by Blake Herzog
A San Manuel native is parlaying his lifelong passion for motorcycles, inherited from his father and uncle, into a museum in his Copper Corridor mining community.
JWJ Cycles Motorcycle Museum houses Parrish Traweek’s 70-plus-and-counting collection of street bikes, dirt bikes, choppers, cruisers and more.
“I do have some Harleys, but it’s not based on Harley Davidsons or anything like that. It’s more on Japanese bikes and sport bikes, though we just have a lot of everything,” he says.
A few of them are restored, but most still have the wear and tear they picked up from years flying down tracks, roads and hills. He spent a lot of time and money fixing up that handful, he says, before “a light went on — why are you restoring these bikes? They have their history right on them.”
The cycles are displayed in the rebuilt 4,000-square-foot shell of a long-closed convenience store at 102 W. Main St.; its wooden freezers transformed into a TV room. Traweek, who is a professional pilot and manager of San Manuel’s Ray Blair Airport, bought the property two years ago to build a “man cave” for his bikes because he was running out of room in his hangar.
It quickly turned into an opportunity to share his collection, which stretches back to Traweek family bikes from the 1950s, with legions of enthusiasts — locals, motorcycle clubs riding through on state Route 77, and thousands of riders and spectators who participate in the San Manuel Copper Classic, an off-road motorcycle race held every March.
Traweek, his wife Carla, sister Jacque Traweek Cruce and several more volunteers have worked throughout the pandemic to bring their vision to life.
Museum visits are available by appointment, and there are plans to open it to the public on Saturdays and Sundays starting next spring, sell pastries from a local bakery and potentially boost local restaurants and other businesses.
JWJ Cycles is named after Traweek’s father Jack and uncle Warren, who came out from Texas to Arizona in the 1960s to work and ride their bikes, along with his first wife Jill, who died in 2010 and always supported the family hobby.
See www.jwjcycles.com for more information. To schedule a visit call 520.664.4812 or email jwjcycles@yahoo.com.
Photo by Richard Broeker
