To know Twinline Motorcycles, you gotta smell it. The scent of motor oil and axle grease sticks to everything in the North Beacon Hill shop, aromatic evidence of the bike modifications and custom builds that owner Jeff Pochodowicz cranks out. It stinks, but in a good way, like how sore shoulders can remind you of a satisfying day’s work. So it’s a shame no one ever perfected Smell-O-Vision for TVs; it would come in handy when Twinline makes its small-screen debut this spring. 

Becoming a TV star was the last thing Pochodowicz had on his mind when he first walked into the then-two-year-old shop in 2008. He’d just moved from Portland with an old bike he was tweaking and needed some help. One trip turned into a dozen, and soon he was interning, rebuilding motors and rerouting exhaust lines. Then when the shop’s owner, Ian Halcott, moved away in fall 2011, Pochodowicz stepped up—partly because he wanted to, partly because no one else did.

There was a catch, though. Before he left, Halcott talked to the producers of Cafe Racer TV, a reality show on the Velocity Channel that follows a new custom build each week, about featuring Twinline. Taking over the shop was stressful enough for Pochodowicz, but he kept the commitment. And for the next year, he poured two hours a day and thousands of dollars of his own money into merging the muscular motor of an EX500 Ninja and the steady handling of a Honda CB550 frame. 

Pochodowicz missed his first deadline, almost quit the project several times, and broke a finger in the process, but he finished just in time to have the bike track tested on camera, where it… Well, you’ll have to watch. And if you do, let him know how the show turned out; he doesn’t have cable. “I just don’t have time to sit and watch it,” he says with a smirk. “Too many commercials.”

Published: May 2013