Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (14 page)

RV.

Jenn floats back in and announces that a certain sister is taking a

nap and suggests they write something on her forehead. Another re-

marks about the woman’s size. Jenn decides maybe it’s not such a good

idea.

“We’re Not 1%ers!”

When Jenn formed her club in 1983, most women were stuck riding

pillion, clinging to the backs of men. Despite how mainstream motor-

cycling is today, women riders are still a minority. The American Mo-

torcycle Council reports that women accounted for less than a quarter

of American motorcyclists in 2008. That’s up from one-eighth in 1990.

Lace claims to be the world’s largest women’s MC, although there’s

not a lot of competition for that title. The largest women’s group, the

Motor Maids, calls itself a motorcycle organization rather than a mo-

torcycle club, an MC. As I delve further into the fringe, I come to realize

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this is an important distinction.

Jenn says she formed Lace to help raise money for children’s chari-

ties while doing what she loved most, “being in the wind.” Married to a

1%er, she understood their hierarchy. She liked the familial bonds, the

clothing, the structure, and, of course, the rambling group rides. She

even liked 1%er’s rebellious spirit, but not the violence that sometimes

comes with it.

Loyalty is the highest code to 1%ers. They pledge to place their biker

brothers above all others, including their families and most certainly

the law. That’s not to say that every 1%er runs guns, sells drugs, beats

money out of business owners or commits any other nefarious act.

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The 1%er clubs also pride themselves on raising money for charities,

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typically ones for children. Many hold respectable jobs, and some even

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send their kids to private schools. But the Justice Department labels

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them “Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs” and says they vow loyalty to clubs

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that are nothing less than organized crime. Law enforcement is always

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on their heels, and they are forever portrayed in the media as rogue

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gangs of sociopaths, sometimes justifiably.

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Lace exists in a nebulous world between the recreational riders and

outlaw bikers. It is in essence a hybrid, the fringe of the fringe.

Sisters bond like blood, supporting one another through the tough-

est of times, something they say the 1%ers only claim to do. They help

raise one another’s children. They mail chocolates and bright-yellow

socks to cheer a sister with a broken heart. Sisters might not kill for

one another, but when one needed a kidney, several offered theirs.

Jenn says the Lace sisters’ only illegal act was riding their bikes on a

sidewalk.

Although the women’s club activities seem rather innocuous, calling

your biker group an MC requires navigating more than roads and wear-

ing leather. To ride peacefully, motorcycle clubs, male and female, must

honor protocols of 1%ers even when it comes to naming conventions

and fashion. Lace pushes those boundaries.

The women dare to wear their club identification patch, which MCs

call “colors,” in a similar fashion to 1%ers. Granted, Lace’s colors aren’t

likely to be confused with 1%er’s. No grim reapers or slutty wenches,

rather two female angels, a brunette and a blonde. Black and hot pink

are their colors, which Jenn says, like their name, represent “inner

strength” and “femininity.”

Also like the 1%ers, Lace initiates have to prospect for years. They

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do chores, work fund-raisers and must attend meetings to prove them-

selves worthy of the final patch, a symbol of full membership.

The club doesn’t allow wimpy mopeds or skinny-tire street bikes.

Sisters must ride muscle bikes with engines of at least 550 cubic centi-

meters. Harleys are preferred. Like men’s clubs, Lace has a sergeant-at-

arms. Sisters refer to Jenn as “the boss.”

Lace sisters at nationals make it clear that they aren’t affiliated with

any male club, 1%er or not. Some sisters are a little sensitive about

the subject. When asked the club’s relationship with the Warlocks and

Mongols, Niki Schmidt, a sister from North Carolina, exclaims, “We’re

not 1%ers. They’re criminals!”

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Granted, after learning more about the members’ backgrounds it’s

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easier to understand why they find comparisons insulting. They are

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as diverse in age and profession as the vegetable garden beside Jenn’s

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pool. Their ranks include a Maine marine biologist, a Daytona Beach

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chiropractor, a New York doctoral candidate, a Pennsylvania vet as-

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sistant, a Colorado accountant, a Florida circus chef, waitresses, bar-

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tenders, and housewives. Many are mothers. Most are married or have

Leather & Lace MC

founder and presi-

dent Jennifer Chaf-

fin takes a break

from overseeing

her club’s weeklong

gathering to show

her bike. Photo by

author.

proof

serious boyfriends. The founding chapter is based in Florida, but the

club has members in more than thirty states and other chapters in

Pennsylvania, California, the Carolinas, Alabama, and as far away as

the United Kingdom and Australia.

Even though they are scattered, Lace sisters stay tight by talking

once a week in an online chat room. Each chapter hosts charity biker

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rides, yard sales, and biker balls throughout the year. They walk to-

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gether at breast cancer awareness events. At 10:00 a.m. on the third

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Saturday of every September, each Lace member is required to start her

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bike and ride 100 miles, solo or with others, to connect in spirit with

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her Lace sisters.

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They have two annual clubwide gatherings. They take care of busi-

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ness during their annual meeting at Jenn’s, which they refer to as

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nationals. Their summer meeting is more for play, and they take road

trips outside of Florida. They have ridden from Florida to New Mexico.

Once they rode to Missouri and put flags on the graves of veterans.

Being all about encouraging financial independence, they formed an

investment club. They are entrepreneurial. They have their own cloth-

ing line, cookbooks, and board game honoring noted female bikers—

Boots, Scoots and Roots!

Jenn’s home is the headquarters of their business enterprise, Lace

Sales. A commercial embroidery machine with big spools of thread fills

a table in her den. Lace makes custom biker patches for women’s and

men’s clubs. It designs T-shirts and vinyl banners for women riders,

charities, and Little League teams.

The club sells wares online and out of a small storage building with

matching window boxes beside Jenn’s house. During nationals, the

store is open in case members want to pick up some additional Lace

flair, say a beach towel embroidered with the club’s angels logo, rhine-

stony biker appliqués, or glass Christmas ornaments embossed with

“Leather & Lace.” Racks are filled with club-member-designed biker

T-shirts that would have made feminist Betty Friedan proud, even

though she wasn’t a motorcyclist. Messages such as “Fear the Pink”

champion breast cancer awareness, and “I Beat the Reaper” celebrates

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the survivors. The shop covers feminine desires from tot to adult, in-

cluding toy water pistols and women’s intimacy kits “for her personal

pleasure.”

Outside by the fire pit, Jenn’s precocious granddaughter hits me up

to buy a five-dollar tin of popcorn. “It’s for Future Lace,” she tells me.

“Next I’ll be in Teen Lace!” The club schools two age groups of daugh-

ters and nieces in the ways of business. To that end, the club loaned the

Future Lace girls three hundred dollars for a popcorn machine, charged

them 2 percent interest. The Lace sisters taught the girls to calculate

how many bags they needed to sell in order to pay the loan back. The

girls paid off their debt and started making a profit.

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The sisters also give the older girls tips on how to deal with men.

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“They learn a lot about relationships with guys,” Jenn says. “Like how

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not to put up with things and how to be your own person.”

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Lace sisters live what they preach. But unlike the white-gloved Mo-

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tor Maids who pride themselves on ladylike behavior, Lace sisters like

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to throw sexism right back in men’s faces. They make a sport out of

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coaxing men in bars and at parties to give up their boxer shorts. It’s a

twist on a crude male ritual of keeping women’s underwear as trophies.

Jenn estimates she has more than thirty pairs.

During a prior Bike Week, nine sisters stood outside the Boot Hill

Saloon, a notorious Daytona Beach biker bar, and graded passing men

on their looks, posting their scores on a chalkboard. “A few of the men

who got low grades left in a huff,” the
Daytona
Beach
News-Journal
re-

ported at the time. Jenn recalls some the men’s girlfriends liked the

ratings even less. “They would say, ‘He’s a 10.’ We’d say, ‘No, girlfriend.

He’s a three.’”

At the time, Jenn told the Daytona reporter that “Riding is one of

the last frontiers for them, and we’re stepping into it.” Clearly, motor-

cycling wasn’t the boundary they were breaking.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many Lace sisters got into motorcycling

following a divorce. Over pot roast and drinks at the Moonshine

Wednesday party, the sisters share stories of why they love riding on

two wheels. “I think because it’s liberating,” says Blythe Joslin, as a sis-

ter passes with a tray of pudding shots.

Blythe is a stout Alabama woman with wild, shoulder-length salt-

and-pepper hair and a strong jawline softened by plump cheeks. She

had always been too scared to try riding a motorcycle. Then, after her

third marriage, she met Country, a wiry, bearded bike mechanic with

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forever a cigarette in his hand and a grin on his face. She rode on the

back of his bike until his son started coming along. Then she was stuck

following them in a car.

“I told myself there’s not that much to riding a bike,” Blythe says

matter-of-factly. “I’d ridden horses a long time. So I went out and

bought a bike.”

She found out it wasn’t so easy when she was riding in the rain by

herself and dropped her Harley Softail. “It happens to everyone at

some point and you have to be able to get it up by yourself. And it

weighs about eight hundred pounds!” She raises her knee, then stomps

down on an imaginary foot pedal to demonstrate how she did it.

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Once Blythe got down the basics, she found a Zen-like peace in mo-

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torcycling. “It puts everything in perspective. When I’m on my bike,

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I’m not worrying about bills, my job, the kids. I’m not afraid. I’ve done

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a lot of things in my life. If I die tomorrow, I’m fine with that.”

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For all their independence, Lace still plays by the rules of the male

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clubs, even though they sometimes gripe about it.

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Much of the tension is over something as seemingly superficial as

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colors—the club patches. Next to their bikes, club colors are 1%ers’

most prized possessions. In the early days, they cut their patches into

three pieces to distinguish their club from more ordinary, law-abiding

ones. The top patch, which in biker speak is called the “top rocker,”

bears the club’s name. The middle patch is the club’s symbol—be it a

skull and crossbones or two angels. The bottom rocker bears the chap-

ter location.

Jim Dillman, who tracks outlaw biker clubs for the Florida Intelli-

gence Unit and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office, says 1%ers feel they

own the three-piece patch. They don’t want every ordinary, law-abid-

ing MC wearing three-patch colors. That would dilute the hell-raising

significance of theirs. Furthermore, 1%er clubs have gone to war with