Bad Raps And Bad Reps

Bad raps and bad reps

EDITORIAL

MOST OF US STILL BLAME IT ALL ON Marlon Brando. Ever since his memorable performance in The Wild One back in 1953, motorcycle riders have been typecast as the Peck’s Bad Boys of motorized transportation, familiar symbols of lawlessness and disorder to be avoided by “decent” people everywhere. Uh-oh! Better hide most of the liquor and all of the virgins; here comes a motorcyclist.

What Em trying to say here is something you no doubt already know: Motorcycling has a 35-yearold image problem that just won’t go away. The image today is somewhat different than it was in 1953. but it still is a negative one that continues to have adverse effects on the sport’s health and welfare. That the image usually has been more fantasy than reality hasn’t mattered; the problem persists, just as it has ever since Brando, Lee Marvin and a motley assortment of other motorcycle-riding miscreants ravaged a small California town in the prototype for a distressingly long line of bike-gang flicks.

In the Fifties, the image was of black leather jackets and engineer’s boots, of moody young troublemakers with time on their hands and grease under their fingernails. That illusion gradually gave way to the Hell's Angels image of the Sixties, a time when the very mention of the word “motorcycle” conjured visions of the Great Unwashed riding milelong choppers, wearing sleeveless “colors” and engaging in the kind of group activities you won’t read about in the Sunday supplement.

By the time the Seventies rolled around, the Japanese manufacturers had cleaned up motorcycling’s soiled image quite a bit through extensive advertising and public-relations campaigns. Even the hard edges of the outlaw mentality had been slightly softened by two more of filmdom's make-believe motorcyclists—the laidback. hippie-biker duo played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in 1969's Easy Rider.

Today, ghosts of bike-gangs past still haunt us, but not as much as in days gone by. Except for the movie listings in TV Guide, you no longer read about some small town being victimized by a horde of invading bikers. Instead, the non-riding public’s current perception of motorcyclists is that we are risk-takers, irresponsible, hell-bent-for-horsepower fools who race around at breakneck speeds on machines that are too fast and too loud. And while that image is not quite as high on the social-misfit scale as one involving rape and pillage, it’s still the kind of reputation that does motorcycling a lot of harm and not a lot of good.

So, how did all of this happen? Is it the end result of a smear campaign backed by the insurance industry or some covert agency of the government? Or a clandestine plot by the auto industry to get people off of two wheels and into four? Who’s to blame for this injustice?

Well, if we really want to point a finger of accusation, we should seriously consider aiming it at ourselves. Because in my opinion, motorcycle riders themselves have done more over the years to further their bad image than anyone or anything else.

Now, before you cancel your subscription and start sticking pins in my likeness, consider a couple of key points. Consider that no one would have paid much attention to books or movies about the misdeeds of bike gangs. Actional or otherwise, had thousands upon thousands of real motorcycle riders not done their best to live up to that image. And people wouldn't think of motorcyclists as speed-crazed, socially irresponsible loonies if so many riders didn't give their all —quite literally, in some

cases—in pursuit of that reputation.

Of course, not all motorcyclists are guilty of such indiscretions; the vast majority are conscientious, responsible riders. But while the offenders are comparatively few in number, the cumulative effect of their actions has a powerful, destructive effect on the entire sport.

Sadly, most of those riders aren’t concerned about what John Q. Public thinks of them; they don’t care that they’re perpetuating the image of motorcyclists as hell-raisers. But that attitude is as short-sighted as it is stupid and inconsiderate. A rider never knows who is in that car he just flipped off. who lives in the neighborhood he terrorized with wheelies on a Sunday afternoon, who he awakened with a 10,000-rpm symphony played through open pipes at 3 a.m. The people on the receiving end of such behavior aren't always just your average, “harmless” citizens; they often are civic leaders or other respected, highly influential people with enough clout to prompt some kind of legal retaliation against motorcyclists. And most of the time, they aren't very concerned about separating the guilty riders from the innocent riders; the price usually is paid by all riders.

So, when politicians come down hard on motorcycling—as Senator Danforth did with his anti-superbike bill, for example—you shouldn’t automatically assume they’re bad guys unfairly attacking us; they just might be well-meaning public servants merely attempting to cure a problem that motorcyclists played a major role in creating. The same can be said for writers in various media who portray motorcycling in a lessthan-favorable light: Quite often, they’re simply capitalizing on an image that a lot of motorcycle riders helped establish.

I hope all of you remember that fact every time you're tempted to do something irresponsible on a motorcycle. Remember that your ability to ride tomorrow depends heavily upon how you ride today. As the old saying goes, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem. Now is the time to decide which part seems most appealing to you.

Paul Dean