Born in Brooklyn, Built American: The BklynMotors Story
There’s a short answer and a real answer.
The short answer: BklynMotors started in 2010. Brooklyn. Motorcycles. Graphic tees. You can piece it together.
The real answer is what happens when you grow up in a borough that runs on identity — where what you wear, where you’re from, and what you ride tells the whole story before you open your mouth.
Brooklyn Has Always Had Its Own Language
Before the lofts, before the rooftop bars, before the word “artisan” got attached to everything — Brooklyn was neighborhoods. Real ones. Canarsie. Red Hook. Flatbush. East New York. Crown Heights. Each with its own rules, its own sound, its own way of moving through the world.
And running through all of it, for as long as anyone can remember, was motorcycle culture. Not the chrome-polished, slow-rolling parade kind. The working kind. The kind where guys fix their own bikes in shared garages, where riding is just how you get around, where the motor club isn’t a brand — it’s a crew you actually know.
BklynMotors came out of that world.
What Gets Put Into a Graphic
When we designed the Kings County Riders — the tee that became the anchor of everything we do — we weren’t thinking about a product line. We were thinking about what it means to carry a borough on your chest.
Kings County is Brooklyn’s official name. Always has been. Before the consolidation in 1898 folded Brooklyn into New York City, Kings County was its own city — with its own government, its own identity, its own pride in being something New York wasn’t.
That independence never fully went away. Brooklyn’s always operated like it’s still its own city. The Kings County Riders graphic is built on that history: a vintage motorcycle, old-school typography, the kind of design language that looks like it was painted on a garage wall in 1967 and just never washed off.
That’s not an accident. That’s the point.
Built American, By Design
Every design we put out starts the same way: with something real.
A neighborhood that shaped people. A motorcycle that defined a decade. A graphic language that came from actual garage culture — not from a trend board, not from what was selling elsewhere. From the borough.
The Arrows tee came from the way early motor clubs marked their territory — directional, pointed, always moving forward. The Canarsie Cruisers came from the community that built one of the most distinct corners of Brooklyn. The Red Hook Motorclub came from the waterfront — isolated, tough, completely itself.
American motorcycle culture at its best has always been local first. Regional identity made into something you could wear. BklynMotors is that, from one specific borough, built into a catalog that travels.
Why July 4th Hits Different Here
Independence Day means something particular in Brooklyn.
This borough was its own independent city once. It didn’t ask to be consolidated. And in a lot of ways, it never fully accepted the merger. Brooklyn still operates on its own clock, its own culture, its own terms.
So on the 4th, when you see someone in a Kings County Riders tee — that’s not just patriotism. That’s Brooklyn patriotism. The homegrown kind, where the independence you’re celebrating is a little closer to home, a little more specific, and a whole lot more personal.
Where We Are Now
More than a decade in. Still Brooklyn. Still motorcycles. Still built on the same idea that started it: the identity you carry should mean something.
The catalog has grown. The neighborhood series keeps expanding. There are now kids’ tees for the riders raising the next generation, women’s cuts for the riders who never needed an excuse to ride, and a growing list of neighborhoods represented on cotton that can actually hold up to being worn.
But the Kings County Riders V2 is still the tee we come back to. Still black. Still distressed. Still the vintage motorcycle and the old-school type that started everything.
Built in Brooklyn. Worn everywhere.
Shop the Kings County Riders V2 T-Shirt
Est. 2010. Brooklyn, New York.
