Today in motorcycle history, February 10, 1939

 

  

  







  Peter Purves, presenter of the long-running BBC1 trials bike series "Kick Start", is born in New Longton, near Preston, Lancashire, UK.







  While the 1978 Lombard RAC Rally organizer, Nick Brittan was staring out the window of his local pub when-BAM!-the idea that top trials motorcyclists, competing over a hazardous track and obstacles with the possibility of blood and/or broken bones might make exciting television. After a dozen or so phone calls he was finally able to pitch the idea to his connections at BBC1...

  Run against a timing clock, the show illustrated some of the skills needed in normal  motorcycle trials riding. In the Kick Start format, the riders went over obstacles such as piles of logs, 55 gallon oil drums, thru water troughs, up steep banking or a cliff-face and over cars. Penalties, in the form of time added to their time, would be given for putting a foot on the ground while tackling an obstacle or touching or knocking over specified parts of an obstacle.



  The course for the three-part series was devised by trials rider Sammy Miller and constructed within the World Famous Donington Park Race Circuit. 

  Kick Start ran on BBC1 from August 6, 1979 – June 1, 1988.





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Today in motorcycle history, February 9, 1974

   




   






  The Stooges play Detroit’s Michigan Palace Theatre. It will turn out to be the band’s last gig together before they call it quits.

  Prior to the show Iggy Pop gave a radio interview in which he "called on" the Detroit chapter of the Scorpions MC. He allegedly screwed a member's girlfriend and now he wanted tell all about it. Iggy called the club a bunch of fuckin' rats. The club showed up and pelts the band with broken glass, beer bottles full of urine, eggs, ice, jelly beans, and shovels (yeah, I said shovels). Undeterred, Iggy continues to taunt the crowd/the club, “You pricks can throw everything in the world… your girlfriend will still love me.”


  The band feeds off the crowd’s anger and continues to play. Iggy finally tells the crowd, “All right you assholes, wanna hear Louie, Louie? We’ll give you Louie. Louie, ” The Stooges then went on to play a forty-five-minute version of the Kingsmen classic, which includes improvised lyrics by Pop, in which he continues his verbal assault on the club.



  The show finally ends after Iggy Pop focused his attention on one particular Scorpion heckler (believed to be the girl's boyfriend) and said: “Listen, asshole, you heckle me one more time and I’m gonna come down there and kick your ass.” The biker told Pop to come on down, so Iggy jumped off the stage and confronted him. The biker beat the living crap out of Iggy, putting an end to the evening's festivities. 

  The concert was captured live on a reel-to-reel tape machine and in 1976, The Stooges released the recording in an album titled Metallic K.O. It is thought to be the only rock album where you can hear beer bottles breaking against guitar strings. The album remains a favorite among Iggy Pop/Stooges fans.

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD).  www.nabd.org.uk 

Today in motorcycle history, February 6, 2014

  

  

  A private buyer purchases Pope Francis’ 2013 Harley-Davidson Dyna Super Glide for about $327,000 at a Bonhams auction in Paris, France. The price far exceeded the $16,000 to $22,000 presale estimate.

  Plus, a black leather Harley-Davidson motorcycle jacket signed by the pontiff fetches $77,485.

  Money from the sale of the two items went to benefit a hostel and soup kitchen at the Termini train station in Rome.


  “We’re absolutely thrilled that our donation of the motorcycle could result in so much good for the charity,” Maripat Blankenheim, a spokeswoman for Harley-Davidson, said in an interview. “I’m not sure that the company had an expectation about what the bike would get, but if we did, it certainly exceeded it.” 

  A 2014 Super Glide's MSRP is $13, 549.

  A vintage black leather Harley-Davidson motorcycle jacket with an H-D eagle patch is roughly $545.00.

  A one-year Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.) membership is $45.00.

  A large (14") pepperoni pizza from Zaffiro's" (1724 N Farwell Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202) is $14.50.

  Today in motorcycle history is a proud supporter of the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, February 5,1959

  

  

  The February 5, 1959 issue of The Motor Cycle (UK) features, Scooter Impressions; the Lambretta Li 125.

  The 124cc Lambretta Li 125 is gushingly reviewed as a "nippy, good-looking scooter with performance belying it's size: excellent power characteristics, handling and brakes."




  Innocenti were the major rivals to Piaggio, whose Vespa scooter was rather more stylish than the Lambretta LD. In response came Lambretta's TV 175, a smoothly styled, modern scooter, soon followed by the Li 125 version. A good four-speed gearbox and more powerful 5.2 hp engine gave the Li 125 reliable performance while the two-tone grey paint and it's easy-clean styling made many friends!



  Lambretta Li 125 production dates - October 1959 to November 1961.





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Today in motorcycle history, February 4, 2015

  Go West, young man, go west! (Westside, that is.)




  The oldest patch-wearing gay men's motorcycle club in the country holds it's February meeting tonight. 

  Empire City Motorcycle Club, Inc. of New York City, was founded by a group of twelve motorcycle riders in October, 1964 as a motorcycle owner/rider club. They are the oldest ongoing gay all-riding organization in the country and a vital part of the gay community in the New York metropolitan area. Empire City M/C's open general meetings are held 8pm-9pm on the first Wednesday of each month at "The Centre", 208 West 13th St., Room 205, New York, NY 10011. All interested men and prospective members are welcome to attend.

 According to their website full members should reside within 50 miles of New York City.


  Empire City Motorcycle Club: 51 Years of Riding & Brotherhood!




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Today in motorcycle history, February 3, 2007

  

  




  Three-time AMA Grand National Champion, and legendary bad-ass, Bart Markel dies.





  From 1958 until he retired from racing in 1972, Bart Markel competed in more than 140 AMA Grand National Series races. His record of 28 Grand National wins held until 1982, when Jay Springsteen earned his 29th victory at the Houston Astrodome. Bart is still considered one of the best riders in the history of AMA racing.

  He rode a few times on street bikes as a teenager, but didn't get into the sport seriously until he came out of the Marine Corps in 1956. A good friend of Bart's was racing in local scrambles events and Markel decided to give it a shot so he went out and bought a Jawa for $25 and started racing.

  "I did pretty well on that old clunker as long as it kept running, which wasn't very often," recalled Markel. "I raced four or five times on the Jawa before I went out and splurged and spent fifty bucks for an old BSA B33."

  He soon began tearing up the tracks, making his mark in 1959, when he earned four Top-10 finishes, including runner-up at the Springfield (Illinois) Mile. He ended the season ranked seventh in the series and earned a factory-backed ride with Harley-Davidson.


  At the same time he began earning a reputation of being a very "aggressive" rider and was dubbed "Black Bart." At one point, Markel was suspended from racing for rough riding.

  "I didn't like following anybody," explained Markel, who was an amateur boxer in his younger years. "If I needed to give someone a little shove to get in front of them, that's what I'd do. I don't like to admit it, but I guess I was a little rough."

   Bartlett David Markel was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998.

  Today in motorcycle history is a proud supporter of the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, February 2, 1972

  


  

  By 1972 two-stroke dirt bikes became so popular that they practically weren't even given a second notice. Except by environmentalists.

  In the early days they were manufactured with unmuffled expansion chambers and were conspicuously noisy, and smoked a couple packs a day. In 1972 it was estimated that more than five million off-road vehicles (motorcycles, snowmobiles, ATV's, etc) were in use on public lands. Complaints against the expanding use of off-road vehicles caused President Nixon to issue on February 2, 1972, Executive Order 11644, calling for the regulation of motor vehicles on public lands. EO 11644 signaled the official declaration of a war for public lands that continues to the this day. Federal regulators saw the Order as a practically unfulfillable obligation to provide for appropriate and regulated use of off-road vehicles, whereas motorcyclists saw it as an effort to unfairly limit their enjoyment and eventually shut them out entirely, and some environmentalist organizations saw it as entirely unwarranted, preferring rather to see all public lands closed to motorized use.


  Although federal agencies responding to EO 11644 have strived to objectify the problem and reduce it to statistical and scientific components, the real battle has continued on an emotional level. Ironically, "On Any Sunday" gave the opponents of off-road motorcycles their most enduring weapon. Depicting the mass start of the legendary Barstow to Vegas cross-country desert race from the bird’s eye vantage of a helicopter, narrator Steve McQueen asserted facetiously that the event raised “a dust cloud that settled three weeks later over London.” Environmentalists found the image and the assertion neither facetious nor funny. Thus, the movie that helped popularize off-road motorcycling became a weapon against it. Although point-to-point desert racing was not characteristic of how most off-road motorcycles were used, the horrendous image of the start of the Barstow to Vegas race became a symbol of the destruction of which every small trail bike was thought to be capable.


  The battle over public lands raised America’s motorcycling community to a higher level of responsibility than ever before, largely through the work of the American Motorcyclist Association. The AMA put significant funding into researching and publicizing scientific techniques for the responsible management of public lands, added professionally trained staff to raise the dialogue with environmental organizations and federal land managers, encouraged its local clubs to model conscientious and responsible motorcycle use, and became the first motor sport governing body in the world to mandate mufflers on full racing machines, hoping the example would be emulated by individual road and off-road motorcycle owners. 



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