Mullet Man might be Ron Cecchini, and that might not be a mullet after all-it could just be shaggy hair. He took out Bay Area Custom Cycles' 80-inch Pan "Git Back," a basic rider that pretty much sums up some of the differences between the flashy show bikes often seen across the pages and the regular bikes the ordinary blokes rode.
The Alliance of Women Bikers (I'm guessing this didn't have anything to do with the "Boobs!" splashed on the cover) issued a missive lamenting the state of females in the industry. "The traditional image of a biker has been very macho. In general, both biker publications and the male bikers have sustained this image." The supporting evidence in the underwhelming number of women on bikes drew from the lower paychecks women in the working world received, thus not enabling them to just go out and buy a bike as some men could.
The industry has gradually come around-STC has featured a few bikes designed by women-but like horse racing, it's still heavily dominated by men.
The boobs in question came at the Fond DuLac Motorcycle Show in Wisconsin. If you will consider previous installments of Back in the Day, you may recall that this magazine once printed boobs in their entirety. By 1979 this was no longer acceptable; the STC crew lamented that one girl "wanted to give us a flash and we said we couldn't run 'em bare, so this guy offered to cover 'em up. What a gentleman." But woe to the poor souls denied a look at the bosomy glory.
Highlights of the full-color bikes included "Spacehawg," a bike I would have run (if I were editor) simply because of its name and the fact that it had a hog face on the frontend and some sort of "hog-centaur-man" wrestling with a "snake-dragon-thing" on the gas tank. Obviously, someone else thought Spacehawg was pretty bitchin', as it won the Big Twin class at Daytona's Harley-Davidson show.
The space thing must have been a theme, as "Star Rydar" and the babe astride it showed off their stuff in the closing pages. It's a nice-looking bike even when I look at it with eyes trained on modern Harleys; a Ness frame, 6-inch over frontend, and internal wiring gives the bike a sleek, clean appearance. OK, and the blatantly sci-fi imagery on the gas tank-spaceships and asteroids!-appeals to the geek in me like no other.
Moving along, STC featured some stories by Eric Mottner (who first envisioned Bikers in Space), prompting the question, why do we no longer have chopper stories going?
In closing, check out the image of "Reflector," which graced the end. This '77 Sporty might well be red, but in my faded issue it looks more like a dark pink. "We'll let the tank art speak for itself," the editors of STC demurred. Don't know what I'm talking about? Squint at it a little. You'll see.
See you next month!PS: Why, oh why, would he leave his glasses on?