Cute video of a hen-pecked husband’s torrid love and passion for his Harley-Davidson. There’s a lot of soap and inappropriate touching, not to mention the quintessential, sexy soundtrack of “Let’s Get it On” by Mr. Marvin Gaye. But they’re clearly having a moment together. And that’s special.
This is awesome, vintage footage of motorcycle hill climbs filmed somewhere in California in the 1930’s. I love watching this and seeing how bumpy the rides are up the hill. These guys were nuts.
(sorry for the ads, blame revver.com)
Last night the Teutels showed up on one of my favorite shows: My Name is Earl. Now, if you’ve never seen this show I have to tell you it’s one of the funniest shows on tv (and I’m super-critial of comedies. Or maybe I just have a strange sense of humor…but I digress).
The premise of the show is that Earl has done a lot of bad things in his life and after winning the lottery & then getting hit by a car, he has an epiphany and decides he has to cleanse his karma by righting the wrongs he’s done.
Last night’s show, Stole a Motorcycle, details a night that Earl and his brother, Randy, stole a motorcycle from the OCC guys shop (not a chopper, it was a crappy beater bike that looked like a Sportster) that someone left the keys in. Paul Sr. and Jr. did their typical arguing schtick and Mikey was the jokester who left the keys in the bike. Screen time was short and sweet.
(the videos are from nbc.com, so sorry if there’s ads in them)
The interesting thing is that OCC was also approached to create a My Name is Earl theme bike to be auctioned off for the Make a Wish foundation. If you watch the show, then you can understand how humorous the paint job and plaid shirt seat cover is.
The actors talk about the Teutels’ acting abilities and Paul Sr. talks about creating the charity bike:
If you can try watch the episode either in a re-run or somewhere online. I highly recommend it!
When I started this site a year ago, I really didn’t know what the goal of the site was going to be. Initially I wanted to put the call out to other young, rockin’ biker women (like me!), who maybe were part of Gen X and not quite ready to be a grown up (like me!). And quite honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I could maintain posting consistently week after week (I’d be out riding in the summer and motorcycle news is scarce in the winter months-or so I thought) to make this blog worth reading. It was difficult in the beginning: I would sit in front on my keyboard, staring at the screen wondering what the hell I was going to write about.
But something weird happened: I finally found my groove, my posts started getting attention and I found not only was I enjoying the whole blogging thing, I was “meeting” a lot of other my fellow biker bloggers and people who were becoming regular readers and I was also getting great blog reviews and awards from my blogging peers.
I didn’t really know the first thing about blogging. I’d kept a personal journal but a motorcycle blog is different. How would I find people to read my blog and who would care anyway? Through some cool blog communities like BlogCatalog I met a bunch of people and learned lots of things about writing a blog. And through social networking sites like myspace and BikerWorlds I found other bikers who are interested in the same things I am.
Traffic started increasing, people were linking to the site and honestly the highlight for me last year was when Greg White and Kawasaki asked me to test ride a Vulcan 900 Custom. I mean, who the hell was I? Just some biker girl from MA who happened to start a blog a few months before…
In one year, I’ve gone from a few readers a week to tens of thousands of page views. I’m not going to make any grand claims like you see on other blogs, but I will tell you that I’m happy to see my google page rank on the rise (link to me!), my Alexa rank continues to move up and the number of people who view the site goes up almost every week. Fellow bikers in 114 different countries have checked in on the rippin-kitten.com blog. And I’ve been getting inquiries from major companies regarding advertising opportunities. Not too shabby.
Anyway, enough of boring blog stats and me marveling at my own success. Stay tuned later this week as I roll-out a new feature for Rippin-Kitten.com and share some other things that I’ve been working on.
Thanks to everyone for making my first year of blogging a great one. It’s been a great learning experience and I’ve enjoyed our many discussions. Looking forward to another year!
Inspired by watching a show on Fuse TV called Talking Metal I decided to dust off this strip club classic video by Motley Crue. Love it or hate it, you gotta admit, they look like they’re having a great time.
Whenever there’s a bike week somewhere in the country it seems the accident/death toll always trumps other events that are newsworthy. Daytona 2008 is no different, with the death toll reaching seven as of Friday.
So, here’s some good news for a change, regarding the first ever Harley-Davidson Woman’s Day Ride:
Some 500 women cruised into Daytona Beach, Fla., March 4, as part of the first ever Harley-Davidson Daytona Women’s Day Ride. The event garnered a whopping $60,520.50 in contributions to help send children with neuromuscular diseases to MDA summer camp, the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced today.
Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company of Milwaukee organized the historic ride, the largest women’s ride in the company’s 105-year history. In addition to providing recognition to women motorcycle riders, the event will enables MDA to send more youngsters to camp, where they’ll enjoy a week of accessible activities such as swimming, horseback riding, fishing and arts and crafts.
Karen Davidson, great-granddaughter of one of Harley-Davidson’s founders, William A. Davidson, led the group, including the six winners of Harley- Davidson’s “Get Down to Daytona” contest. They left Atlanta March 1, and were joined by the rest of the riders for the last 10 miles of the approximately 500-mile trek, which ended at Ocean Center.
Three women received special recognition as the top fundraisers for the event: Joanne Mold of Forest Hill, Md., ($3,055 raised), Dee Roberts of Bernville, Pa., ($2,717) and Lynne Cone of Houston ($2,715). Each received a 105th Anniversary Harley-Davidson women’s jacket, and had lunch with Karen Davidson and the six “Get Down to Daytona” contest winners and MDA ambassadors.
Story source and full article: The Auto Channel
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t need to be involved in women-only events to show my pride in being a female rider, but I think this would have been a cool event to be a part of and for a really great cause. And for that, kudos to all those ladies who participated!
I opened up a pretty big can of worms when I tackled the subject of social networking for bikers. Back in August I wrote a post about Bikerworlds, the first social site I found geared toward the biker community. In October I wrote a follow-up post regarding BikerOrNot.com, which is another very popular social network (and also a very popular post for this site).
For part three of this subject matter I’m going to highlight a few more sites that I’ve found since I last wrote. One thing to keep in mind, not all of these sites are created equally. While a lot of them share the same basic idea and similar buckets of content, some are technically easier to use and more thought out than others. It all depends on what appeals to you in the end.
Motorcycle Syndicate: This site has been around since summer ‘07. I’m not quite sure what their member base is, but according to their site they “strive to be the premier interactive online community for motorcycle enthusiasts worldwide.” They also use other social networking sites to their advantage when trying to get the word out. You can also win a free T-shirt if you’re a registered member and help spread the word.
Hogstr: I got an email about this site a few weeks ago so I thought I’d check it out. Seems this site is a brand-spanking newbie, having only come into existence in the beginning of February. Not a lot of members or content yet and now that I look at it I’m not even sure if it’s officially “launched.” I see lots of profile pics with half-nekkid chicks on bikes, which kind of turns me off. I’m going to file this one under “wait and see.”
Harley Social: I think the title for this one speaks for itself, but this social network is for HD enthusiasts. It looks to have launched early this year and encourages it’s members to upload photos, videos and to post blogs. It’s a visually robust site, almost to the point where I don’t know where to look first, but the emphasis on this site seems to revolve around just having a good time.
Biker Nation: From what I can tell this site has been around since late 2006. Like all of the other sites it has forums, news feeds, blogs, classifieds, events, pictures, videos and music. It also has a “babes” section (if you’re into that sort of thing) and online auctions. For the amount of time this site has been in existence I guess I expected more. Perhaps they’ve been spending more time focusing on their heavily-tattooed, sister site Inked Nation.
If I had all the time in the world I would love to join all of these sites, but I just don’t. You can still find my profiles on Bikerworlds, BikerOrNot and of course, good old myspace.
Do any of you have a favorite social networking site that you use regularly?
Bruce Rossmeyer thinks that the average Harley-Davidson rider these days is a RUB (rich urban biker, a term coined by Harley-Davidson enthusiasts to refer to executives, lawyers and other professionals who buy expensive motorcycles as status symbols).
Rossmeyer, who owns 14 Harley-Davidson dealerships across the country, just acquired Boston Harley-Davidson and also opened up a high-end HD shop to sell overpriced t-shirts and gear to tourists on illustrious Newbury St.
He was quoted in a recent article written in the Boston Herald newspaper as saying:
“The image of Harley-Davidson bikers as ‘rebel riders’ is pretty much gone these days. We’re ‘Rolex riders’ now.”
Huh? Perhaps that’s the case in Mr. Rossmeyer’s world, but I think he needs to buy himself a clue. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the face of the modern biker is changing. Gen X and Y are getting in on the action and they definitely do not fall into the RUB category. There’s a younger demographic of riders out there just waiting to be tapped and the HD mothership gets that.
This video accompanies the announcement of HD’s Dark Custom line of bikes that’s had the motorcycle world buzzing for weeks now. These bikes are stripped, chopped and raw and extremely cool looking!
Even reading some of the comments on youtube the clash of the age groups is palpable:
“…you need a young spine to ride a hard single seat with your hands above your shoulders all day. these “radical customs” are poser bikes. hard core riders ride roadies, dynas, and softies and not fatbobs, nighsters, or boneses. you just cant sit on one all day.”
“Harleys aint for the old anymore - just ’cause i am 24, doesn’t mean i want a p-o-s bike. i want a harley, now i am gonna get me one. thanks for finally acknowledging not all gen x is broke…”
This is an interesting time to be a younger biker. I think I’ll sit back, watch and go along for the ride.
Last week the movie poster for the eagerly anticipated, Quentin Tarantino produced Hell Ride (which I posted about back in December) was released to the waiting world.
Hell Ride premiered at Sundance earlier this week (and was reviewed favorably, which you can read here) and is a throw back to the 60’s & 70’s style biker movie that promises to be filled with lots of testosterone and violence (or according to the movie review, the three B’s: bikes, beer, and booty!)
According to another recent article on shocktilyoudrop.com, Hell Ride could eventually become a trilogy:
Leave ‘em wanting more. Films with the Quentin Tarantino touch seem to have that effect. Hell Ride may be no exception. Larry Bishop’s revenge tale, presented by Tarantino, premiered last night at Sundance to a sold-out crowd and already those involved in the project have the word “sequel” on their lips.
Co-star Michael Madsen tells us during an interview, “I hope this is going to be a trilogy.” In the film he plays a well-dressed biker named The Gent and it’s a role he’s looking forward to revisiting. “The Gent’s story has not been completely told.”
When we later spoke to writer-director-actor Bishop, we inquired about a possible “trilogy” and Madsen’s desire to slip back into The Gent’s skin, to which Bishop merely sat back, raised his eyebrows over his dark shades and smiled, “Absolutely.”
As of right now, there is no release date for the movie. Dammit.
Bikers and tattoos go together like peanut butter and jelly. The two cultures are intertwined in a never ending love affair. Tattoos became utilized by biker gangs to signify their allegiance to specific gangs and to convey an image of rebellion that would set them apart from the rest of society.
“The Tattoo Artist” by Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post, March 4, 1944
After World War II tattoos became further stigmatized by their associations with bikers and juvenile delinquents. Tattooing had very little respect in the American culture. In 1961 there was an outbreak of hepatitis, which caused an even bigger backlash against tattoos and sent the tattoo world into a tailspin.
tattoo flash by Sailor Jerry
Here in Massachusetts, there was a ban on tattooing in effect since 1967, until local underground artists lobbied to legalize it in the late 90’s, partly because of health and safety reasons. Tattooing was finally legalized in this state in 2001 and shops began to spring up everywhere–the first legal shops being Fat Ram’s Pumpkin Tattoo and Darkwave Tattoos (which then spawned Lightwave Tattoo Studio). Natan Lin, owner of Darkwave and Lightwave, was a large supporter of legalizing tattooing in MA and has been running the wildly successful annual Boston Tattoo Convention ever since.
photos by Forrest Frazier (see more motorcycle pics at ffphoto.com)
Tattoos today are more acceptable and popular than ever before. And it’s getting even more mainstream with TLC hitching its programming trailer to tattoo shows like LA Ink, Miami Ink, and London Ink. Acceptability and high demand for the best artwork have put some artists on the map. Certainly that can partly be contributed to the quality of inks and needles that just weren’t around forty or fifty years ago. People now revel in the highly artistic nature of tattoos and artists are now truly fine artists.
Kat Von D from TLC’s La INK
