by Sonny Barger
The motorcycle started out as a far simpler (and cheaper) machine than the car—as a vehicle that almost anyone could ride, fix, or rebuild. Men prided themselves on doing their own work and expressing themselves through the individual nuances of their choppers. Whether it was with paint and chrome, forging our own parts (like we often had to do), or adding after-market accessories, we found a hell of a lot of ways to personalize a Harley so that it reflects its owner. The same process applies to customizing yourself.
Here are a couple of things to remember in customizing yourself. A lot of bikes today have little or no appeal to me because they’re unrideable. They may look nice at a bike show. They might sparkle and shine in your garage (or in a living room, where a few of my more obsessive friends keep their bikes). They might even look beautiful arranged inside a museum like the Guggenheim in New York City. But unfortunately, most show bikes are hell to take out on the highway for a casual spin. They’re hard to keep on the road, they break down, they are hard to drive, and they’re simply dangerous. You have to trailer them to get from Point A to Point B. Beneath all the glitz and glamour, you need to have substance. They need to work. Are you getting my drift? Underneath the “bike,” the clothes and the accessories, who and where’s the real man or woman?
An important thing to remember is that when you take a stock bike and add to it or customize it, it not only looks cooler and rides faster, it automatically becomes less dependable and maintainable. It may no longer be under its warranty. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t beef up a bike, or yourself for that matter. It just means, once you begin the customizing process, expect to spend more time on maintenance. The process is ongoing.
That said, Harley-Davidson and other organizations have built empires and billion-dollar corporations based on designs that riders like us, as yesterday’s outcasts, invented years ago. There was a time during the sixties and seventies when we rode rigid-framed chops, and Harley-Davidson dealers chased us out of their stores. Our old ladies had to buy all our parts because the dealers wouldn’t sell them to us. By adapting their product to our own needs, we were, in their eyes, messing with the basic designs of Harley-Davidson. Again, we were considered the one percent giving ninety-nine percent of the other motorcycles a bad name. Once we got our hands on a new bike, we immediately stripped it down to its bare essentials and rebuilt it from the ground up. Now those same stripping ideas, once considered bad, are mainstream concepts. Chopped frames are the norm, while other innovations, such as ape-hangers, smaller seats, tiny peanut gas tanks, louder pipes, and other radical engine modifications that we pioneered, have made the bikes of today run faster and look way cooler.
The bad part today is that with all the modern electronic technology, it’s more difficult to perform your own emergency roadside maintenance on a contemporary Harley. You now need a nearby shop—and guess what?—they exist, everywhere. Even small towns now have Harley shops. That’s how much our tiny innovations shook and changed an entire marketplace.
Here’s the lesson. First, customize yourself and don’t be afraid to go the whole hog. Don’t be afraid to step out and be different. I emphasize taking the road less traveled, whether you’re on a run or navigating your way through life. It’s a vital theme that bears consideration. You don’t need to be a bike rider, an actor, an athlete, or a musician in order to be different. I’ve known doctors who drove race cars. I’ve known auto mechanics who flew airplanes. I’ve known bankers who raced horses. I’ve known teachers who raised snakes. Part of being free is deviating from the norm or simply being yourself.
If you’re going to customize yourself, during the process of rebuilding yourself, make sure you retain a sense of practicality. Remember the lesson about the bike that looked great but rode like shit. In your quest to be unique, don’t turn yourself into an unrideable show bike that can’t make it two blocks down the street. As you begin to challenge the norm, remember what we experienced rebuilding our motorcycles and pissing off Harley-Davidson. Radical ideas (especially those with the right form and function) are eventually swallowed up and adopted by the mainstream. Yesterday’s object of ridicule and scorn, whether it’s riding a motorcycle or selling bottled water, is often tomorrow’s brilliant mainstream idea. Yesterday’s revolutionary act can easily become today’s middle-of-the-road behavior. But keep moving forward, because if everyone is alternative, then no one is.
If it’s happened in almost every field—politics, business, art, motorcycles, and cars—why not make it happen to you?
20
Only One Person Can Ride a Motorcycle
It’s not a good idea to mess with another man’s woman. To me, that’s always been a given.
I’ve seen men get shot over women; I’ve seen women get shot over men. Love is the world’s oldest and most fought-over situation. Men are always wondering what women are thinking, women are always trying to second-guess men. But the no-no, the line you don’t cross, is coming between two people who are a unit.
Mess with another man’s money. Cheat at cards. Steal his motorcycle. Those are all “hanging offenses.” But messing with another person’s partner creates the worst tornadoes of all. It messes up a lot of people on a whole lot of levels. Don’t do it and don’t tolerate it. Nip it in the bud. It’s a cancer. Cut it out. Strike another match. It’ll only spread and kill you from the inside out.
We count on our friends to do their part to keep their family problems out of others’ affairs. If a wife or old lady (or a son or daughter, for that matter) is the source of trouble that affects you or your organization, look to that person to control the situation. I’ve had old ladies that were shining examples and I’ve had old ladies that were completely out of control. Believe me, it isn’t easy. I’ve had to cut loose from women who were unable to walk the line and conduct themselves properly.
A good leader leads by example. If I don’t keep myself straight, it’s hard to expect another man within my group to keep himself straight. If I can’t control my own household, who else is going to? Relationships can be a constant source of drama and headache. No matter how valuable someone might be, if they can’t keep it together on the home front, they’re not all that valuable. On the contrary, they’re a liability.
As long as you’re dealing with people, you can only hope that the smartest ones will have the common sense to keep their affairs and domestic crises out of the way of others. It’s a simple matter, so to speak, of the separation of church and state.
21
Gonna Take a Beating? Hell, No, Fight Back.
I believe in the luck of the draw, not some predetermined destiny. Then I push my luck further.
I’ve had lots of people come up to me, shake my hand, pat me on the back, and tell me how much they admire me because I cheated death by whipping cancer. As if anybody’s capable of whipping cancer. I considered it my destiny to live on.
When cancer attacked my body, specifically my throat, and I was diagnosed after a life spent smoking nonfiltered Camel cigarettes, I was handed a death sentence: two months to live, tops. The doctors sent me packing. Don’t even bother to quit smoking, they said. I was a goner.
I’d seen a lot of death, and a lot of riders will tell you, death is part of the script when you ride a motorcycle. Close friends may be here today, gone by Friday. You get to know how tenuous life really is by just riding a motorcycle down the street. You live with the fact that all it takes is the slightest turn of somebody’s steering wheel or the smallest pothole or scrap of rubber in the road, and the next thing you know, you could be playing checkers upstairs with William Harley and Arthur Davidson. You accept death’s odds by knowing that life is a volatile balance of good and bad luck. In Johnny Cash’s words, you walk the line.
In my case, the doctors were wrong, dead wrong. I even outlived a few of them. Twenty-three years later, I’m still here, still ridin’. I attribute part of that longevity to the fact that I was too stubborn to give up, too pissed off to stop lif
ting weights and staying strong. But also, my luck turned. My advice is to not give up, just in case the doctors don’t really know and you are that one-in-a-thousand case that proves them all wrong. I’m using my story as an example.
It would be easy, out of conceit, for me to lead you on and tell you that I miraculously cheated death by beating cancer. But I didn’t. I lived. Nobody’s god from out of the sky saved me or struck me down. Rather, my lymph nodes did their job by absorbing the toxins, saving my life. Listen to your body. I’m still around because I did. My body fought back, telling me it wasn’t my time. My meter hadn’t run out. Yet.
Your body is an amazing machine. If you take even marginally good care of it, it’ll bounce back when attacked. If you’ve smoked for a lifetime, take a few years off the weed and chances are your body and lungs can shake off the effects of nicotine by returning to close to normal. By eating well and spending time in the gym, even with cancer hanging over you, given the miraculous way the human body is constructed and functions, you stand a chance of rebounding and leading a longer life, if you’re lucky.
Cancer used to be considered a death sentence. As with RICO, people would just hear the word and throw in the towel. Not so much anymore. Destiny—which I don’t believe in—or “life” (as I like to call it) can be improved on by a man’s own proactive determination and free will. Rather than merely praying, or waiting for the right roll of the dice, get out there and lose weight, eat less poisonous food, and suffer through that extra round of exercise even when it seems impossible. That’s what’s going to save your life. That and your mind’s determination.
Until your meter runs out, live to cheat death for another day. There’s more at your disposal and command than you might initially suspect. Even if the roof caves in, don’t automatically give up. Don’t miss a golden opportunity to save yourself by waiting for a miracle that’s not going to happen. It may be up to you, a test only you can pass.
22
If You Can’t Change the Players, Then Change the Game
Are you outgunned and outnumbered? Change the shape and perception of the battlefield.
When I was in grade school, we all put our hands on our hearts and recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, ending with the words “with liberty and justice for all.” It sounded good to me, an excellent concept, though I’m not really sure I believed liberty and justice really existed for all of us. The government I pledged allegiance to then was to become my foe later. At one point, I frequently fought with the feds at every turn and corner. With its unlimited resources, the government became a formidable opponent. I was a small and outgunned individual limited to what legal weapons I had to fire back with. I was forced to figure out a way to beat the odds and slay the giant with a single stone.
If it’s liberty and justice and a fair fight you’re after, and if you’re going to be a player inside the criminal justice system, or any other competitive arena or organization, you need to get good at playing, or at least at changing the perception of the game.
I was the first motorcycle rider in Oakland to own a Harley Sportster. At the time, they were considered sport bikes, starter bikes, or even ladies’ bikes. But I found them to be quicker, lighter, easy to ride, hotter off the line, and a better bike to race and dodge enemies and the cops on.
The point of this example is that you have to learn what the rules are, interpret them, and then use them to your benefit. Sport bikes were legal, I knew how to ride mine better, and I managed to beat the system and my opponents.
Maybe you’ve got legal problems. Problems with your old lady. Business hassles. You’re ready to pack it in, because according to those around you, the odds are royally stacked against you.
I’ve been up against the most aggressive opponents one man could face. It was “us,” a small group of guys, against the vast resources of “them,” the United States government. These were dark times, when we were constantly in and out of jail and court, fighting desperately for our freedom. It looked for a while as if we might lose our footing under all the extreme pressure. Friends and allies lost faith. But those who remained were the best of the team. We learned and abided by the rules and stayed strong. We reviewed our situation for what it really was—a game, a contest, and a match. By indicting us, the cops may have won the first rounds in the press. We were in jail. No bail. But the game was far from over. We had to go to court.
Consequently, we put together the right team of people, people willing to go the distance by remaining flexible if things needed adjustment, but also willing to follow a leader and stick to our proven and predetermined course of action.
A brainy defense can often outfox a brawny offense. Just like my sport bike could outrun my enemies’. Instead of presenting tons of charts, witnesses, and evidence that bored the jury, we turned our courtroom into a game show. At the time, competition on the raceway came more naturally to me than competition in the courtroom. I figured we needed speed and ingenuity. We were the objects of yet another multidefendant trial designed to wear us down and pulverize us. But by turning a critically grave situation into a contest, we gained a more competitive edge, and ultimately the advantage, and we won the game.
23
Don’t Listen to “Them” Whoever “They” Are
Over and over we hear the phrases “If they would only…” or “That’s what they say.” Who is this “they” that people are constantly referring to? Those at the top? The politicians? The rich? The intelligent? Or is it the authorities?
I’ve fought authority and authority isn’t always right and doesn’t always win.
By definition, authority isn’t going to encourage anybody to change things. Most of us were brought up with the notion of respecting authority, that the policeman on the corner was our friend, that the government we pay for is out to serve and protect us, that, as a result, as Americans, we will remain free. We also are taught that judges impartially interpret the law. That if you work hard, your boss and your company will stand firmly behind your efforts. These are the authority figures most of us deal with throughout our lives. These are the “they” people I am referring to. However you choose to handle authority, don’t let it deter you from maintaining your own self-reliant vision.
Rarely in the history of this country has it been harder to get something new off the ground than it is today. But it’s not impossible. We are now a nation hamstrung by more rules, regulations, and special interests than ever before. It may seem that those who prosper are those who stick closest to the tried and trusted formulas, who stay close to home, who play it safe and are resistant to innovation. But I don’t believe it. I never have.
If you want to do something, go ahead and try it. That’s how the first airplanes and automobiles were born, by breaking the rules, defying the status quo, and persisting in a dream. So if you want to start a new venture, expect the banks, accountants, attorneys, and the reigning competition (they, them, the authorities) to tell you what you can’t or shouldn’t do. Then do it anyway.
If you’re looking for the next innovative idea, don’t listen to the folks sitting comfortably at the top of the heap. Check out the people at the bottom, who are hungry and are tirelessly, slowly, and steadily working their way upward. These are the people who have a far clearer view of the battlefield, the reality.
In your process of creation, be careful who you write off. All sorts of everyday people have started revolutions and movements. Tired old ladies on buses in Selma have inspired revolutions. Misfit awkward nerds like Gandhi changed the course of the British Empire. Guys who couldn’t get a date on Saturday night as teenagers have started billion-dollar software corporations. The works of painters who died penniless and unpopular are now auctioned for millions.
Listen to yourself and believe in what you want and not what you think they want. Take on the competition; you alone can make the world a better place, but only if “you,” not “they,” want to.
24
Knowle
dge Is Out There, but It Don’t Come Served to You on a Bun
Admit to yourself when you’re in the dark. Don’t go on fumbling around in it, acting like a tough guy or, worse yet, the smart guy.
There’s nothing wrong with saying the three simple words: I don’t know.
If you don’t know, say so. Better yet, ask. Even better, learn. Lots of times it is pure arrogance that drives us. You fake it, someone else fakes it, and after a while you start to wonder who is kidding whom. Time spent wandering around lost could have been time spent learning what it was you didn’t know in the first place. Sounds basic, I know. What I don’t understand is why so many people just can’t say, “I don’t know.”
I’ll only give one small example because I think you get my drift.
Once I was going to the Sturgis rally in South Dakota and I had been forewarned that there might be some trouble from the other clubs. I knew I was outnumbered, but I also knew I could fight back with everything I had, no matter what the cost. I started thinking of something or some way I could be one up on the opposition. Then I asked around. When I was told about a certain law in South Dakota, I went and made sure that it was indeed still in force. It was, but with one wrinkle. It was a gun law that said you had to register all loaded guns before you entered a certain area. Instead of turning them in, you just had to unload them. It still created an illusion of power. You could wear as many guns as you wanted, all exposed and everything, but felons (as I was later to become) could not carry guns. The law separated the sheep from the goats, the felons from the nonfelons, in other words, and the NFers went strapped like warriors, with almost every firearm imaginable. The opposition never showed their faces. If I hadn’t asked earlier on, gotten a tip, and followed up on it, things in South Dakota that year might have been very different.
