FROM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34075-2002Aug18.html
On a Harley-Davidson,
Riding Into the Sunset A Demographic Grows Up, and Grayer
By Bret Schulte Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 19, 2002; Page C01
BALTIMORE -- Time was when you didn't mess with bikers. Motorcycle gangs like Hell's Angels, now as much myth as menace, were seen as a rolling terror. They frightened whole communities, intimidated law officials, started fights; some dealt in drugs and murder.
Time was when bikers were bad. Times have changed.
At the Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary Open Road Tour in Baltimore over the weekend, thousands of bikers, often with their wives and children, stood tamely in line at the gates of Pimlico Race Course. They were paying $55 a ticket. They came to see concerts by Bob Dylan, Billy Idol, Ted Nugent -- and for children's activities, exhibbits on motorcycle history -- and to straddle anniversary-edition V-Rod Harleys that sell for $18,000.
Across the street from the line stood a gang of large men in black shirts, sleeves rolled up, staring out from behind dark sunglasses. They taunted the grizzled, tattooed bikers. "You want to be a real man? Be a Christian!" Ruben Israel blared through a megaphone. "Follow the love of God, not the love of a machine!"
It was the Bible Believers, street preachers. The bikers reacted with only a few shouts.
Israel, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and thick arms, held up a banner that read "Prepare to Meet Your Maker." He was greeted with jeers but almost no face-to-face confrontations.
Israel put down the megaphone to say: "Our message is that without Jesus Christ, you're going to spend all eternity riding around in flames, on a moped. That's these guys' worst fear."
Israel has never ridden a motorcycle, he said, and bikers don't scare him. Standing in line, the president of a Temple Hills Harley-Davidson club took the verbal onslaught with a sense of a calm. "It's freedom of speech, but this is more like harassment," said Tom Rhodes, slowly making his way to the gates.
Rhodes has gray hair, business cards and rides in Memorial Day parades. He entered Pimlico as Israel continued to question the macho culture of Harley-Davidson: "You get excited on your Harley? You get excited over a woman with silicon breasts? You get excited over whiskey and beer?" he asked. "There's a reason Jesus Christ says you should be born again!"
Harley-Davidson Motor Co. might disagree. In 2001, the median age of the Harley owner was 45.6. The average income: $78,000. If Harley-Davidson owners ever constituted a loose association of outlaws, today they are quite the opposite. They're a mature bunch with plenty of gray woven into their ponytails. They have tattoos, but they have children, they have jobs. The three-day event in Baltimore was apparently trouble-free, despite the confluence of thousands of bikers, live rock and plenty of beer sales.
The yearlong Harley tour kicked off in Atlanta last month and came to Baltimore Friday. It travels next to Los Angeles and includes such eventual destinations as Tokyo, Barcelona, Hamburg and Mexico City. It's a multimillion-dollar effort and hardly one that would attract rebels.
At Pimlico, the tour featured musical acts like Alison Krauss and Union Station, Hootie & the Blowfish, the Neville Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd -- a mix of hard rock, blues and pop thhat reflects a decidedly mainstream demographic.
While most of the crowd sported Harley-Davidson shirts from Palm Beach to Toronto, a sizable group wearing conservative shorts and tank tops was there, too. Grace Phillips attended with adult daughter Nichole Waters. Neither one has ridden a motorcycle. Phillips admitted to being a nervous when her daughter suggested they attend the event yesterday.
"I feel very comfortable now that I'm here," Phillips says. She remembers the reputation of bikers when she was younger "as rough, drinking, fighting-types of guys." Today, "I haven't seen anyone out of control," she says. "Everyone's pretty normal."
But the day wasn't without a few surprises. Two women walking through a tent that housed vintage Harleys dating back to 1907 turned a few heads away from the antiques. They wore crotchless leather chaps and open leather vests, under which they wore bikinis (one with the sort of flames you find on, well, a Harley). A few male attendees, themselves wearing stained Harley T-shirts, asked their wives for cameras, who forked them over without comment.
Only slightly more popular was an exhibit titled "Harley-Davidson in the World," in which the motor company reflects on its place in history. This place is one that we've come to known through film and rock-and-roll. Housed in a large air-conditioned tent, the exhibit was organized with the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame. Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" pumped through the air, and rock videos featuring Harleys played on large-screen televisions.
Joanne Bischmann, Harley-Davidson's vice president of marketing, says the motorcycle is the embodiment of cool; it stands for "freedom and individuality and adventure." For this reason, "music and Harley-Davidson have been linked."
The exhibit included the 1956 model KH owned by Elvis Presley. He anointed Harleys as the official ride of rock-and-roll when he appeared with the bike on the cover of famed motorcycle magazine Enthusiast. Standing alongside it at the exhibit was another bike by a rock star with slightly less impact, Jon Bon Jovi.
When they founded the Harley-Davidson Motor Co. in a Milwaukee shed in 1902, William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson, both in their early twenties, never knew that they would create a machine that would spark a century-long obsession with speed, steel and the open road, a machine that would one day define the American bad boy, a machine that was born to be wild.
In 1903, it looked like a bicycle made with an Erector set. The first Harley-Davidson mustered a couple of horsepower, came equipped with back-up pedals and sported handlebars that reached nearly back to the driver's abdomen. But then, the bike sold. They made more. Soon, Arthur Davidson was joined by his brother Walter, who was then joined by another brother, William, a few years later.
By 1909 Harley-Davidson introduced its V-twin-powered engine with cylinders placed at a 45-degree angle. It became an unofficial trademark of Harley power, nearly synonymous with the bar-and-shield logo that was patented a year later.
Since then, Harley-Davidson has left an indelible mark on the world. In 1918, it sent nearly half of its offspring into the military. In World War II, Harley devoted almost all its production to the war effort.
It was a Harley-Davidson that broke the 100-mph barrier in 1928, and nine years later it set a new land speed record at 136 mph.
Culturally, the motorcycle has remained unbeaten in artistic mileage. For decades it has represented rebellion and cool and even a metaphysical search for meaning. Marlon Brando created the modern-day biker chic in "The Wild One," and in "Easy Rider" Peter Fonda anointed the motorcycle as the holy transport of Captain America, man and machine inseparable in their search for freedom.
Now Harley-Davidson is 100 years old. Captain America, in his pursuit for something pure, has found himself selling credit cards. Bikers aren't rebels or speed freaks, they're normal people, more and more of them women, most of them with the usual jobs and families.
For many, motorcycling is not about macho culture, rebellion, babes, or alcohol. Alexander Sutton of New Orleans says it's quite the opposite. He got started on motorcycles in 1985 and now he rides a 1995 30th-anniversary-edition Ultra Classic Harley-Davidson.
"I used to do drugs, but I've been clean for 25 years," he says. "I tell you what, riding is spiritual."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company