I’m putting this up on Saturday just to make sure you aren’t tempted to watch it at work. Just look at the redhead in particular. My G-d, I was born twenty years too soon.
When I was at See See Motor Coffee in Portland a couple of months ago, I tried on a few Grifter items and ended up buying a set of their bison-skin natural-finish gloves. So far they’ve held up very well to all sorts of weather conditions. Compared to the TourMaster gloves I used previously, they are more comfortable, offer more security when trying to grip the handlebars in wet weather, and do not transfer any dye to my hands. They also look pretty bad-ass.
On the negative side of the ledger, the gauntlet portion of the gloves is far too short. Part of the reason you wear gloves on a motorcycle is to protect those vulnerable blood vessels in the wrists, and I don’t like the way the Grifters terminate about in the middle of the joint.
If you watch the video or look at their website, however, you’ll see that Grifters are not meant to be part of a comprehensive touring-motorcycle safety package. They’re for the kids in the Pacific Northwest or Paris or Tokyo who want you to see their tattoos when they’re riding. Nor am I anywhere close to the proper demographic for their clothing, although I was riding a cafe’d-out Honda CB in 1999 back when the Grifter model guy on their website with “peaceinsidemyhead” tattooed on his forehead still had training wheels on his bicycle.
More impressive to me than their almost try-hard adherence to the hipster aesthetic is their straightforward commitment to American manufacturing. So I’ll be buying a few more things from their catalog, although it will no doubt grieve their marketing team to know that one of their more visible product endorsements comes from a middle-aged father who paid for his YZF600R back in the day by writing a computer program. And I remain entirely un-tatted.
Scars, on the other hand? Scars I have. I’ve suffered and inflicted enough scarring in my life to ensure that if I ever had “peaceinsidemyhead” tatted anywhere, it would be a lie. There’s a great scene in the first season of “True Detective” where some biker pal of Matthew McC’s says, “I embrace the outlaw lifestyle!” or something like that. Plenty of people think you can tattoo yourself into the outlaw lifestyle, but here’s the truth: before the needle touches the skin, you know if you’re really cut out for it, and so does everyone who has ever loved you.
What’s happened to our country - or am I just that old?
What parent would want their child festooned with tattoos?
What do longshormen and sailors think about this personal statement?
Sorry Jack - but I don’t aspire to have a, ahem, intimate relationship with an inked woman.
I agree with you, maybe I’m just too old (49) but a tatted up woman is a complete turn off to me. 2 or 3 strategically placed tattoos are OK with me but you lose me with the sleeve and it’s downhill from there. Now that redhead, notice she didn’t have an tats….at least not visible 😉
Go around to the rear and have a look. Odds are there is a “tramp stamp”.
“What’s happened to our country – or am I just that old?”
it isn’t “your” country, in case you missed it there are 300+ million people in it.
what is it with old white people who think this country “belongs” to them and they should be able to dictate how other people live?
What is it with young know-it-alls who can’t see the pronoun OUR as including themselves?
Don’t you get all warm and fuzzy when your bigotries are reinforced by by your own tribe of true believers?
You get that my != our, right? Perhaps your hair-trigger offense detector is set too damn high. You lack the tolerance of the Hippie generation: “This land is your land, This land is my land”
Life isn’t a zero sum game unless you make it so.
I’m thinking, too, about Curtis Mayfield’s “This Is My Country”, which at the time was held to be a very positive, affirming song.
@Mr. Greenman A great observation about life only being a zero sum game if you make it so. That is the essence of what I have successfully inculcated in my 21 year old son as a key point about life.’
Another of what I consider to be personal victories of a father is that he has come to understand what I told him, that when almost everyone is getting a tattoo to be different, the truly different thing to do is to not get a tattoo, and to let the way you live your life be your statement. And if you live your life consistently and strongly, no one will need to see a tattoo to know what you are all about.
He’s 21, some of his friends already had several tats by the time they turned 21, and he is showing no sign of checking out ink shops…which makes me proud of the way he has chosen to embrace that advice. Anyone who knows him for an hour knows how real he is, and that he consistently stands for, and does, that which is right. No tat can project that…only something that emanates from within can. And he “gets it”.
Yeah 300 million people a large percentage of which cant read ,wont work,are here illegally and want to use that petulant tone to my face that Will GET YOU hit in the head.No its NOT my country,its your mess you deal with you sniveling ass.Dont worry the village idiot Obama will take care of you.
I really like your series on made in USA items. I understand we have a global economy now but for crying out loud does EVERYTHING have to be made in China or Vietnam? I’ll check that company out for some riding apparel. And that redhead is just icing on the cake.
Quite the bon mot Jack, and obviously applicable to every part of life: ‘(Y)ou know if you’re really cut out for it, and so does everyone who has ever loved you.’ I feel bad for the dudes trying to fake it in whatever way they do it. It’s like wearing an itchy suit all the time.
Very excited to have learned the term for the portion of a glove extending toward the wrist is a ‘gauntlet’. God, I hope this is a crossword clue sometime soon while I remember.
Other sources of US-made riding gloves:
Vanson: http://www.vansonleathers.com/main_page/chapters/mens/gloves_list.html
Churchill: http://www.jrcglove.com/
Iron & Resin: https://shop.ironandresin.com/accessories-gloves
Genuine Motorworks, which seems mostly to sell other brands, but also has a pair of their own: http://www.genuinemotorworks.com/collections/gloves
Meh.
They’re trying to establish rider bonafides, but without the attention to detail - anyone with any true interest in motorcycles, or style, or Christ even attitude, whatever that might be, surely stopped reaching for their wallet about half way through and is instead screaming unto the void, ‘one doesn’t push a motorcycle with the kickstand down.’
Amateur hour. In that single detail, you realise that no one in the whole production and sign off of this video knows the first thing about riding. No surprise, then, that this outfit can’t put adequate wrist protection into a glove. Even Heine Gericke can get that (kinda) right.
I like Bike Exif, but it has a whole lotta crap to answer for.
Yeah, I noticed that too. I don’t ride myself so I thought that it was some safety practice for girls only.
No, because you’re just as likely to catch the stand on the ground and then the bike tips over away from you and is virtually impossible to catch…The only reason you do it due to sheer laziness and inexperience and then after the first time it catches and you either drop the bike or pull something in your groin trying to save it you never make that mistake again…
Ha, I was going to say I move my bike with the kickstand down. Usually only in a straight line. Any sort of turning and it goes up.
Interesting but lame in every way .
I do like some of the hipster styles and things but trying to look tough by tatting up is 100 % loser bullcrap .
I’m old & crippled so I don’t ride in the rain anymore but I found American made leather Welder’s gloves worked very well and had terrific gauntlets , cheap too although they’re not all shiny and cool looking , when you’re sliding your hands across asphalt style really ceases to matter .
After 45 years of riding , my palms are the only parts of both hands sans scars .
They stopped making Hippo Hands decades ago but the Snowmobile folks make a very good copy , cheap and wonderful for riding in freezing temps , rain and snow .
-Nate
” it isn’t “your” country, in case you missed it there are 300+ million people in it.
what is it with old white people who think this country “belongs” to them and they should be able to dictate how other people live? ”
Real Americans what also happen to be old and white (ahem) , don’t .
-Nate
Hey Tomko :
GET OFFA MY DAMN LAWN RIGHT NOW !!!! .
-Nate
Culture war aside, Jack, do you happen to know the artist performing the video’s amazing soundtrack?
I do not. Interesting though, ain’t it?
Oh, wait, here you go:
Hey, thanks for finding that - I dig it!
The red head towards the end is gorgeous; the others with tramp stamps all over their bodies look like SLUT biilboards (and yes, it’s my opinion that men sporting tat “sleeves” and branding all over look ridiculous, also).
Sometimes I wish Nate lived on one side of me, and DeadWeight on the other, so I could tell people to “KEEP OFF ALL OF OUR LAWNS!”.
Another nice aspect of being my neighbor is the ‘ broken windows ‘ aspect ~ my lawn and house are _always_ tidy and neat , I automatically pick up the trash and glass (broken or not) on both sides of the street where I live , this has a definite ripple effect .
Some of my less classy neighbors prefer to park in front of my house instead of their own , they drop trash and soiled diapers as a routine thing , my response has been to plant cactus in the parkway as it’s so stony grass doesn’t like growing there anyway .
This is working ~ I know it is because after every drunken party there’s at least one kicked over cactus where some boob got stuck then got angry instead of simply parking else where along the large open street’s curbstones .
-Nate
I love you like a brother, Jack, but screw that hipster shit. Aerostitch is where it’s at. Roper gloves… Deerskin, indestructible, and made in USA. And then there’s the Roadcrafter… Cordially and ballistic nylon, indestructible and made in USA. Pretty sure the Combat Lite boots are made in USA, too. I wore all this stuff during a cross-country ride with three days of rain and temps in the high 30s, and it was all up to the task.
Yeah, their stuff is an extreme example of function over form that won’t score points with tattoo-covered redheads, but then neither will road rash.
Cordua. Not cordially. Damn auto-correct.
You are Cordura invited…
I’d recommend Lee Parks Deertours, except the dye bleeds for decades. Anything of theirs that can be had in not-black is okay. I think they are made by Sullivan Glove in Oregon, as opposed to the Aerostich ones which are by Geier.
Check out hipsterbikevideos.com
Wow ;
Such hate and ignorance there .
When will you be leaving ? .
-Nate