As you can see on the roads, in the parking lots of dive bars, and in the pages of this magazine the link between skateboards, BMX bikes, punk rock, and choppers has been a mainstay in the “flaked and raked” scene for more than a decade. While it’s easy to peg the DIY work ethic on guys hacking up bikes, what is it that really attracts us Gen X and Y kids from the black hole to choppers and bobbers?
Sure, my boys Chris Moeller of S&M Bikes and Matt Barker from Tum Yeto both have traded in most of their days spent overshooting dirt jumps or carving empty pools for some knees in the breeze action aboard their choppers. Is it because they have gotten older? Or did they just want something a bit faster than push or pedal power to quench their 40-year-old-plus adrenaline-addicted broken bodies? Only they know the true reasons why.
Of course, there’s the dirt bag connection between bikers of old and punks of new. Tattoos, shitty attitudes, and fistfighting are the common bonds, but as we all know living this lifestyle is much more than looking the part. In the ranks of the punks I grew up with there was always the bond of friendship and camaraderie by looking and acting different to separate yourself from the faceless masses. Even back in the day while seeing bands at the Olympic Auditorium we had to stick together or get a beat-down by other roaming hordes of misguided youth. We all made it perfectly clear, even in the ranks of other punk rockers, who we were and where we were from by what we wore. Kind of like the first outlaw bike club members did decades earlier.
For me, it comes down to the freedom I first felt as a young kid by stepping goofy-foot on my Variflex with Kryptonics, or throwing a leg over my blue-anodized Race Inc. to get away from my humdrum childhood even if it was just for a while. It was akin to the excitement in my teens I had the first time I saw a live band playing balls-out. A few seconds after I gained even more personal autonomy by clawing my way to the stage and jumping off at full speed not caring or knowing where I would land. Talk about bloodstains and cheap thrills.
These very same feelings were again rekindled when I first kicked over a Harley as a young adult and got some wind in my hair and a good distance away from an unstable family life.
I am sure my past experiences are similar to most of you who are reading this, and that just may be our common bond. We are for the most part the product of our environment, but we also have free will to choose our future path in life. We just desire to do it on wheels. sc