runs

It’s no secret that Americans love outlaws, from the legends and lore of rebellious (and illegal) acts by the Founding Fathers, to the bushwhacking and bank-robbing capers of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, to the “bad boy” music of Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and Dr. Dre. American culture and mass media have led inexorably to characters that embody this bad-boy attitude – a recent example being Jax, the heartthrob outlaw biker star of the TV show “Sons of Anarchy”. Western society has a long established canon from which we “learn” about society from fictional dramas. And the more we watch shows like “Sons of Anarchy,” the more a news story will seem to fit our mental construct of “how those people are.” The same is true of popular TV crime dramas’ portrayal of American minorities’ involvement in violent crime. And it seems that every time outlaw motorcycle clubs are portrayed in the news, it’s because of something terrible, such as the deadly events in Waco, Texas. Add to this the fact that the outlaw biker narrative has been largely controlled over time, not by members of the culture, but by outsiders and the misconceptions grow. The term 1%er was first used in print in the pages of Life Magazine during the 1960’s. The article was a contrived response to an AMA rally in Hollister CA, after encouraging certain individuals to get drunk and ride through town the media then reported on ‘drunken’ motorcycle clubs giving rise to the popular misconception of bikers and also the movie The Wild One. The American Motorcycle Association stated that 99% of the people at their events were God fearing and family oriented. The other 1% were hard riding, hard partying, non mainstream type people. Thus the term 1%er found its place in […]