The Allure of the Motorcycle Is Stalling Out

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In the reasons motorcycles are on the decline, the author neglects to mention the most obvious, the demographic shift and aging population. Cruising around on motorcycles is mostly a young male pastime, with its Macho, Tough Guy, Cool, Sexy image it conveys.   As has been noted in all the falling birthrate articles, there just are relatively fewer of the teen and 20-something male consumers of these vehicles around.

Far as the impracticality goes, that has always been the case, and the main reason lots of young men got them in the 50s & 60s was they were cheaper than cars.  Later on as they started getting super powered up and tricked out the price differential wasn't so big, but in the 50s you could buy a bike for a few hundred while a car ran a few thousand.  You could pay cash for it, no loan needed.

I doubt they will disappear completely.  At least until there are zero adolescent males around who want to flash a motorized penis substitute around to pick up girls.  Or these days pick up other guys.  lol.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-11-08/why-us-motorcycle-sales-may-never-recover?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqEAgAKgcICjDi7PAKMIXduwIw8fqvAw&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=g&gaa_n=AVINqTxW9QcNe3-WHQHWrRY__4XUCFSacGbewD0xy1nGLizR3QqL9SHTv9mtIeZOlYjBZWTzC9J_vjEfFM6T&gaa_ts=6731caea&gaa_sig=9pxjzqiWCQqS7q2UYiz37Ga5btDmYKWA8sD5yZYurgEZNW9lEYBepB3Mrz8aTUL3ed5hAGB9iCZp6dkAg9vV0A%3D%3D

Weekend Essay
The Allure of the Motorcycle Is Stalling Out

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What happens?  DOOM! LOL.

OK, why did I drop this story in a thread I started with a story about motorcycles?

The theme here is the inexorable decline & fall of the cultural identity of post industrial Amerika.  The Malls, the Bars, the Fast Carz & Bikes, the Chain Restaurants are all passing into history.  For this author, clearly a Gen X child of the 80s there's nostalgic sadness similar to the way I feel about the old Jewish Delis in NY that have disappeared like the Stage Delicatessen & Katz's.

I am less nostalgic about the disappearance of bar-restaurants like TGI Friday's, which as a chain was a poor facsimile of the Upper East side Looking for Mr. Goodbar hookup havens it was modeled after.  As a college student in the 70s many Friday nights were spent bar-hopping with my buddies looking to pick up fresh meat.  Requisite in the mid 70s was a few pre-rolled joints tp smoke outside the bar, by the early 80s if you expected any action you needed a gram of Coke in a little glass vial to snort up through a rolled up $100 bill off the glass topped coffee table in somebody's off campus apartment.  The FIT girls and dancers from the Joffrey School were always looking for Ivy League boys with money and a future as Masters of the Universe, although they quickly looked for bigger fish when your vial ran out of coke.

Anyhow, I think that scene is mostly dead now too, after CoVid in the gender and sexual confusion of our collapsing society.  What will come after this is anybody's guess, but whatever it is in unlikely to be as much fun.

https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a62910398/tgi-fridays-bankruptcy/

What Happens to America When TGI Fridays Goes Bankrupt?

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[TDoS]

In the reasons motorcycles are on the decline, the author neglects to mention the most obvious, the demographic shift and aging population. Cruising around on motorcycles is mostly a young male pastime, with its Macho, Tough Guy, Cool, Sexy image it conveys. 

Great picture. Looks familiar.
I am familiar with young males playing pseudo tough pretending they are macho doing stupid things on motorcycles. Few are there to cruise around unless it is for posing for chicks. We refer to them as "posers". "Stunna's" are the ones trying to wheelie for girls. The motorcyclists understand this contingent of poorly trained morons giving motorcyclists a bad name. While this is often an entry excuse into the sport, fortunately they fall away quickly, usually by having some crash because of incompetence. And then sell slightly damaged motorcycles to real motorcyclosts who fix them up and get years on service staying on two wheels from them.

How unfortunate, your characterization of motorcyclists. Certainly doesn't explain my daughters enjoyment of them, but covers the boy to some extent. Fixed quickly by a proper father of course.  The boy had to spend a year with me learning prior to getting fully licensed and no longer requiring a mentor/trainer with him at all times. We tried stupid stuff as well as all the normal training, just to take the young male macho edge off the right, and safer, way. The day he turned 18 and was able to take that lime green 250 to high school by himself at age 18, he was certaining surfing the "cool" factor. Only kid in high school fully licensed, insured, registered and riding his Ninja the entire senior year. He is now on motorcycle #5 as he begins his post college professional career. 

The daughter walked up to me after she graduated college and said..."are you going to teach me to ride or what?" I bought her a learning bike in like February, and starting in the first warm days of spring we began the basics of clutch and gears (she was trained at 16 on a manual on a car, the boy learned manuals on a bike before a cage) and by April she was riding on her own in the parking lots. We went out every day or two, around town, sometimes with the boy, him preening in his experience over her on our Beemer, yucking it up. She took it well, went in for her official 2 days training, aced the riding test of course, and the same day she got her license we went to the local Big Box motorcycle store and she acquired a new 400cc Kawasaki, with a little financial help from her father and grandfather.

So sure, there is occasionally cool young male factor in there, but 2 of the 3 riders in my family are neither. I agree that adult male children are certainly a demographic of motorcycling....but to pretend we are all such half assed young male shits might be based on your experience crashing yours around New York....how many DECADES ago now?  And what age did you give up at? Also the usual outcome for the short timers. But thanks for all the easily fixed bikes over the years! Go young macho cool testosterone addled newbies!

Later on as they started getting super powered up and tricked out the price differential wasn't so big, but in the 50s you could buy a bike for a few hundred while a car ran a few thousand.  You could pay cash for it, no loan needed. I doubt they will disappear completely.  At least until there are zero adolescent males around who want to flash a motorized penis substitute around to pick up girls.  Or these days pick up other guys.  lol.

Unfortunate that your view of motorcycling never really made it past the "gee am I interested in my dick!" phase. It is a common defect of newbies into the sport who don't really figure it out.

[RE]

Unfortunate that your view of motorcycling never really made it past the "gee am I interested in my dick!" phase.

I like motorcycles.  They're fun, and actually pretty practical transportation in NYC if you disobey the laws on lane splitting to snake through traffic.

Regardless, I spent enough time riding around on them and talking with the other 99% males I ran into riding around sometimes in expensive leather outfits and others in studded denim outfits with Hell's Angels paraphernalia sprinkled around to have a feel for the dominant culture in the pastime, which is overwhelmingly macho bullshit.

As usual you put forward your own kids as counter examples to the archetype, but the fact your daughter rides a bike doesn't mean anything.  She's just a statistical anomaly.  You however are not.  You fit the profile of macho asshole to a tee.

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[K-Dog]

 

America went over the high side.

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