I don’t know shit about motorcycles. A friend of mine just got one and posted the obligatory social media posts of him with his sweet, new hog. A few days later, he tells me that he had been getting messages from girls he didn’t really know, sliding into his DMs saying stuff like “Cool! You ride?” and “Sweet bike! I’d love to ride sometime!” Shit like that. It lead me to believe that maybe guys I know are getting motorcycles just for attention from girls.
Mike Brown was lucky enough to sit down with some dudes from the Barons Motorcycle Club and get the what’s what on the current state of motorcycle culture in SLC and beyond. Photo: John BarkipleBut like I said, I don’t know shit about motorcycles—I don’t know how much gas my motorcycle–soft boy theory holds. So I decided that I’d better find out. Whom better to ask than guys who have been riding their whole lives? I was lucky enough to sit down with some dudes from the Barons Motorcycle Club and get the what’s what on the current state of motorcycle culture in SLC and beyond. Chad, who is the Road Captain of the club; Dirt Bag, who is the President; and Teach, a fellow nomad who literally wrote the book on the club, all sat down with me at the Barons’ annual Show and Shine fundraiser for local veterans.
As far as the current state of motorcycles goes, Chad, who is a second-generation Baron, said that there is definitely such a thing as the Instagram Biker. On one hand, Instagram shows off a lot of really amazing bikes and craftsmanship, but you also get a lot of people concerned about their image. Another cultural influence is definitely that soap opera called Sons of Anarchy—or as Teach calls it, Sons of Malarkey