The Complexities of Motorcycle Culture in Pandemic America
In the summer of 2020, over 270,000 cases of Covid-19 were traced back to the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. With contact tracing spanning over fifty-nine states, Canadian provinces, and countries, the outbreak placed an often overlooked subculture under sudden and immense scrutiny.
On April 18th, 1924, the Ithaca Motorcycle Club was first mentioned in the Cornell Daily Sun:
“NEWLY FORMED MOTORCYCLE CLUB TO HOLD FIRST MEETING.”
The story called for "any students owning motorcycles or any who might be interested in the sport," citing an
exciting
inaugural season of programming and even potential for a polo team.
The club was never mentioned in print again, according to Shantanu Naidu, MBA ‘18. That is, until he revived the organization by founding the Cornell Motorcycle Association in 2016. “I tried to find the termination date of the original club in the archives, but there was nothing more. It seems to have just faded out,” Naidu told me when we spoke over the phone. He re-established the organization while he was a student at the Johnson School, with the primary goal of educating his classmates on motorcycle culture:
In East Asian countries, people use
motorcycles part of their daily commutes. There are
motorcycles everywhere on the roads; everyone has one. But
when I came to Cornell and told people I rode a motorcycle,
my American classmates flipped out. ‘Do you want to die?
Why do you want to risk your life?’
I didn’t understand because
I’d been riding for years. I felt that the stigma around motorcycle
culture in America was exaggerated to an extreme.
At the same time, though, Naidu found a new sense of community
surrounding motorcycling at Cornell. “Whenever I passed other motorcyclists,
they would give me a thumbs up. This was new to me," he said. "In India,
commuting is commuting, and motorcycles are an affordable and
convenient way to do so. But in America, motorcycling is unique and niche:
there’s a spirit of brotherhood.”
Thus is the complexity of American motorcycle culture: stigmatized, yet novel; tight-knit, yet
welcoming.
While on a wine tour around the Finger Lakes with my friends this October, I saw a group of a couple dozen
motorcyclists roar past in what I
can only describe as an expression of total freedom. I decided I needed to learn more about who America's
motorcyclists were,
beginning with Ithaca and New York State.
The Complexities of Motorcycle Culture in Pandemic America
In the summer of 2020, over 270,000 cases of Covid-19 were traced back to the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. With contact tracing spanning over fifty-nine states, Canadian provinces, and countries, the outbreak placed an often overlooked subculture under sudden and immense scrutiny.
The story called for "any students owning motorcycles or any who might be interested in the sport," citing an
exciting
inaugural season of programming and even potential for a polo team.
The club was never mentioned in print again, according to Shantanu Naidu, MBA ‘18.
That is, until he revived the organization by founding the Cornell Motorcycle
Association in 2016. “I tried to find the termination date of the original club
in the archives, but there was nothing more. It seems to have just faded out,”
Naidu told me when we spoke over the phone.
He re-established the organization while he was a student at the Johnson
School, with the primary goal of educating his classmates
on motorcycle culture:
In East Asian countries, people use
motorcycles part of their daily commutes. There are
motorcycles everywhere on the roads; everyone has one. But
when I came to Cornell and told people I rode a motorcycle,
my American classmates flipped out. ‘Do you want to die?
Why do you want to risk your life?’
I didn’t understand because
I’d been riding for years. I felt that the stigma around motorcycle
culture in America was exaggerated to an extreme.
At the same time, though, Naidu found a new sense of community
surrounding motorcycling at Cornell. “Whenever I passed other motorcyclists,
they would give me a thumbs up. This was new to me," he said. "In India,
commuting is commuting, and motorcycles are an affordable and
convenient way to do so. But in America, motorcycling is unique and niche:
there’s a spirit of brotherhood.”
Thus is the complexity of American motorcycle culture: stigmatized, yet novel; tight-knit, yet
welcoming.
While on a wine tour around the Finger Lakes with my friends this October, I saw a group of a couple dozen
motorcyclists roar past in what I
can only describe as an expression of total freedom. I decided I needed to learn more about who America's
motorcyclists were,
beginning with Ithaca and New York State.
I asked a few friends what thoughts came to their mind when thinking about motorcyclists, motorcycles, or motorcycle clubs, and these were a few of the responses I received:
I realized from these answers that my circles, especially of friends at Cornell and the University of Michigan, predominantly formed their idea of motorcyclists from portrayals in pop culture and media, with only a few of them personally knowing a motorcyclist. To actually find out what and who motorcycle culture consists of, we reached out to motorcycle clubs, riding groups, and organizations around the state and learned more about them through individual and group interviews. By the end of three weeks, we met riders from over seventeen clubs and gathered more than eighty responses on a Google Form. The results, though providing a clear picture of what demographic dominates the scene, carries interesting variety in time spent towards riding.
During my call with the Nassau Wings Motorcycle Club of Long Island, a club member chimed in on the topic of motorcycle stereotypes. "We're just about the scariest group of dentists, doctors, and IT guys you'll ever meet." The whole group broke into laughter, and I started asking in future interviews about the members' occupations.
With almost every group we spoke to, each had a unique insignia that comprised a cornerstore of their social identity. Club insignias are typically created at the founding of the club and rarely change. For older clubs, this means their insignias are relics of a fading cultural zeitgeist.
With the above testaments to the level of deep camaraderie and community building motorcycle culture
has to offer,
placing a culture of freedom, open-air, and socializing into the context of the ongoing pandemic understandably
gives rise to conflict.
This past summer, one of the most unifying annual events of the nationwide community, Sturgis
Motorcycle Rally,
was identified as the root cause of around 270,000 cases of Covid-19 in early September.
With data provided by the official Sturgis headquarters in South Dakota, mapping the 2019 rally attendance
of about 495,000 shows to what degree the event unifies the community, bringing riders from almost every state.
Despite the height of the pandemic in the United States occurring throughout the summer, the attendance numbers for the 2020 Sturgis rally shows minimal drop in attendance this year compared to past years. The phenomenon once again gives rise to a sense of inherent conflict within American motorcycle culture: Day to day, motorcyclists often go unnoticed by the everyday civilian, both physically (the high rate of motorcycle accidents is a point of contention within the community) and spiritually. Yet, the sheer interconnectedness, intensity, and tradition of the culture still continues to influence the country in momentous ways, as it did with the pandemic this summer.