Remember when life was simple. We thought about Weed, Whiskey, Women and of course Wheels. We didn’t much care about four wheels just two and mostly choppers.
I watched a documentary called the Social Dilemma recently, about the upsurge of unregulated social media platforms. The documentary was made up of a series of interviews from ex-social media execs and professionals in psychology, behavior, etc. They blame all the problems in our society from BLM riots, to political infighting on Facebook, twitter, YouTube and the others. They said that these companies are making more money and taking up more of your time than anything on the planet. They are basically making all their wealth off you, your habits, hobbies and personal data.
The largest factor in the equation is the lack of benefit to anyone except financial gain to them and so far, legislators have not figured out how to regulate them or protect your privacy. They admitted over and over to fake news being fed to the public all in order to keep you on the platform so they can sell ads. Okay, what the fuck am I going to do?
I don’t have anything to do with twitter and dislike Facebook, but we have a couple of accounts. I don’t go to the You tube channel, but I do look at You tubes folks send to me. Very rarely do I run a link to a You Tube clip or video on Bikernet. Bottom line, I’m going to back off my use of all these platforms as much as possible.
My grandson uses Instagram and shopify exclusively. He thinks that platform is the shit. I like content. I like to be able to go into the internet and search for something and get the whole story, not a snippet. I like to search for parts, find them easily and get back to the shop.
That depressing film examined how social media messes with kid’s minds. The conceived peer pressure is insane. Suicides have gone through the roof. Kids are afraid to do anything, afraid to go outside and afraid to get a driver’s license. They are afraid to date, to interact with other kids or trust adults.
Hell, in my day, we would jump off a building to see how it felt. I know guys who went into a bar just to see how long it took before they got into a fight. We were bikers and nuts, loaded on reds flying down a freeway on a bike held together with bailing wire. Fuck it, let’s ride.
We partied and slept on the beach, ran from the cops, slept with the mayor’s old lady, it didn’t matter. We loved being on the edge. When I was in Jr. High, we snuck into any local building or government facility that wasn’t locked down. We didn’t fuck with much, except to steal a gearshift knob. I remember running home being chased by the cops. Scared shitless, I lay in bed waiting for the cops to pound on the front door and arrest my ass.
Motorcycles were special. They were sorta violent, like a nasty long-barreled revolver and sexy like a woman. I think, if I hadn’t gotten into choppers, I would have become a pimp. It was women or custom motorcycles. With motorcycles I got a taste of both power, freedom and sex.
I had a conversation recently with a chopper-rider and family man. There was a time when the two didn’t mix well. We were too busy ripping up the streets to deal with families. My dad kicked me out, when I first became a biker. That was fine with me. If we had gone to blows, I might have hurt the nasty bastard.
So, we all ultimately got married and some brothers settled down. Some ol’ ladies forced brothers to stay away from clubs or even give up their motorcycles. Some did, some said fuck it, and rode into the sunset and into the arms of another broad.
I’m sure a lot of guys don’t like my marital record, my five wives and all the broads in between. Believe me, there are some situations I wish had slipped in a different more tender direction. Each to his own, although I do feel strongly about kids. Once you get in the kid game you need to stick around for them. It’s critical to the growth of kids. I was once on the board of directors of some group homes for abandoned boys, or kids who had alcoholic or drug addicted folks. Those homes were the last stop before detention camps.
These kids looked as if you had just chopped off one of their legs. They were incomplete without their folks. And a single mom just doesn’t have enough hours in a day to handle a couple of kids and teach them like a mom would love to.
I wish I knew where the hell I was going with this? I had a blast and never stopped. And women were my drug, like snorting a massive line of cocaine. Riding to a woman’s side was heaven on earth. Gives me chills just thinking about the lure, the touch, the chase, the adventure and the tenderness. But when I needed to peel out, the road called, and I had to move.
I woke up this morning thinking about the above topics and how they played out in Easyriders Magazine and now in the current Choppers Magazine. Something dawned on me. A couple of times I sent my books to Clint Eastwood. I felt he was the man to turn Chopper riding stories into the westerns of the 21st Century. No one ever got back to me.
In a sense, the western story line has never changed. It’s still the loner approaching an unfriendly town, run by outlaws, an unscrupulous lawman and the gangster landowner who wants it all. It’s about single characters who looked for love in all the wrong places.
In simplistic words, the Western didn’t ever change, and wasn’t forced to shift with the times. Hell, history says the old west only lasted about 20 years, before trains, planes and automobiles came into the picture. But the true western still lives on 100 years later.
Easyriders magazine tried to change with the times, and I was apart of the transition. And now the Chopper Magazine arena is being tested. The new ER owners don’t know what to do or how to do it. But in the hearts and minds of the true outlaw, we understand. In our guts we know the code of the West and still relish the symbol of the outlaw, the untamed, the never-say-die notions and creeds of the loner. In our hearts nothing has ever changed. The wind, the open road, the whiskey and the women will never stop calling us.
–Bandit
