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Introduction The Love Run “Hey asshole,” shouts one of the 17,000 riders on the Love Run. “Hey asshole,” he shouts again, and everyone there turns around. Us Harley riders, we know when our name is being called. Six a.m. and the dense LA fog is thick enough to fondle. Six a.m. and I am already fortified with enough coffee and Bailey’s to burst. Six a.m. and I am riding on the back of a bike, while the rider is tearing up the road at warp speed trying to catch up with our friends who left five minutes before we did. Six a.m. and I am already pissed enough at the rider to bitch. Barreling down the highway at ninety miles an hour, trying to catch our friends, who themselves are all traveling at warp speed, is an almost impossible task. The fog muffles the world speeding by and casts an eerie silence around us. For once the roar of the motor is silenced by the thick, deep, early morning fog. The frigid wind bites right through our riding clothes, through our bodies, and into our bones. Freezing tears run down my face and burn into my neck, my fingers are numb to the point of pain, my body is pressed hard between the sissy bar and the rider’s back as he races, in fog blindness, down the endless LA freeway. Somewhere just ahead and out of reach, our friends are already pulling into the destination. We would have been riding with them instead of playing catch-up if the rider had gassed the bike the night before. He is now determined, deep in biker machismo, not to be left behind. We will catch up. We will ride with our group. And ultimately we do, though we jam the wind on a shuddering bike, pass other riding groups with only inches to spare on this highway of fog, jump two curbs, and ride part of the way on city sidewalks 3 History and Structure to do it. Not a time to show how really pissed I feel. For this trip, I am a passenger, and I know that it is not a good idea to upset the rider. “Hey asshole,” shouts the anonymous rider, and I too turn around. Seventeen thousand bikers have gathered in front of the LA– Glendale Harley-Davidson dealership to start the ritualized run up the Grapevine. The run raises money for research on muscular dystrophy. Bikers go to help and to party. We have traveled from Frisco, a fair distance, but there are bikers here from all over the country. Exhaust fumes overwhelm the morning, mixing with the fog to make the air turn stiff. Frozen faces peer from beneath small, barely legal helmets while frigid fingers hold coffee mugs and light cigarettes. The moment of calm gathering is brief. The fog-muffled silence is broken by the sound of ear-splitting, soul-satisfying roars. Even the fog gives way as group after group revs their engines. To the Harley rider, there are two kinds of bikes. There are Harleys, and there are all other kinds of motorcycles. The Harley world, as a separate American subculture, has been growing at a phenomenal rate. It started in a number of places, among very different kinds of people, and it is emerging as one of the more important social phenomena of the times. The Harley world. A new face on America. Once, it seemed to be the private landscape of the One Percenters, members of the outlaw clubs so outrageously chronicled by Hunter Thompson (1967) and brilliantly documented by Daniel Wolf (1991). Once, it was the private preserve of the rebel, the social outcast, and the movie villain. From outlaw, working-class origins, the Harley world has grown to include people from a variety of classes and social statuses. Once, it was a male sanctuary; now it is shared by women. Men and women two-up, in partnership as passengers, or travel side by side as riding buddies. Women, who used to be excluded from any position except that of back-seat Betty or the bitch on the back, now ride the roads alone or travel in all-women riding clubs. The old Harley world was a world in which membership meant belonging to the same race. Now there are numerous clubs that welcome racial diversity. The old world still exists, of course—indeed it is frequently fundamental in the organization...

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