Photographs: Beth Levendis

Dan Lyle had a vision: music, motorcycles, tattoos—all the things he cares about—in the same space. PBR in hand, he grills a dozen cheeseburgers in front of the Shop (917-776-8872), a 2,500-square-foot garage that realizes his dream. It opened in March 2008, and now 50 Williamsburg motorcycle fanatics keep their bikes there—snow-white Harley Classics with shiny chrome ape hangers, electric-blue Ducatis, V twins, choppers and bobbers. “These guys spend a lot of money on their bikes,” Lyle says. “They’re not going to park them out on the street.”

Lyle, 33, is handsome (but not too much so), and also runs an investment-banking firm. He opened the Shop with resident technical guru Carlos Dos Santos, to build the type of bike community they felt was missing in New York—a clubhouse. Eventually Lyle hopes to expand the Shop to include a boutique hotel and a natural-foods restaurant, and is planning outposts in San Francisco and Atlanta.

At least once a month, Lyle fires up the grill for 15 to 20 members and friends—many of them technicians for other garages or industry insiders. They hang out, chew the fat, compare scars and tell stories about “white-lining” between cars and dodging the fuzz. “The second you get on the throttle, and you’re tucked behind the windscreen at 140 miles per hour…,” Dos Santos says, “for one moment, for that brief instant, you’re lawless.”

The crowd on this October evening includes a fireman, a software developer and a painter, all drinking PBR or Johnnie Walker Black. Everyone bunches around Alex, a 27-year-old technician for Triborough Motorcycles, whose fingers are still black with motor grease. He displays a photo on his phone of an engine that blew up that day, while he was riding—on the Williamsburg Bridge. Greg, whose business card reads reverend greg and who owns a clothing company called Deth Killers, gives Alex a small black patch, an inch square with a gold calligraphy R. “It stands for retarded,” he says. “Which can be good or bad. If it’s bad, you wear it upside down.” Alex sports six patches on his black puffy vest, several upside down.

Joshua, a 43-year-old airport developer, gives track tips to Rafael, a 23-year-old motorcycle salesman. “Don’t try to be fast,” Joshua tells him. “Ride your own ride.” He pulls his brown suede jacket and collared shirt back a little to show the inhuman form his clavicle took after a bad accident. Even guests get their own ride; it’s not long before Dos Santos puts me on the back of his Harley for a 100-mile-an-hour blast up Kent Avenue, and suddenly their obsession makes visceral sense.

The connection among these guys, besides a pathological fixation on motorcycles, is Dos Santos. “I literally met these guys popping wheelies down the BQE,” he says. “Eventually, you end up stopping somewhere. You recognize a helmet. You get to know each other. And if you ride hard and you ride fast, then you’re down.”