Evolution of Urban Biker Set
THE EVOLUTION OF THE URBAN BIKER SET:
Have Motorcycle Clubs Changed Their Focus?
PART I
If you’re ever blessed with pleasure of conversation with motorcycle club (MC) riders who have been on the set long before the biker boom of the ‘90’s, almost immediately you begin to feel their sense of pride in the unity and solidarity they possessed. You come to know their strength in having bonds tighter than any blood related family. You feel the cohesiveness that was formed by their common, undying passion of both living their life and in experiencing the world on two wheels. You feel a brotherly love that just has to surpass that of any love known or felt even in the deepest pocket of the city of Philadelphia. You come to know of a family fully committed to life on the road, to each other, and to living life to the fullest. And of these old school bikers, as their children, and their children’s children began to rise and go forth on two—two wheels, that is—and as technology has advanced and wealth increased, the black biker set of old has exploded and evolved to what best can be described now as the new urban biker set. In that evolution, with the additions of many new MCs, along with the exponential increase of Riding Clubs, the sprouting of Social Clubs, the movement of female riders from “riding bitch” to making some of the boyz eat dust, and the relentless flow of money onto the urban biker set, one has to wonder if all of these things have had an effect on the committed and strongly bonded brotherhoods of MCs of yesterday. One has to wonder, have motorcycle clubs changed their focus?
THE EARLY BLACK BIKER SET
The most vivid written record we have today of the cultural beginnings of the black motorcycle set can be found in Soul on Bikes, a book that tells Tobie Gene Levingston’s story of the founding of the all black East Bay Dragons motorcycle club in Oakland, CA. Although not the first black club, Levingston relays how the East Bay Dragons and many other black motorcycle clubs appeared on set around the 1950’s, some in a slow evolution from car clubs, and focused on members banding and riding together, and in enjoying their God-given life. In this pre-civil rights era, the motorcycle club was the same as family.
Little Dragon is the Los Angeles Chapter President of the 39-year-old, 30-chapter-strong, Flaming Knights MC (http://www.firenationfkmcworld.com). “In the 1950’s through the ‘70’s, bike clubs were all about the camaraderie and about fun. It was family,” said the son of King Dragon, the founder of the Flaming Knights MC. “Back then, there weren’t many places black bikers could go. They were set apart from the white bike clubs, for the most part. So they often went to another biker’s house for a barbecue or a get together. And just how the black family was structured with the mother, father, uncle and so forth, so it was with black biker clubs. It was family.”
Although many of the bikers I spoke with from the early set agree with this statement, some also say there was a little more to a few of the clubs back then. Glenn Edwards, Sr. of the Deuce Riders MC (www.deuceridersmc.com) acknowledges Little Dragon’s perspectives of old school bike clubs, but also adds a little more for the later decades. “Some older clubs say they just wanted to ride and be around for the camaraderie, but most attained small fortunes. We started out just riding, going to cookouts, fish frys, charitable events, then we expanded and our needs grew. So while the primary focus may have been camaraderie and riding, the ‘70’s and ‘80’s seem to hint at a taste of black bike clubs on the tip of an expansion of becoming much more.
Respect is an ever-prominent element of the bike set, and in the black community, black bikers were respected. “In the ‘60’s, they could get a small group of bikers and ride down the street and get respect and admiration from people,” said Little Dragon. “They’d clap and wave. They didn’t have to do burnouts and stunts like they do today. All they had to do was ride down the street.”
Talk to any old school biker and they all seem to tell you that bikers rode back then. I mean, really rode. Life was made for biking and there was seldom a day where they weren’t on two. And the true bikers—Nomads—often told stories of their rides from state to state, across the country, and through the mountains. It was not a pastime, but a part of their destiny. Little Dragon quotes the three main purposes of an MC back then as being camaraderie, the iron, and the road. Brotherhood, the bike, and riding was a lifestyle. It was the lifestyle. “If God said to me, ‘You can’t ride anymore,’ then I would have no existence,” Little Dragon explained.
The biking lifestyle was a shared one. Club members shared a love for the road and for each other. Not just members of the same club, but members of all clubs. Black biker clubs showed a certain hospitality to any biker that rode into their town. “Back then, there were maybe five outlaw clubs. The rest of the clubs had no problems or issues between them. You could ride to a city with five dollars in your pocket and be taken care of by a biker or another MC no matter what you had on the back of your vest or what colors you wore. ‘Your money is no good here’ you would be told,” said Little Dragon.
THE RISE OF THE URBAN BIKER
But, of course, times have changed and along with it, so has the makeup of the traditional black biker set. The decade of the 1990’s and beyond ushered in a flood of motorcycle enthusiasts. While motorcycle registrations had increased in prior years, they began to rise tremendously in the mid ‘90’s and the years following. Between 1995 and 2004 alone, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported an increase of 48% in the registrations of motorcycles. And that only indicates the increase of bikes on the road that are actually registered.
Another change has been the abrupt increase in women who ride. It’s well known that there were very few female riders back then and female bike clubs were almost unheard of although they did exist. The Cycle Queens in Maryland may have been the one of the first all female clubs to arise in the ‘70’s and are said to have had as many as 40 members. Today, females are now said comprise about 9% of all riders. But why the explosion occurred has been a question. Some credit the movie Biker Boyz, but statistics show a steady rise well before the release of this 2003 movie. Another portion of the explosion has been attributed to wealthier urbanites. An assortment of new riders surfaced and affluent 30, 40, and 50-year-old bikers hit the road for the first time. Unlike earlier times, now there were increasing numbers of established professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers, and business owners, who not only now had enough money to splurge on these expensive toys, but also had an overflow of funds to pour into them and trick them out with custom paint jobs, chrome for days, DVD players rearview mirrors, and anything else imaginable.
Still, some credit the explosion to rising gas prices and motorcycles being more economical for routine errands. Today, with gas topping three dollars a gallon, it’s increasingly become the best reason yet.
Each of these individual changes, along with societal changes, came together and culminated into a biker set that has become more diverse and more cultural. The definitions of brotherhood and camaraderie in the biker community had to be stretched to encompass a multitude of newly developed stipulations.
Blaque "Swag" Washington
Blaque “Swag” Washington, the Vice President of the Corpus Christi, TX chapter of the 1996 born Cyclone Riders (www.cycloneriders.com), states that, “Camaraderie today as in most societies is different as time goes on. Today there is more individual competition, violence, and racial/gender integration. Today it is nothing to see an MC with women and men of various ethnicities riding together and closer than most.”
CHANGES ON THE SET
As one might expect, this plethora of new riders resulted fresh interests in motorcycle clubs. So much new interest that the number of urban motorcycle clubs began to increase. In addition to that, riding clubs began popping up in leaps and bounds and was being tailed closely by an upsurge of social clubs. And where there is growth and change, there can be issues. As the set continues to expand, changes can be observed by not only the old school bikers, but by the entire community as a whole. Yes, change can be good, but some may possibly not be for the better.
An eyebrow has been lifted to this increase in the number of clubs on set. Rather than joining existing clubs, many new riders are opting to start their own. “The younger bikers don’t want to join a club with longevity,” said Little Dragon. While this can be a factor to the many clubs in existence, so to may be the decline of—or lack of establishment of—the type of strong brotherhoods that existed in the past. In many cities you may see instances of unresolved ingrown club issues that fester and either shuts down the club, cause members to leave and find a new and better “family,” or produce club “spinoffs.” Cyclone Rider, Swag points to the loss of fellowship that the older clubs had as a possible issue. “The older clubs defined family, if you saw one you saw them all, they made the sacrifices or necessary adjustments to stick together. In some clubs today you will still get small groups within the group as opposed to one family. It is hard today to get one large union, due to lack of trust and individualism.” Swag also considered that a growing number of members might be less committed today. “Colors, image, and materialistic things are the main focus of some individuals.” If this is indeed true, it certain could be thought of as at least an underlying factor in the sprouting of so many new clubs when excesses exists in almost every city.
A common sentiment of many of the old school bikers is the loss of tradition and respect on the urban biker set. “Today, bikers don’t want tradition,” said Little Dragon. “There’s a loss of history.” He goes on to explain the loss of a “motorcycle etiquette,” if you will. “Like some clubs will think nothing of scheduling an event on the established anniversary date of an older and established club. That was something that was unheard of in the past. We didn’t bite off names or color schemes of other clubs. It was all about respect back then,” he explained. “Today, there’s no respect for elders, tradition, and time.” He believes that new riders want to do things their own way. “And a lot of the times, they think they’re doing something new, but they really aren’t. It’s already been done,” said Little Dragon.
Respect and tradition is one thing, but one change more harrowing is the accident and fatality statistics. In 2004, the NHTSA reported that motorcycle fatalities increased every year since 1997. With many new riders on the road, unfortunately the numbers of registrants for Motorcycle Safety courses aren’t increasing as dramatically. There’s a high fatality rate of bikers with less than six months of riding experience. “The sad thing is that ‘SAFE RIDING’ is often said but not enforced,” Swag admits. “We lose so many riders due to lack of helmets first and foremost, not to mention unacceptable accidents such as two bikers head on collisions, highway racing, and alcohol related accidents.”
An area of increasing speculation is with the 30 and over, “grown and sexy” crowd. We’re in an age where new and affluent riders are buying the bigger bikes right off the bat. Statistics show an increase in older riders who are riding bikes of 1000 cc or bigger, with fewer than six months riding experience—and getting hurt or dying. Riders buying more bike than they can handle and riders allowing their egos to take control and riding beyond their limits are resulting in a steady increase number of annual deaths and dismemberments, with each year’s totals topping the last.
Read PART II - A NEW HORIZON
While there may be a downside to the expansion of the bike set, there are many good things that are developing as well.
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed in any manner.
Have Motorcycle Clubs Changed Their Focus?
PART I
If you’re ever blessed with pleasure of conversation with motorcycle club (MC) riders who have been on the set long before the biker boom of the ‘90’s, almost immediately you begin to feel their sense of pride in the unity and solidarity they possessed. You come to know their strength in having bonds tighter than any blood related family. You feel the cohesiveness that was formed by their common, undying passion of both living their life and in experiencing the world on two wheels. You feel a brotherly love that just has to surpass that of any love known or felt even in the deepest pocket of the city of Philadelphia. You come to know of a family fully committed to life on the road, to each other, and to living life to the fullest. And of these old school bikers, as their children, and their children’s children began to rise and go forth on two—two wheels, that is—and as technology has advanced and wealth increased, the black biker set of old has exploded and evolved to what best can be described now as the new urban biker set. In that evolution, with the additions of many new MCs, along with the exponential increase of Riding Clubs, the sprouting of Social Clubs, the movement of female riders from “riding bitch” to making some of the boyz eat dust, and the relentless flow of money onto the urban biker set, one has to wonder if all of these things have had an effect on the committed and strongly bonded brotherhoods of MCs of yesterday. One has to wonder, have motorcycle clubs changed their focus?
THE EARLY BLACK BIKER SET
The most vivid written record we have today of the cultural beginnings of the black motorcycle set can be found in Soul on Bikes, a book that tells Tobie Gene Levingston’s story of the founding of the all black East Bay Dragons motorcycle club in Oakland, CA. Although not the first black club, Levingston relays how the East Bay Dragons and many other black motorcycle clubs appeared on set around the 1950’s, some in a slow evolution from car clubs, and focused on members banding and riding together, and in enjoying their God-given life. In this pre-civil rights era, the motorcycle club was the same as family.
Little Dragon is the Los Angeles Chapter President of the 39-year-old, 30-chapter-strong, Flaming Knights MC (http://www.firenationfkmcworld.com). “In the 1950’s through the ‘70’s, bike clubs were all about the camaraderie and about fun. It was family,” said the son of King Dragon, the founder of the Flaming Knights MC. “Back then, there weren’t many places black bikers could go. They were set apart from the white bike clubs, for the most part. So they often went to another biker’s house for a barbecue or a get together. And just how the black family was structured with the mother, father, uncle and so forth, so it was with black biker clubs. It was family.”
Although many of the bikers I spoke with from the early set agree with this statement, some also say there was a little more to a few of the clubs back then. Glenn Edwards, Sr. of the Deuce Riders MC (www.deuceridersmc.com) acknowledges Little Dragon’s perspectives of old school bike clubs, but also adds a little more for the later decades. “Some older clubs say they just wanted to ride and be around for the camaraderie, but most attained small fortunes. We started out just riding, going to cookouts, fish frys, charitable events, then we expanded and our needs grew. So while the primary focus may have been camaraderie and riding, the ‘70’s and ‘80’s seem to hint at a taste of black bike clubs on the tip of an expansion of becoming much more.
Respect is an ever-prominent element of the bike set, and in the black community, black bikers were respected. “In the ‘60’s, they could get a small group of bikers and ride down the street and get respect and admiration from people,” said Little Dragon. “They’d clap and wave. They didn’t have to do burnouts and stunts like they do today. All they had to do was ride down the street.”
Talk to any old school biker and they all seem to tell you that bikers rode back then. I mean, really rode. Life was made for biking and there was seldom a day where they weren’t on two. And the true bikers—Nomads—often told stories of their rides from state to state, across the country, and through the mountains. It was not a pastime, but a part of their destiny. Little Dragon quotes the three main purposes of an MC back then as being camaraderie, the iron, and the road. Brotherhood, the bike, and riding was a lifestyle. It was the lifestyle. “If God said to me, ‘You can’t ride anymore,’ then I would have no existence,” Little Dragon explained.
The biking lifestyle was a shared one. Club members shared a love for the road and for each other. Not just members of the same club, but members of all clubs. Black biker clubs showed a certain hospitality to any biker that rode into their town. “Back then, there were maybe five outlaw clubs. The rest of the clubs had no problems or issues between them. You could ride to a city with five dollars in your pocket and be taken care of by a biker or another MC no matter what you had on the back of your vest or what colors you wore. ‘Your money is no good here’ you would be told,” said Little Dragon.
THE RISE OF THE URBAN BIKER
But, of course, times have changed and along with it, so has the makeup of the traditional black biker set. The decade of the 1990’s and beyond ushered in a flood of motorcycle enthusiasts. While motorcycle registrations had increased in prior years, they began to rise tremendously in the mid ‘90’s and the years following. Between 1995 and 2004 alone, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported an increase of 48% in the registrations of motorcycles. And that only indicates the increase of bikes on the road that are actually registered.
Another change has been the abrupt increase in women who ride. It’s well known that there were very few female riders back then and female bike clubs were almost unheard of although they did exist. The Cycle Queens in Maryland may have been the one of the first all female clubs to arise in the ‘70’s and are said to have had as many as 40 members. Today, females are now said comprise about 9% of all riders. But why the explosion occurred has been a question. Some credit the movie Biker Boyz, but statistics show a steady rise well before the release of this 2003 movie. Another portion of the explosion has been attributed to wealthier urbanites. An assortment of new riders surfaced and affluent 30, 40, and 50-year-old bikers hit the road for the first time. Unlike earlier times, now there were increasing numbers of established professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers, and business owners, who not only now had enough money to splurge on these expensive toys, but also had an overflow of funds to pour into them and trick them out with custom paint jobs, chrome for days, DVD players rearview mirrors, and anything else imaginable.
Still, some credit the explosion to rising gas prices and motorcycles being more economical for routine errands. Today, with gas topping three dollars a gallon, it’s increasingly become the best reason yet.
Each of these individual changes, along with societal changes, came together and culminated into a biker set that has become more diverse and more cultural. The definitions of brotherhood and camaraderie in the biker community had to be stretched to encompass a multitude of newly developed stipulations.
Blaque "Swag" Washington
Blaque “Swag” Washington, the Vice President of the Corpus Christi, TX chapter of the 1996 born Cyclone Riders (www.cycloneriders.com), states that, “Camaraderie today as in most societies is different as time goes on. Today there is more individual competition, violence, and racial/gender integration. Today it is nothing to see an MC with women and men of various ethnicities riding together and closer than most.”
CHANGES ON THE SET
As one might expect, this plethora of new riders resulted fresh interests in motorcycle clubs. So much new interest that the number of urban motorcycle clubs began to increase. In addition to that, riding clubs began popping up in leaps and bounds and was being tailed closely by an upsurge of social clubs. And where there is growth and change, there can be issues. As the set continues to expand, changes can be observed by not only the old school bikers, but by the entire community as a whole. Yes, change can be good, but some may possibly not be for the better.
An eyebrow has been lifted to this increase in the number of clubs on set. Rather than joining existing clubs, many new riders are opting to start their own. “The younger bikers don’t want to join a club with longevity,” said Little Dragon. While this can be a factor to the many clubs in existence, so to may be the decline of—or lack of establishment of—the type of strong brotherhoods that existed in the past. In many cities you may see instances of unresolved ingrown club issues that fester and either shuts down the club, cause members to leave and find a new and better “family,” or produce club “spinoffs.” Cyclone Rider, Swag points to the loss of fellowship that the older clubs had as a possible issue. “The older clubs defined family, if you saw one you saw them all, they made the sacrifices or necessary adjustments to stick together. In some clubs today you will still get small groups within the group as opposed to one family. It is hard today to get one large union, due to lack of trust and individualism.” Swag also considered that a growing number of members might be less committed today. “Colors, image, and materialistic things are the main focus of some individuals.” If this is indeed true, it certain could be thought of as at least an underlying factor in the sprouting of so many new clubs when excesses exists in almost every city.
A common sentiment of many of the old school bikers is the loss of tradition and respect on the urban biker set. “Today, bikers don’t want tradition,” said Little Dragon. “There’s a loss of history.” He goes on to explain the loss of a “motorcycle etiquette,” if you will. “Like some clubs will think nothing of scheduling an event on the established anniversary date of an older and established club. That was something that was unheard of in the past. We didn’t bite off names or color schemes of other clubs. It was all about respect back then,” he explained. “Today, there’s no respect for elders, tradition, and time.” He believes that new riders want to do things their own way. “And a lot of the times, they think they’re doing something new, but they really aren’t. It’s already been done,” said Little Dragon.
Respect and tradition is one thing, but one change more harrowing is the accident and fatality statistics. In 2004, the NHTSA reported that motorcycle fatalities increased every year since 1997. With many new riders on the road, unfortunately the numbers of registrants for Motorcycle Safety courses aren’t increasing as dramatically. There’s a high fatality rate of bikers with less than six months of riding experience. “The sad thing is that ‘SAFE RIDING’ is often said but not enforced,” Swag admits. “We lose so many riders due to lack of helmets first and foremost, not to mention unacceptable accidents such as two bikers head on collisions, highway racing, and alcohol related accidents.”
An area of increasing speculation is with the 30 and over, “grown and sexy” crowd. We’re in an age where new and affluent riders are buying the bigger bikes right off the bat. Statistics show an increase in older riders who are riding bikes of 1000 cc or bigger, with fewer than six months riding experience—and getting hurt or dying. Riders buying more bike than they can handle and riders allowing their egos to take control and riding beyond their limits are resulting in a steady increase number of annual deaths and dismemberments, with each year’s totals topping the last.
Read PART II - A NEW HORIZON
While there may be a downside to the expansion of the bike set, there are many good things that are developing as well.
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed in any manner.
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ABOUT THE FEATURE WRITER
Cherlyn "2Spicy" Michaels is a member of the St. Louis #1 Stunnas Motorsports Club and the author of two novels, including her latest, First Fridays. Visit her online at www.myspace.com/cherlynmichaels.
ABOUT THE FEATURE WRITER
Cherlyn "2Spicy" Michaels is a member of the St. Louis #1 Stunnas Motorsports Club and the author of two novels, including her latest, First Fridays. Visit her online at www.myspace.com/cherlynmichaels.