The confluence of the Bay Area and the northern Central Valley is the historical wellspring of outlaw biker culture; living here means finding oneself rolling down the freeway next to a leather-vested dude on a chopper regularly. The thing is, these guys are old; no less common than the pointedly undersized fuck-the-man helmets are the fluttering handlebar moustaches and beards, in rebel gray.
There's always some easily-mined irony in any circumstance of a youth culture grown old. Yet it's not the historicality of an idea which staked everything against the clock and in favor of presence that's so powerful to me, it's how recent it remains. It seems amazing that such people are in fact still alive, that it was in their brief lifetimes — mine too — that this vision of freedom seemed possible as a material fact, abetted by individual high-speed transportation, and supposing spaces, empty spaces, as a fact of the nation. The nomadic myth, escape into the unregulated interior — these romantic ideas were more immediate than myth recently enough that the believers are still riding pillion past my town in their original bodies.
Seen also in the town where I was born, an enduringly adorable scene: two girls; maybe seven years old, sharing a single pair of rollerskates, each with one sneaker and one set of wheels, balancing for brief runs along the sidewalk.
Posted by jane at January 10, 2006 07:52 AM | TrackBack