For me it feels like saying goodbye to an old friend. I have been reading this magazine since 1975 , the year I graduated high school, yeah a long time ago! Before I ever had a bike I was reading Easyriders.
I had it down to the day the new issue arrived at the local 7/11 store. As soon as I got out of work it was the first stop. If I remember right they cost $1.50!
I got the bike, along with about 3 other guys, and we rode. We would buy Easyriders and get together on a Friday or Saturday night and go over the magazine from cover to cover. This is what I was going to do to my bike. This is what my buddies were going to do to their bikes and it went on and on into the morning hours along with drinking a beer or two and with a joint or two. It was a GREAT time.
My favorite was the Dave Mann center folds. My garage walls are covered with them, some are on the walls of our home and I have plenty of them stored away. As luck would have it, in the last issue published, they printed one I did not have. it is framed and on the wall! Again, as fate would play out this past January I entered my ‘82 Shovel in the Easyriders National Invitational show here in Charlotte and got 3rd place in the antique class!
Easyriders was more than just a magazine, It was a way of life for many of us. Our hair was long, and our beards were long. We wore the t-shirts, the jeans and the engineer boots just like what you saw in the pages of the magazine.
Many choppers were born in late night garages and buildings from the pages of Easyriders as inspiration. In the winter my buddies and I would all get together and help each other with our bikes after work. Nights often turned into mornings on Friday and Saturday nights. Those bikes had to be ready for that first spring ride!
Easyriders was neutral ground for all of us, no matter what we believed or what we thought, we all agreed it was a cool magazine. We all shared what it was about–FREEDOM! Freedom to be who you wanted to be, freedom to look how you wanted to look and most important Freedom to ride! It was our voice!
I talk about the “look” in Easyriders, and I will never forget this story. We were riding and stopped at a pizza parlor. We all had the hair, the beards, our tees, our jeans and our leathers. We walked in and as soon as we did all the folks looked at us and got up and left!
Yeah, we knew we had arrived! Man we got a laugh out of that but more so, we were proud! Another time I will always remember: I worked for IBM a number of years. Yep, with the suits and ties and all the fakes. The first week I was there I was approached a number of times people asking, “Hey man, you got any weed to sell?” Yep, I had the look of a biker. I talk about the look, but it is much deeper than appearance. If you don’t have the heart and soul, you are not a biker! Funny thing is at IBM a few years later, I started to see more bikes in the parking lot and more t-shirts and jeans at work?
We all wanted to be In Easyriders and for me I was lucky enough to have a couple of bikes in the Readers Ride section. My name on the pages and for bike show awards was a high I will never forget!
On a more personal note Easyriders helped me through some tough times when I had nothing I had the magazine and it gave me a way to never give up through the stories I read in those pages. I was not going to give up on who and what I wanted to be.
