agingrebel.com
The riding season is here for most of
the country and it isn’t uncommon for local policemen to stop riders for
the sole purpose of telling them to go home. This riding season may or
may not put a smile on your face.
But whether the bike basically stays in
the garage or not, even if worst comes to worst, there will be a riding
season next year or the year after that. It might look like Mad Max.
Outlaws may invade small towns and some guy in a hockey mask at the head
of the pack may demand through a bullhorn, “Give us your toilet paper
and we will go away. We only want toilet paper. Not your women.
Resistance is futile.” No matter what, there will still be bikes and
bike riders.
Yay
“The Biker Lifestyle,” on the other
hand, might be on a ventilator already. Everybody is going broke.
Millions don’t know how they will keep a roof over their heads and food
on the table. For the last 35 years or so, the “lifestyle” has been
about selling people symbols they don’t really need. The “lifestyle” has
always been about prosperous men saying “Yeah, I’m a badass outlaw. Got
a tattoo and shit. Respect my bitch Poppy. These are my sons Fielding
and Merritt. Don’t look them in the eyes. I raised them to be badasses,
too. Fielding! Fetch me my genuine Harley-Davidson work gloves!”
The Harley-Davidson Motor Company found
the limits of biker affinity marketing the hard way starting in about
2008 People do not actually need a $35,000, teal, custom motorcycle with
a 131 cubic inch engine – cool as it might be to park one of those
things outside a bar. I can’t say how it would run.
Integral to the biker lifestyle has been
the big bike fest which culminates every year in the greater Rapid
City, Belle Fourche, Sundance, Buffalo Gap metropolitan area. That rally
is called the Black Hills Rally and it is a wonderful place to buy five
tee shirts on sale, a collapsible baton or a carton of Camels. You can
also buy a pair of $800 boots, photograph a woman wearing blue paint
instead of a bra and meet a real policeman.
Show Goes On
It might be time to consider what the summer may bring.
The Lauhhlin River Run, which attracts
up to 70,000 riders, had been scheduled to unfold in all its majesty
from April 23 to April 25. With a month to go, on March 25 the promotor
announced, “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the 2020 Laughlin River Run has
been canceled. Please check back for 2021 Laughlin River Run dates
& information”
Two days later the “Progressive Laconia
Motorcycle Week” released an announcement that explained: “The Board of
Directors of the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association held a
teleconference meeting on March 26th and determined a decision would be
made no later than April 30th on whether or not the Rally would be
postponed from June 13th-21st, 2020 to August 22nd – 30th, 2020. At this
time, they are optimistic the rally will still be held in June.
“This could be a huge boost for morale
of not just motorcycle enthusiasts but everyone in the region,” says
Charlie St. Clair, Executive Director for the Laconia Motorcycle Week
Association. “This event brings millions of dollars to the state and is
critically important to NH businesses and our tourism economy. Not only
that, we have all been cooped up inside for well over a month – What
better way to tell the world we’re returning to normal when we hear the
familiar June roar of motorcycles returning to Weirs Beach?”
.The Republic of Texas Rally which had
been scheduled for March in Austin, has now been scheduled to compete
with Laconia from June 11 to June 14.
The Hollister Independence Motorcycle Rally, which commemorates the Holister Biker Riot which inspired the motion picture The Wild One which inspired the smash television hit Sons of Anarchy which inspired the smash television reality series The Devils Ride
which has provided the basis for most biker expert witness testimony
for the last decade is still on. The Hollister Chamber of Commerce
sincerely believes that the Covid-19 plague will be but an unpleasant
memory by July 3 and that everybody will be able and inclined to spend
like drunken sailors until July 5.
Surely, our many state, local and
national leaders will have resolved this plague by August 7, 121 days
from now, when an estimated 400,000 motorcycle enthusiasts in the
greater Sturgis area can finally finish with social distancing.
Maybe everybody can gather at the Buffalo Chip to burn big, wooden replicas of the novel CoronaVirus.