We are bikers (a couple of photos below to illustrate). And since the weather is warming and more and more bikers are getting their iron out on the road, and since I get all creatively hyped up at the thought of going outdoors to shoot cool bikes and hot biker people, we thought it might be a good time to offer a special on motorcycle portraits. So we’re giving a $25 discount off the standard booking fee through the month of April for any photos taken with a motorcycle (see our Facebook banner for samples from a previous shoot).
Now let me define “motorcycle.”
For purposes of our special offer, a motorcycle is defined as anything on two wheels with an engine of 49 cc or larger. Three-wheeled vehicles of 49 cc or larger are also included if the two wheels are in the back.
I make the 49 cc cutoff on engine size because mopeds and scooters aren’t motorcycles, and because Wikipedia says most jurisdictions cut it off at 49 cc (hey, I’m writing a blog not a doctoral dissertation, so Wikipedia will do just fine here). I include three wheels because trikes are a badass tradition in the biker world. But I say the two wheels must be in the back for one specific purpose – to exclude anyone who rides a Can-Am Spyder Roadster. Can-Am Spyder Roadsters are out because of their television commercial.
Note, I write “television commercial.” I’ve never ridden a Can-Am Spyder Roadster and cannot comment on its mechanical quality. I can only comment on the commercial, which ticks me off because it tries to associate one thing (Can-Am Spyder Roadsters and the people who ride them) with something their representatives in the commercial clearly aren’t (bikes and bikers). In other words, the commercial BS’s me and I don’t like to be BS’d.
The Can-Am ad piles it on by depicting a “gang” of cleanly dressed, nicely coiffed executive types and their lady friends cruising along a highway. They stop here and there to do some kind of balance beam act on a wooden fence, grab a bite to eat and quaff down a pony pitcher of what appears to be lemonade. Now, this in itself is fine. I have no problem at all with stubble free grown-ups in crisply pressed denims and kevlar jackets sharing the oxygen real people need to survive. For the moment, there seems to be plenty of oxygen to go around.
What I take issue with is the commercial’s attempt to associate these people with bikers. It does so by showing a “real” biker (a big, goateed, leather-clad monster of a man) nodding approvingly at these three-wheeled things in a parking lot. Then it really crosses the line by showing the metro gang pass a group of two-wheelers on the highway and one of the Can-Amers has the audacity to drop his hand in the traditional and top secret two-fingered biker wave.
This absolutely drives me over the deep end because these people, these Can-Am people, don’t look or act anything like bikers. You’re not a biker just because you know the top secret wave. Bikers are gritty and crude. They wear cracked leather and ragged jeans. They have fun with things like burn-outs and mud wrestling. They love the flag and hate authority. They push the edge of everything they do.
Can-Am people don’t push the edge. They pull it back with their straight-laced, safe style, and with a vehicle you can’t drop on your leg no matter how drunk you get off lemonade.
And they say in their commercial that the Can-Am Spyder Roadster is riding “reinvented.” B.S. Riding ain’t broken. It doesn’t need to be “reinvented.” That’s why something like the old Harley-Davidson “We Believe” promo appeals much more to me.
We’re Frayed Edge. We want to photograph people out there on it. So, for April, bikers get a $25 discount.
Can-Am riders pay full price.
Mike
