The Scooter Page

When I was a kid, and after months of saving my measly allowance, I purchased my first set of chrome forks for my bicycle for the huge sum of $104 at the local Western Auto, to finalize the long-waited transformation of  my hand-sprayed pea green bicycle into a chopper. I added a sparkle silver vinyl banana seat and a tall, chrome sissy bar, with a redline slick on the back. I was the shit in my neighborhood!

There are many days that go by - especially with the gaining popularity of motorcycles due to guys like Forbes, Jay Leno, and Jessie James - that I wish I would have stuck to my custom building.

Back in the day - I was maybe thirteen or fourteen - there was a chopper shop on Mace Avenue, right down the street from where I was growing up, called, One Eye's. My brothers and our friends would always walk by and study the brightly painted machines in awe on our way to the playground. There was something about those machines that we found fascinating; psychedelic paint, loud chrome exhausts, the badass attitude that goes with ownership. Motorcycle guys are allowed to wear jeans and T shirts whenever they want. 

But back then, along with being a motorcycle rider - most of these guys were in gangs - the equivalent of the modern-day outlaw riding a metal horse, came the harassment of the local cops. Unlike today, these guys looked scary! Especially One Eye with his patch and, well, one eye. The guy really freaked me out when he looked my way. And this was before the media whored themselves out on every story; the only way you could get the latest breaking news was if you, like many families back then, owned a police scanner. 

That night was like a Fourth of July parade; the noise of police sirens as cops rushed from what seemed every corner of the planet, the garbled voices of dispatchers over my mother's Marantz four-band AM-FM-weatherband-scanner radio - the fear the I could get shot or beaten up, even though all the action was miles away from my home.

A few Hells Angels rode into our town on the usually quiet, June summer night. And so did the Pagans, and the Outlaws. Mix-up this rowdy bunch with beer and fun at the local strip of bars running up Eastern Avenue, add a few biker sluts, knives, guns, and chains, and you have a lot of trouble on your hands.

Actually, I met up with all my friends, and I could have cared less about that one-eyed cyclops bastard. 

Hey - he was really really scary...

My first motorbike

In 1990, I had a studio and gallery downtown on the 900 block of North Charles Street. With renting the premo space came several parking spots on the side of the building. In one of those spots sat a Yamaha Seca 650 - the same kind of bike that my friend Bobby Byrd owned and loved - so I asked the landlord if it could be moved. Parking downtown sucks as it is, always at a premium -  I needed all the spaces I could get. 

He informed me that the owner of the bike use to rent an apartment upstairs in the building , that he won't be coming back anytime soon, maybe five to ten years. The guy was incarcerated. And with the landlords blessing, I contacted an auction house and they placed several ads in the paper for someone - anyone - to pick up the bike if they were the legal owner, or it would be sold to the highest bidder. That Yamaha became my first motorcycle. 

The landlord also had an extra set of keys which he gave to me, so I rushed down to the local auto parts store to buy a new battery, stopping on the way back for a gallon of gas for a thirsty and dried-up tank. 

I don't know what was wrong with that thing. All the lights would come on but that was about it. Needless to say, I never got the damn thing started, don't know what I would have done if I did get it going anyway as I never have owned a motorbike in my life. My brother Billy was into motorcycles and had several dirt bikes when we were growing up. And so did all of our friends. 

              new project bike - BMW R65  

© 2003-04 ODANIELL.COM   all rights reserved    ODANIELL™  is a trademark of my dad's genes