuff and it was like, “Bring it to the beach, dude.” So it was kind of both of us coming together and having this concept of doing it. Of course, Covid hit, nothing happened, then Jeremy gave me a call out of the blue, he’s like, “Dude, let’s try and do Straight Rhythm on the beach”, and I was like, “Sick, let’s do that.”

Caption: Roland at a Super Hooligan race (Photo: Owned by Roland Sands Design)

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: Moto Beach Classic has been a hit for a few years now. Walk us through the highs and lows of establishing such a stellar motorcycle event?   

Sands: I mean, the high is after it’s done and everybody’s safe. We sold out and the event looked really good. The flow of the event was good, and the vibe and the energy of the people. That’s how I know we were a success. When you could see the smiles on people’s faces, it just permeated the entire crowd. You can feel it. It’s just a vibe and everyone had the same feeling of the vibe. The low part is problem-solving. It’s part of every event. Not being completely ready. Being a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of things that needed to be done at the space. But it’s always a testament to your hard work when you bust your ass, you put out fires that you need to put out, and then the gates open. People are enjoying and experiencing the event and how you envision them experiencing it. And all the hard work or all the drama just kind of goes away. People don’t see that. That’s how you know you’re successful with an event.

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: What’s your creative process for thinking all of this out for an event? Do you have an ultimate objective in mind?

Sands: I want people to see something they haven’t seen before. I want to see it in a new way and I think the beach gives us that opportunity, in spades. We’re able to go and set up. We have plenty of space to work with. Trying to work around the sand, that’s so hard. Our entire event was on the sand. So we put dirt on the top of the sand for the dirt track. It’s just a challenge to work in the sand to make it all aesthetically look the way we want to look. 

The artwork was a huge part of our event this year because we wanted to give our event an aesthetic. I think we had eight or nine art walls that were 8×12 that were double sided. It made the event have this visual for our portion of it [Moto Beach Classic]. Which we could see from Straight Rhythm’s [branding] and [how] we branded [Moto Beach Classic]. I think it was cohesive and cool.

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: What are ways you like to change things up to change up your creative process and thinking?

Sands: Give myself too much work. I love to bring new people in. Every time you bring a new artist in, a new bike builder, somebody who’s going to bring something that I haven’t seen yet. Give them the freedom to execute their art and what they believe in. It usually brings a new aesthetic to the table and I get inspired by that. I’m also inspired by the production of the event [Moto Beach Classic x Straight Rhythm] and the ability for Dane Herron and the States and Kingdom guys to execute the event and bring in that much dirt to build this track. It was just like, “We could do anything. This is possible.

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: What should motorcycle enthusiasts expect for Moto Beach Classic in 2023? What’s going through your head to make it different and new?

Sands: We’ve got a lot of discussions about what’s possible for next year. I’d love to see it be a two-day event and I’d love to see music. We can put more of a show together. We can keep people at the beach a little bit longer and give them an excuse to come for two-days. And if we do make it a two-day event, it’ll just blossom into an international affair. That’s what happens when you do two-day events. When you do bigger events, you give people something to do on Friday night when they get in a pre-party. You get to Saturday and [then] you get to Sunday post-party and it’s just a whole to-do. Bigger, louder. A little bit more energy. Bring the music in, give people an experience. Not that they didn’t this year, it was a cool experience for sure, but a little bit more time I think on the beach.

Caption: Roland riding flat track (Owned by Roland Sands Design) 

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: You’ve said in the past Super Hooligans is about racing bikes that don’t necessarily belong on the track. Since electric motorcycle racing hasn’t hit the mainstream, do you have plans on starting an electric division in the series?

Sands: We are. You saw we had three electric classes, this past weekend [Moto Beach Classic] at the Super Hooligan races. We’re giving people the ability to race their electric bikes, STACYC for kids. The Super73s [participated] and are a little bit more consumer [based]. Then we did an open electric. There’s a few more electric bikes that participated. We’re trying to give people the room to ride all types of different electric. And then in Super Hooligan racing, we are allowing electric bikes to race kind of open next year. 

 
Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: You recently built a Harley Davidson Pan America, what does the future hold for Adventure Bikes at RSD after this? 

Sands: We didn’t work specifically with Harley-Davidson, but we built two Pan Americas. We also just built a KTM adventure bike as well, a 1290 [Super] Adventure R. So what does the future hold for adventure bikes? There’s some of them that are going Super Hooligan racing, actually. We are deconstructing adventure bikes and turning them into road racers. We are allowing Pan America to ride in Super Hooligan again next year. We’ll have Indian versus Harley-Davidson versus Ducati versus BMW versus KTM. 

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: What’s some advice you would give someone who wants to break into the motorcycle-build world but doesn’t have a lot of connections or experience in the industry?

Sands: If you’re really going for it as an individual, you could watch a lot of YouTube videos. Start with the project, when you can accomplish it, [finish it]. Don’t think you’re going to build a frame from the ground up. Start with something that’s there and do finishes. Take stuff away. Deconstruct. I like the deconstruction method of customization. It’s where I always start. What can we take off of it to make it look cool? Sometimes you don’t even need to do that much. You can build something special.
 

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: Tell us about something you’re proud of that you’ve been working on lately?

Sands: Straight Rhythm is the thing that comes to mind right now because it was all hands on deck effort from my whole team. It was really a team effort. So I’m personally proud of it, but I’m also proud that our crew and our group was able to accomplish what we accomplished next to Red Bull. When you partner with somebody that’s used to doing massive events on a huge scale — some of the world’s coolest events, you know? So for us to be able to do that with Red Bull, I think that they were happy and we’re happy. We did our job. So yeah. Pretty proud of that.


Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: Is there any bike you’re super stoked to get started on?

Sands: We just finished that KTM. It’s super sick. I love that thing and I’m just stoked to be finished it. We’re building a crazy dragster right now. I’m building a BMW dragster out of a R18, which can be crazy. I’m building a CRF 110 for my buddy, Weeman. We’re editing the bike so that he’s able to ride it. He’s got a really short inseam. But he wants to have a legit motocross bike, so we’re gonna build him something.

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: What are some exciting things you have in the pipeline at RSD for 2023? 

Sands: We just launched a new apparel line called the Seventy4 Collection, which is a V-Twin derived apparel line. It’s really affordable price points, but a really good product. We launched a new hard parts collection called Sector. It’s mainly V-Twin focused motorcycle parts. It’s all made here in the United States. Actually I should say, made in Southern California slash Long Beach. Super Hooligans again, 2023, with MotoAmerica. And we’re doing this road race series and racing Indian FTRs. We’re also racing in the bagger class. So we raced the King of the Baggers class in MotoAmerica this year, and we’ll be doing that again in 2023.

Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorney: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given that sticks with you just every single day?

Sands: What you think about, you bring about.

Caption: Roland working on a BMW motor (Owned by Roland Sands Design) 

Caption: Roland smiling on a Super Hooligan racing bike (Photo: Owned by Roland Sands Design) 

If you want to learn more about Roland and his brand, visit the Roland Sands Design website or follow the company on Instagram. If you are a motorcycle racing fan, be sure to keep up-to-date with the 2023 Super Hooligan season! Ride safe and thanks for reading!


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