Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (16 page)

dents’ complaints about noise and traffic, the city imposed restric-

tions, sending the more raucous to the outskirts. The event now spans

30 miles north and south of Daytona, from Ormond Beach to Edgewa-

ter and another 30 miles inland to Orlando. Even so, most bikers man-

age to make at least one trip to the center of the mayhem.

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It’s Not Going to Lick Itself

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On a cool March morning, bikers cruise Main Street to show off their

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steel horses and leer at the half-naked women who are there either for

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thrills or by profession.

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The core eight-block stretch is already lined with parked motorcycles

of every make, color, and style—cruisers, softails, touring bikes, speed

bikes, and a curious handful of mopeds. There are
Easy
Rider
chop-

pers with handles so high that riders could throw out their shoulders

reaching up to them. Others stretch as long as a car. Bikes are wrapped

in bandito belts of ammo. Some look like space capsules. A number

of tricked-out trikes (three-wheeled bikes) pull trailers, begging the

question, Why not get a truck? Gas tanks, fenders, and trunks are air-

brushed with lightning bolts, topless big-breasted women, helicopters,

and the Last Supper.

Owners in leather jackets who reek of designer cologne stand near

their pimped-out rides, swigging beer or in the case of the Jesus clique

of two, passing out small New Testaments. A steady stream rolls down

the street in both directions underneath welcoming city banners. One

three-wheeled trike pulls a cart of German shepherds wearing goggles;

in another, there’s a matching airbrushed casket. Herds of leather-clad

men with middle-aged women in chaps riding behind them inch be-

tween the red lights, seeing and being seen. Engine rumbles add to the

cacophony of rock, country, and rap music blasting from open-air bars

with names like Dirty Harry’s and Froggy’s.

There are no club colors in sight since bars along Main Street now

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ban them. An occasional biker suspiciously wears his vest turned inside

out.

Young barmaids bear the chill in low-cut midriffs and shorts that

look more like panties. As rock blares over the speakers they grind,

jiggle, and kick around a stripper pole that tops a sidewalk bar in hopes

that out-of-town bikers will open their wallets for a brew and a big tip.

Bikers on foot scour the endless line of souvenir stands and stores.

The design “Support Single Moms” with a silhouette of a naked woman

at a stripper pole is ubiquitous, appearing on T-shirts, posters, and

bathrobes. There are hundreds of patches with messages ranging from

the tame “Harley-Davidson” to the crude “I Eat Pussy and I Stutter.”

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A couple of middle-aged men in jeans and Harley jackets stop to

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check out a wall of women’s black booty shorts with sayings across the

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back such as “It’s not going to lick itself,” (perhaps a nod to women’s

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growing strength in the biker world). The men look, laugh, but aren’t

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buying.

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Meanwhile, about 20 miles inland in the farming community of

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Samsula, women pull hair and pin one another in a rank pit of soured

coleslaw. The winner gets five hundred dollars and the infamy of a title.

More than one thousand beer-guzzling bikers and posers upwind cheer

from behind a web wire fence. A stout contestant yanks the bathing

suit top of her rival, exposing fake breasts. The hooting and hollering

becomes almost deafening.

The women’s coleslaw wrestling competition at Sopotnick’s Cabbage

Patch Bar has been a Bike Week tradition since 1985. Owner Ron Luzner

started the contest to entertain the hard-core bikers who camped in

the adjacent field. Other bars already used mud and whipped cream,

so he chose coleslaw to reflect the club’s name. Ron, also known as Mr.

Polka Man, mixes 1,000 pounds of shredded cabbage and 5 gallons of

Wesson oil for a day’s meet.

The event has become such an attraction that some contestants dress

up like Pocahontas and action heroes. Local mom Heather Spears, four-

year reigning champion in 2010 and winner of pudding and creamed-

corn wrestling at other Bike Week events, described the competition

to the
Orlando
Sentinel
: “It is rough. I’ve had crater marks on me from

all the girls digging in their nails and tearing my shirt and skin off. It

is slimy, too. This is just oil, and you just have to put your weight to

one side and hold it. The more you do it, the better your technique

becomes.”

proof

Campfire Stories

Back at Jenn’s, exposed flesh is mere talk for the half dozen Lace sis-

ters and their friends huddled around a fire bowl in the backyard. None

of the odd assortment has witnessed the coleslaw wrestling extrava-

ganza, or at least will admit it.

A newbie, a Massachusetts credit union accountant in a Lands End–

style jacket, had never met any of her Lace sisters until this week. Her

tall, clean-cut boyfriend, John, rides with a mainstream club.

Blythe and Country and their friends, another couple from Ala-

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bama who aren’t affiliated with Lace—the grizzly bearded biker who

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had been napping earlier and his petite girlfriend—seem more familiar

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with the rowdier biker scene.

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The napper is now in high gear, downing beers and entertaining the

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lot with one-liners in his hillbilly southern twang. Since I’m also from

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Alabama, we engage in a little state bonding, then talk books. “Who is

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your favorite writer?” he asks, leaving little time for an answer. “I love

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Bikers are all about patches, and not just their club colors. Ones like these sold at

proof

Bike Week leave little unsaid. Photo by author.

to read. My favorite writer is Lewis Grizzard. He wrote some funny

shit.”

The group starts sharing memorable sights and experiences at past

biker events, which naturally include women displaying flesh.

An older Leather & Lace sister standing by the fire quietly recalls

seeing a flabby woman in a thong riding on the back of a bike at a Stur-

gis rally. The Bama biker twangs, “That sounds like two sheets of paper

flapping in the wind.”

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The conversation turns to the Main Street scene of whale’s tails (the

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back of thong panties exposed above low-riding jeans) and women in

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mere body paint for tops. John jokes in his rubbery Massachusetts ac-

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cent, “I’ve thought about taking Viagra, putting on tight sweat pants

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and walking down Main Street.”

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Without hesitation, the Bama biker chimes in: “I’d have to wear a

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fuckin’ sign that said, ‘I’ve just taken Viagra’ or nobody would know!”

All crack up. He continues. “I’m not kidding. It’s like a button on a

fur coat.”

The newbie laughs, nervously.

Someone asks about thong pulls, a contest big in biker circles and

advertised at numerous area bars during Bike Week. The visiting Ala-

bama couple seems to intimately know the details and explain that the

contest involves a woman wearing a thong that’s attached by rope to

two loaded carts. In their experience, the carts roll in opposite direc-

tions and the women whose thong rips off first wins. The thin Bama

woman fesses up that she once won such a contest. Then adds that she

cheated by cutting her thong so it would easily rip off and then split the

hundred-dollar prize with the only other contestant. “Hey, that’s fifty

dollars for less than an hour’s work,” she says.

Typically, thong pulls at bars during Bike Week involve women drag-

ging cases of beer in one direction until all but one, the winner, is still

wearing her panties. In other words, the one with the strongest elastic

wins. The bar contests require women to wear something underneath

their thong, a double-thong ensemble; but safe to say, there’s always a

lot of ass showing at thong pulls and typically not the Playboy Bunny

variety.

The sisters lining the patio bar are loosening up from swigs of tequila

proof

and the sweet Kahlua pudding shots. In their midst, a short, bouncy

woman with a gray braid running halfway down her back and honest

blue eyes holds court with her younger sisters. Lois Upston, a sixty-

five-year-old administrator at Miami-Dade Water & Sewer, has been

riding a motorbike since she was in elementary school. She was the

only kid in high school, male or female, to arrive by motorcycle. Her fa-

ther rode and sold bikes and boats in Miami. Her family has lived there

for four generations, long enough for her to pronounce the city “Mi-

amah” and ride a trail bike through swampy fields in the Everglades

before they were protected.

While raising her children, Louise got away from biking trips. Then

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in 1987 her husband, also a rider, spotted an article about Leather &

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Lace in a biker magazine. Eager to check it out, she and a girlfriend

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biked up to Edgewater from Miami and joined the fledging club on a

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ride. “We went out at night with Bear [Jenn’s late husband] and his

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friends, and they rode hard. They would go 60 to 70 mph on these dark,

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winding roads. It was so cool! We didn’t have that in Mi-amah. We have

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square blocks and streetlights. We were all silly about it and screaming.

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We would go down the highways, and it was black in front of us. I was

sure my eyelashes were frozen and my eyeballs would fall out because

it was so cold and we were riding so fast.” After one late-night im-

promptu ride, Lois stayed over and kept the others awake chattering.

Jenn dubbed her “Ewok,” after the fiery fur balls of the
Star
Wars
Tril-

ogy. The name stuck as her biker handle.

Ewok loved the challenge of hanging with the hard-riding 1%ers on

the country roads. “One of the things Bear was proud of was that none

of the ladies in Lace were sissies,” Ewok recalls. “We felt real proud he

would recognize that in us.”

Riding with 1%ers had other advantages. “There was security in be-

ing with Bear and his brothers,” Ewok explains. Contrary to the hype

that all 1%ers treat women like dirt, Ewok says the Warlocks could be

quite chivalrous. “They never took us any place that a lady shouldn’t

go. We were untouchable. None of them ever pursued any of us. Some

of the single girls were a little disappointed. They were like, ‘Gee, they

always just take us home.’”

In the early days of the club, the sisters were less about business

and more about riding and play. A trip to the store might turn into

a 70-mile ride. They had weekend getaways, sunned in hotel pools

and played with silly string. Once, at the Holiday Inn in Sebring, they

proof

crashed an outdoor wedding in biker style, wearing their leathers and

making a scene. Jenn pushed Ewok into the hotel pool.

Not surprisingly, they weren’t always welcomed. Niki recalls a stop

in Yeehaw Junction, a crossroads about 30 miles inland from Vero

Beach that is as lonely as it sounds. The sisters, leathered up and sport-

ing their colors, pulled over at the only gas station. “It was hot as hell.

We were dying,” Niki says. “We got out the hose and started wetting

each other down.” The station owner ran inside and locked the doors.

“He was scared!”

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Warlocks, Outlaws, and Harry “Taco”

irolF During the 1980s, the perception that black-leather-clad bikers were

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dangerous wasn’t so farfetched, especially on the desolate country

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back roads through sugar fields and cattle pastures between Miami,

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Orlando, and Tampa. Florida biker gangs had been breaking the law

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and raising hell for decades, but when a wave of recruits fresh from the

bloody fields of Vietnam joined the ranks of 1%ers, they pursued new