Best cross zip or double rider jacket

[Doctor Death]

But gentlemen, aren't we getting a wee bit off the point here? The OP wanted to know about lesser known cross zips. Here's my 2c:

Cross zips come in many different configurations, but it all comes down to whether they have shoulder epaulets, a "D" pocket, a coin pocket, and a half belt or full belt, or removable full belt. Seems to me the best thing is to get three jackets: one clean look, with no epaulets or belt; one with maybe just a removable full belt; and one with all the trappings. And you can choose your hardware: shiny chrome or understated brass.

Fox Creek Leather has a clean one, the "traditional motorcycle jacket" for only $440. And they have frequent sales of 15-20% off, so the final cost is only 350-375.

Schott's got a clean on as well. They've also got the classic Marlon Brando Perfecto with all the trappings. But for increasingly ridiculous prices. I guess you're paying for the name and the reputation.

Vanson has the MK2 California Highway Patrol jacket, which has a clean look with a removable belt. Vanson also has the C2, which has epaulets and a removable belt. Their prices are very good. You can also wait for their Labor Day sale, where you get like 15% off. So you'll spend about 640-700 for each jacket.

So the OP can get all three types of cross zips for less than his budget of $2,000. How 'bout that?

 

[Leather_nube]

Having mentioned Lost Worlds, here's an essay by the LW owner Stuart Clurman which eloquently explains the philosophy behind his work (Stu has a PhD in English Literature):

"On this site we mention "collectors" from time to time, because that's where we began (ages ago). One tenet of the "collector mentality" is important to what we do -- many things that used to be are better than many things that are. This may surprise those who think technology always a step forward. Yet, conversely, not all things in the past are better of course. That's where LOST WORLDS comes in.

We're really gratified when someone who doesn't collect experiences LOST WORLDS gear -- the vast majority of our customers -- someone who just craves an amazing American leather jacket or rides devotedly and needs one. There are still discriminating guys who appreciate artisan caliber quality and care made in USA. These customers give us greater satisfaction, coming without presuppositions -- only sometimes with appropriate wariness, for who among us hasn't been burned by spurious marketing claims and lies, or succumbed to the base manipulations of internet shills and self-appointed "experts?" The Internet facilitates fraud. (This website has been pillaged and plagiarized by ripoff mfgs. and eBay ragpickers for years.)

Throughout we mention matters of history, materials, tradition and manufacturing -- set against the background of the now dinosaur status of American masculinity, rendered toothless by the brainwashing of political correctness. Quality, workmanship and attention to function and detail in clothing were infinitely more important in the past than now. The reasons, myriad, and placed in current perspective, demoralizing. Briefly, from the Great Depression until the 1960s people were grateful for employment and self-motivated to do a good job. Employment was a privilege. Now it's a right -- and we have Homer Simpson at the Springfield Nuclear Plant -- D'oh! The awful legacy of passive middle class surrender to and empowerment of the deadbeat and un-American ... the listless, anomic, unshaven, sandaled slacker/slob. The bubble baby "victim" of absent parenting, tradition, values. The empowerment of ignorance.

Back to sanity -- first and second generation Americans of European extraction principally constituted the old garment work force, working for factory owners of shared cultural and religious backgrounds with common goals, experiences and values. By necessity having often made and mended their own clothing, workers routinely applied this expertise. Back then every mom sewed. Fashion was the concern of a small rich elite. Real America sought durability; one couldn't easily afford to replace worn or damaged clothing until the two decades of runaway prosperity following WWII. Quality was a given, not, as today, the rarest exception. The old class system, so despised by current victim culture, provided upward goals towards refinement, modesty and education. Now the middle and lower classes share the same nosebleed-inducing cultural rung, defined by accumulation and vulgarity, rank exhibitionism. Empty barrels make the most noise.

Specialist apparel like leather motorcycle and rugged wear was made to do things in, not the fashion and rebel-without-a-clue (to quote Tom Petty) image it later became. Original motorcycle and outdoor clothing was functional, often (but not always) overbuilt and necessary. The tide began downturning with THE WILD ONE (1954) with Marlon Brando -- the popular culture watershed first to connect motorcycle gear to postwar disenchantment and rebellion.

Compare, similarly, old and new denim jeans -- in the 1950s the concept of pre-washed, pre-broken in jeans would've been ludicrous, outside the mindset. Remnants of the old pioneer ethic, though fast disappearing, still resounded, if faintly: you broke in work clothing like your forebears had broken horses and soil.

A kind of suicidal infantilism has mortally stricken America: now everything must be pre-chewed, pre-washed. (In the same way, politically correct language is sanitized pre-thought, viz. the identical descriptions of Raymond Shaw by the brainwashed GIs in The Manchurian Candidate (1962).) We recoil when we see someone on an expensive Harley or restored Indian in some pre-distressed, baby soft, logo-driven alleged motorcycle jacket. The image HD covets? Nope, the $$$. Like pre-aged Gibson Les Paul guitars for the wannabe legions. Lord! But the toothless need strained food.

Behold LOST WORLDS jackets -- unaged, tough as nails, uncompromising, routinely protecting riders from serious injury. Our testimonials from those forced under duress to test our claims are astonishing and fill us with pride. A flimsy (and often not inexpensive) import keep you in one piece? Right, call us from the ER, if your arms work, unless the sacred logo's protected you -- the scarab of uninformed (yet uniform) materialism! America today is sickeningly about image -- and the ability to afford an image, a label -- rather than substance. Life-As-Acting-Class -- a definition of current America. Carapace Culture.

We digress (again). The classic jackets we recreate are royally superior in design, materials and construction. Arising from a lost world where vacuous Attitude didn't rule, where Men still walked the earth, their purposefulness, expressed in functional detail and faultless craft, startles. They're heavy, demand respect, a little breaking-in to show who's boss. They express a truth, an honesty, not a fashion flavor choice for brain-dead clone masses which put on different egos according to the day of the week. (Yet which are, scarily, all the same ego, expressed in the repugnant "Have a nice day!" Consider how in current parlance "nice" replaces "good." Good is a a judgment word -- remember, don't judge.)

Forcefully no-nonsense, no-frills honest, the old motorcycle, flight and rugged outerwear is, unsurprisingly, extraordinary looking, originating before the hype, commercialization, ruin, before the wanabes and accountants. Authenticity -- the criterion of value and of beauty too. In things and people. Value and beauty are interchangeable. The inauthentic has no value. (Didn't Keats write, "Truth is beauty, beauty truth...."?) And the inauthentic is, as usual, the majority. Scary. Deadly. But true. The new Holy Trinity for the masses: breed, eat, defecate.

LOST WORLDS jackets are technically reproductions but more accurately offspring of The Great Tradition. Not dry, academic fossil recreations of interest to but a few. Instead, rediscoveries, excavated Troys of exciting, vibrant 100% American individualistic designs matchless in art, spirit and beauty, wholly unrelated to what's out there masquerading as quality behind hyped fashion labels and invented designers, some of whom are even given wives and families for image.

American marketing preaches sameness and uniformity as desirable -- the opposite of the LOST WORLDS philosophy. If everyone's the same, unoriginal, everyone wants the same crap. The imagination-killing myth of "equality." Who ever wanted to grow up to be a Xerox when he was a little kid? Now, most. Equal is the most insidiously totalitarian word there is, substituting quantity for quality. It's so much easier to oppress and slaughter people if just numbers ("You're one of THEM, not one of US." Hi, visit wonderful, neighborly Rwanda, drop in on friendly Raqqa!"). True quality is unique, incalculable. People of quality are unequal -- single gems incapable of duplication. They indicate the richness, variety, not sameness.

Our products aren't "the same things." They're not for those who value quantity over quality. They arise from the heart, not calculator. They provoke reaction. They inspire devotion. They link to important moments. They widen one's boundaries of self, experience and knowledge."

Jesus, I’m not sure if I want one after reading that, or never want one.

Will have to read it again.