Leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities that involve leather garments, such as leather jackets, vests, boots, chaps, harnesses, or other items. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures. Many participants associate leather culture with BDSM practices and its many subcultures. For some, black leather clothing is an erotic fashion that expresses heightened masculinity or the appropriation of sexual power; love of motorcycles, motorcycle clubs and independence; and/or engagement in sexual kink or leather fetishism.
The American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) is an American nonprofit organization of more than 200,000 motorcyclists that organizes numerous motorcycling activities and campaigns for motorcyclists' legal rights. Its mission statement is "to promote the motorcycling lifestyle and protect the future of motorcycling." The organization was founded in 1924 and as of October 2016 had more than 1,100 chartered clubs.
A motorcycle club is a group of individuals whose primary interest and activities involve motorcycles. A motorcycle group can range as clubbed groups of different bikes or bikers who own same model of vehicle like the Harley Owners Group.
An outlaw motorcycle club, known colloquially as a bikie gang, biker gang or motorcycle gang, is a motorcycle subculture generally centered on the use of cruiser motorcycles, particularly Harley-Davidsons and choppers, and a set of ideals that purport to celebrate freedom, nonconformity to mainstream culture, and loyalty to the biker group.
Motorcyclist is an American online motorcycling magazine that was published in monthly print format for 107 years, from 1912 to 2017, then moving to six issues per year, until ceasing print publication and becoming online-only in 2019. Since 2013, it has been owned by Bonnier Group and headquartered in Irvine, California.
Gene Romero was an American professional motorcycle racer. He competed in the A.M.A. Grand National Championship from 1966 to 1981 sponsored first by the Triumph factory racing team and then by the Yamaha factory racing team. Proficient on oval dirt tracks as well as paved road racing circuits, Romero won the 1970 A.M.A. Grand National Championship and was the winner of the 1975 Daytona 200. After retiring from competition, he became a successful racing team manager with Honda and, helped the sport of dirt track racing by becoming a race promoter. Romero was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998.
Bessie Stringfield, also known as the "Motorcycle Queen of Miami", was an American motorcyclist who was the first African-American woman to ride across the United States solo, and was one of the few civilian motorcycle dispatch riders for the US Army during World War II.
The following outline is provided as an overview of motorcycles and motorcycling:
The Daimler Reitwagen or Einspur was a motor vehicle made by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in 1885. It is widely recognized as the first motorcycle. Daimler is often called "the father of the motorcycle" for this invention. Even when the steam powered two-wheelers that preceded the Reitwagen, the Michaux-Perreaux and Roper of 1867–1869, and the 1884 Copeland, are considered motorcycles, it remains nonetheless the first gasoline internal combustion motorcycle, and the forerunner of all vehicles, land, sea and air, that use its overwhelmingly popular engine type.
Motor Maids is a women's motorcycle club in North America with over 1,300 members from the United States and Canada. Established in 1940, Motor Maids was one of the first women's motorcycle groups and has been called the oldest existing women's club in the United States. The first president of Motor Maids was Dot Robinson, who held the position for 25 years.
Augusta Van Buren and Adeline Van Buren, sisters, rode 5,500 miles in 60 days to cross the continental United States, each on their own motorcycle, completing on 8 September 1916. In so doing they became the second and third women to drive motorcycles across the entire continent, following Effie Hotchkiss, who had completed a Brooklyn-to-San Francisco route the year before with her mother, Avis, as a sidecar passenger.
Avis and Effie Hotchkiss, mother and daughter from Brooklyn, New York, were pioneering motorcyclists who completed a 9,000-mile (14,000 km) round trip ride from New York to San Francisco and back on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle-sidecar combination in 1915.
The Craig Vetter Fuel Economy Challenge is a motorcycle fuel efficiency contest created in 1980 by motorcycle fairing inventor Craig Vetter. The contest was cited in Vetter's Motorcycle Hall of Fame induction.
The Bull Riding Hall of Fame, located at Cowtown Coliseum in the Fort Worth Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas, United States, is a hall of fame for the sport of bull riding. It is incorporated as a non-profit organization in the State of Texas, and created to "recognize, memorialize, and applaud the bull riders, bullfighters, bulls, stock contractors, events, and individuals who have made a historic contribution and attained stellar performance in the sport." Membership is open to fans worldwide.
Gloria Tramontin Struck is an American motorcyclist who was one of the early members of the Motor Maids women's motorcycle club, which she joined in 1946, at age 21. She is both a Sturgis Hall of Fame and Motorcycle Hall of Fame inductee.
Dr. Rosa Slade Gragg was an American activist and politician. She founded the first black vocational school in Detroit, Michigan; and was the advisor to three United States presidents. She was inducted in 1987 into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
Jim Rice is an American former professional motorcycle racer who is an inductee of both the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame and the TrailBlazers Hall of Fame. During his career in the late 1960s and early 1970s he won 12 national races and finished in the top 10 of the championship three times. All but one of his victories were on BSA machines. Footage of Rice's crash in qualifying for the 1970 Sacramento Mile was used in Bruce Brown's film On Any Sunday.
Scot Harden is a professional off-road motorcycle racer. He has held managerial and executive positions at Husqvarna, KTM, BMW, and Zero Motorcycles.
