Whatever: Wild in the Streets

OMG WHAT’S THE WORLD COMING TO?! PACKS OF WILDING MOTORCYCLES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY GIVING US RESPECTABLE MOTORCYCLISTS A BAD NAME AND BRINGING THE GUB’MINT DOWN UPON US!!

Possibly the first recent incident that gained world-wide notoriety, in 2013, involved Alexian Lien and his wife and young daughter. Lien was dragged out of his Range Rover in New York and beaten by a gang of moto-ruffians who were upset that he’d run over and paralyzed one of them. In an excellent plot twist, one of the young squids turned out to be 34-year-old NYPD undercover Detective Wojciech Braszczok. Braszczok had made more than 250 undercover drug purchases, according to the New York Times, before being assigned to infiltrate the extremely dangerous Occupy Wall Street movement (sarcasm mine). Braszczok got two years prison for his role in the biker gang assault.

Another of the crazed youths, a 37-year-old Brooklyn electrician named Robert Sims, was sent to prison for three-and-a-half years. In sentencing Sims, the judge said, “When you saw Mr. Lien run over the other biker, keep in mind, you had no idea what was going on there… I don’t see that Mr. Lien or Ms. Ng did anything wrong here,” the Times reported.

Other than running over a guy on a motorcycle and attempting to leave the scene, neither do I. I mean, what would you do if you had a new Range Rover?

Meanwhile on the Left Coast, there was the case of the motorcycle gang that shut down a freeway here in L.A. for a marriage proposal. The video runs nearly four minutes, which was the length of time traffic was held up – about the same time it takes for the CHP to stop traffic to remove the new IKEA mattress that flew off the roof of your Range Rover. If this proposal had happened on an episode of Happy Days, it would’ve been a heartwarming interlude we Boomers would still grow misty-eyed over at every recollection. Remember the Chinese fire drill in American Graffiti? Funny stuff from the Fifties.

Dirty modern bikers, however, are no laughing matter. The San Gabriel Valley Tribune tells us, Hector Martinez, 24, of Covina, Mike John David Gutierrez, 38, of Lynwood, Giovanni Mendez, 19, of La Puente and Rudy Cadena, 24, of Long Beach were booked at the sheriff’s Industry station on suspicion of misdemeanor public nuisance and participation in an unlawful assembly. Martinez, who made the proposal, was also booked on suspicion of exhibition of speed.

Why didn’t Martinez just propose at the country club like everybody else? Anyway, I’d rather stop for a few minutes on the freeway and check my messages than be stuck behind a bunch of slow-rolling old guys on cruisers for miles – a thing which thankfully hasn’t happened to me in a while.

Speaking of the Fifties, I’ve seen this movie before. In fact, we’ve all seen several of them, including The Wild One starring Marlon Brando, The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda (three years before Easy Rider), and a bunch more movies just like them. Basically, your motorcyclists are risk takers, and as a result of that personality flaw the rest of us civilians can’t feel safe whenever there’s a bunch of them around, because you never know what crazy thing they’re going to do! In Lee Marvin’s day, they were going to have a few beers and fall asleep. In 1966, they just wanted to ride their machines, not be hassled by the man, and get loaded. Decent society can’t allow that to happen; neither can we.

Then there was this crazed mob in Seattle, who reportedly assaulted an unidentified pickup driver. “All of a sudden I saw people taking their helmets off, and dropping them on the ground and running into this guy’s truck and they were shaking it all around and broke his side view mirror and there was this huge fight that happened.”

If anybody was hurt in that “huge fight”, they didn’t make it into the story.

Some of these nut riders were going the wrong way, up on sidewalks and doing burnouts. And when it’s not that, it’s people doing long wheelies down freeways in Tennessee, or blocking I-15 South in California. Of the latter incident, California Highway Patrol Sgt. Nathan Baer says the CHP has noticed a recent uptick in reckless motorcycle riding, not only on the 15 but also throughout the region: “We of course discourage it,” Baer said. “It’s illegal, extremely dangerous and extremely inconsiderate.” We will not tolerate inconsiderate.

(It’s also somewhat self-policing, since the cause of that freeway blockage was the death of 28-year old Leslie Elliott, who fell off his bike while standing up on the seat. RiP.)

As for me, I blame the Baltimore 12 O’Clock boys for starting this whole thing years ago, wheelying their dirtbikes and ATVs around on the city streets. First, the general population adopts gangster rap from the black man. Now, no longer able to afford 3-series BMWs and starter condos, we adopt two-wheeled civil disobedience, albeit of course with properly registered vehicles and ATGATT.

As responsible defenders of the true and pure motorcycle culture, we at MO are shocked and appalled by this behavior, and worriedly wring our hands that all this will cause our government officials to suddenly become functional enough to clamp down with Draconian Laws that will adversely affect the Entire Motorcycling Community.

Wait, that’ll never happen. These are all isolated incidents that make for great, fun news items, and our government officials are already bogged down in much weightier matters such as, which bathroom can transgender people use? Should bakers have to make cakes for gay weddings, and if so is it appropriate for the bride to wear white? And most importantly, how can I get re-elected?

I mean, sometimes even I think it’s ridiculous some of the motorcycles they allow me to operate on public roads (and I’m a highly skilled professional ;-)), but no government official has figured out a way to keep me from riding them yet.

If we could get the government to clamp down on motorcycles, though, it might be the greatest thing since the Honda Super Cub, with the potential to restore the industry to its former, pre-Great Recession glory. Obama in the White House and the threat of an imminent Hillary gun-control clampdown, I’m told by a couple of gun industry people I know, boosted sales of firearms tremendously for years.

Since Trump’s election, things have changed; gun sales have fallen through the floor. According to The Washington Times, “The number of purchases run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS, dropped from about 2.2 million in July 2016 to 1.7 million last month, marking the seventh time in the eight full months since Mr. Trump’s election that there’s been a month-to-month drop. Mr. Obama oversaw 19 straight months of increases toward the tail end of his time in office.”

The best thing we can do to bolster the motorcycle industry, then, is to encourage these moto-mob flashes, wheelie-ins and freeway proposals as much as we can. Let’s all get out there and get wild – then get active and write our congress members in protest against these crazy motorcycle gangs! The threat of a crackdown, really only just rumors of a crackdown, should send sportbike sales through the roof, boosting the bottom line at MO and ensuring us all long prosperous lives. Does anybody know a good wheelie school?