Johnny Goes To The Museum: The Art Of The Motorcycle By: Johnny The Theif

(or perhaps more appropriately, trying to house individuality & put it on display for all to see & gawk at like a sideshow freak.)


From July to September the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, off Central Park on the Fifth Avenue side, featured a 100 bike exhibit spanning a century, bearing the same title as this column. [For those out of towners, the Guggenheim is the big cylindrical building that Will Smith battled a wall crawling alien on in the opening sequences of 'Men In Black'.] Naturally, I was in like Flynn, & even such annoyances like no photography allowed, & pseudo-intellectual artsnobs, whose monthly view of the park rent is more than the combined cost of all the bikes displayed combined, standing around & , in that hideous artspeak of theirs, snidely comparing & contrasting the cultural impact versus moral degradation the motorcycle has had on society, which is totally ironic because they're all standing there right in front of the very vehicles that could transport them to places far away from their truncated, elitist worldview, not to mention standing right on top of all the history & technical specs which curators have applied to the floor with vinyl press on type in front of each bike, could keep me from feeling like I had died & gone to Bike Heaven.


There's a lot of ways to take in an exhibit like this; after all, this isn't a rally or helmet run, it's a display in one of the world's most prominent art museums; alternately, motorcycle aesthetics were low on the list of engineers priorities; these machines were meant to be driven, moving fast enough so that the eye wouldn't get much of a chance to see exactly what the hell just buzzed them, even from the two ton security of their rolling cage of safety features. So, you can look at the collection as an evolution in technology, as raw aesthetics, just the visual impact, or you can let the entirety of the exhibit sink into your subconscience & you can take in the true art of the motorcycle,... it's ability to transform a rider of flesh & blood & a machine of metal & rubber together into one of the most inspiring, rebellious, charismatic figures humanity could offer in this century. The way that the bike has influenced individuality in no other way known, & especially what that individuality can mean in a country like ours, composed of all walks & races, & fattened to decadent extremes with a level of comfort never seen on the earth before. And especially for my generation, [I can safely still say that, I didn't turn 30 til December!] how motorcycles became the saving grace to battle scarred veterans of two world wars, ravaged by global scenarios that read like a Twilight Zone episode on steroids; fighting an incarnate genocidal antichrist hellbent on annialating all but the master race, & defeating him only by matching his atrocities by becoming the only nation on the planet to eliminate entire population centers using nuclear weaponry, & then returning home to Middle America & pretending that they are no longer walking killing machines.

On a technical level, I was both amazed at how primitive some of the old turn of the century bikes were, & yet how many features are still in use today. The first motorcycles were just that, a bicycle with a motor, complete with pedals & chain, not very fear inspiring at all. Some early bikes had giant hollow frames that doubled as gas & oil tanks, some had open topped cylinders where the valve springs were out in the open air to collect as much dirt as possible. Some classic designs that I had thought were recent innovations had been conceived at the turn of the century, like springer forks, belt drive, shaft drive; all date back to the 1910's! V-Twins, four cylinders, & even eight cylinders all were up & running by the early 20's. These were real machines, no creature comforts here. Makes you wonder what all the Goldwing owners, with their reversetransmissions & electric hand warmers would've done back then.


Easily, one of the favorite bikes there was a painstakingly replicated version of the 1200cc Harley Davidson chopper Captain America rode in the classic 1969 film Easy Rider. Being born in late 68, it made me feel a little old; to a guy my size, it looked a little small, what with the wire spoke wheels & skinny raked forks. Small,... attainable. Not something that dreams are made of. The bike had to be replicated because the originals are no longer with us. There were two built for the picture, using low compression 1962 Model FL bikes Peter Fonda bought at police auction & totally rechromed & customized four years before filming. The first one was rolled & destroyed during the scene where the good Captain & Billy are taken out by rednecks in a pickup. But the second, used for close ups, was put into storage at a friends' along with a bunch of other bikes owned by Fonda & other friends. Before the picture premiered, someone had broken in, terrorized the family living there, & stole every last bike held in storage there. The bikes were never recovered, never surfaced, & because of this, most likey all the bikes were butchered & parted out.

"The film wasn't out yet," explains Fonda, "To them, it was a chromed chopper. None of us imagined that it would become an icon for a way of life. That bike got scattered, but I like the idea that in a variety of places around the country, folks are riding parts of that bike. Underneath some metal flake painted tank somewhere, there are stars & stripes. And the owner doesn't have a clue."

If you ask me, standing in a giant hall on one of the most expensive pieces of real estate on the entire planet in a city of homeless & forgotten, thats a fitting analogy of what America really stands for; just when, after a lifetime of struggling & fighting the good fight, the dream is within your grasp, some parasitic cretin will just steal it from you. Perfect end to a movie that proclaimed, "A man went looking for America, & couldn't find it anywhere."

This article among others published in the UTMC were originally published in Motorcycho Zine, they are reprinted with the permission of Norman of Motorcycho Zine. Motorcycho is probably one of the best printed beasts out there and a must have for anyone who rides.
You can find Motorcycho on the web at http:www.geocities.com/motorcity/downs/4500