Why Didn't I Form My Own MC?

If this isn’t your first time reading the Sucka Free MC blog then you know my views on motorcycle etiquette and protocol. I am an MC Republican in that I believe in traditional MC values and I preach a black and white resolution to all things MC with the understanding that each club will find their own grey area.  I have been a student of the culture since approximately the age of six or seven when I was first exposed to the outlaw club that lived next door.  In the twenty five plus years since, I have been an avid archaeologist of MC culture exploring for the answers to my questions and digging deep in the conversations I’m privy to have with the 1 Percenters, Outlaws and elder statesmen of the community*.  I am well versed in traditional or classic MC aesthetic, riding, club structure, by-laws and culture politics.  So the question that I get asked at least once a week is with all this knowledge I have is, “Why didn’t I form my own MC?”

Well, I did…actually…not really but I put an end to it faster than you can say Kim Kardashian marriage and the reason why I did is because of all the reasons I stated above.  Mirroring the political climate in Washington today, the Democrats and the Republicans can’t agree on anything. It’s been unprecedented gridlock in DC the likes this country has never seen and for the second time since the early years of this country, the political climate has become downright violent.   A remarkable moment in history occurred on January 30, 1835 when President Andrew Jackson went to the U.S. Capitol to attend the funeral services of Congressman Warren R. Davis of South Carolina. As the President filed past the casket and descended to the Capitol rotunda, Richard Lawrence, an unemployed English house painter, stepped up, drew a pistol, and fired point blank at the former General. A percussion cap exploded, but a bullet failed to discharge from the gun barrel. Lifting his cane above his head, the 67-year old Jackson lunged at his assailant. But before he could thrash the young man, the attacker drew a second pistol and fired again. A second explosion rang out, but again the gun failed to fire. Eventually the idiot was wrangled in and later executed.

If I had formed my own MC I would’ve had glocks that would have been properly lubricated, loaded and aimed to kill for every half ass excuse, missed run, ignorant to the culture, showin’ up late, scared to ride long distance member in a club that eventually would’ve been the death of me.  What I just described would’ve been the Democratic Liberals members of my MC and with me serving as a right wing Republican (or H.N.I.C.).  The Democrats are (unfairly) painted as the weaker of the two parties on all things defense. They’re not aggressive when it comes to wars and seem to always want to command the department of defense’s budget to produce weapons of mass destruction. The Republicans are the classic American cowboys who bomb first and ask questions later.  They respond to ant size threats with Elephant type violence.  

The MC ignorant members of the club I categorize as Democrats. They’re the ones who don’t understand why I’d punch them in the face for taking their rags off in public and laying them on a chair. They’re the ones who don’t understand you can’t call a One Percent “bro” or “brother” until he addresses you that way. The Democrat Bikers wouldn’t be willing to throw blows for their cut choosing instead to flat out surrender their rags or just quit the club entirely when faced with violence.  I don’t want people like that in my club.

In the same breath while I lean towards a more Republican biker etiquette of supporting traditional biker values and protocols, I don’t need someone whose been watching Sons of Anarchy thinking you can walk into a bar and drop a body and then go have lunch like nothing happened. I don’t need someone who’s patch strong and now thinks because he has brothers in arms that he can start fights with anyone and everyone. I don’t want that either.

But I do know a club mixed with biker Republicans and biker Democrats cannot work.

It’d be like having a Congress with two distinctly different political parties who have to come together to agree on important decisions but never seem to get anywhere because they have such polar views on the same topics.

Translation: Remember growing up how they segregated the kids on the short bus from the kids on the big bus?  Same thing applies here.  

When I was forming my own club two years back I didn’t start by looking for a “cool” name as most people do.  Instead I researched (of course) groups or persons with similar philosophies that mirrored mine.  I do believe people make the mistake of finding a “cool” name and then running with it. Unfortunately “cool” names end up being nothing more then something they lifted from a popular movie or some hip hop jargon that’s popular for the moment. (We all know an MC with a butt ass stupid name.)  I knew if I formed a club I’d want that club to have a legacy and legacies don’t need cool names, they need a powerful purpose.   

While I don’t want to share too much as I haven’t completely let go of the idea of one day having my own club names that came up were The Bastards (a lot of MC’s with that name already but I had a play on it that was totally unique), The John Browns (look him up. The man’s passion rivals my own for MC culture and life), The Maroons  (the West Indian Maroons in Haiti and Jamaica specifically though that could be alienating to the non-black members of the club) and Loki (named after the god of mischief as at the time I was under the drunken influence of all the Boozefighters history I had been absorbing).  Each name was derived from core elements of the philosophy I envisioned for the club.

I did put together a business plan not for how the club would make money, but more so like a timeshare pitch to prospective members. I took the position that I was asking members to share their time with me (away from their families) so I had to present to them the benefit of being in my club. I put together a very convincing presentation that included the philosophy, plans to grow the club in the next two to four to six years and the traditional MC rules that would form the basis of the club. I knew six guys I wanted in the club and one man who would act as an advisor.  I called them together on a Sunday appropriately at a tattoo shop and did my sales pitch.

They all bought in.

And that’s when the problems started.

I had designed a logo that I really loved. It was an afro deaths head smoking a cigar with wings on either side. It was complete badass. The VP was adamantly against it because he refused to be associated with death in any capacity because he felt as bikers we already flirted with death too often to posterize it. In my complete shock he got more members to agree with him and my first act as President of my own MC was to vote on a logo that I loved…that the members soundly shot down.

That logo is now tattooed on my chest.

While I was upset at the loss of the logo I was actually proud of myself for putting it up for a vote and not mandating it down their throats. I had an incredibly sore and throbbing chest with a new tattoo but I was smiling until the second problem came up.

“Dude, my wife said…” “Bro, my girl…” “Homey, my ol’ lady…”

It was as if everything with a vagina was plotting against the formation of this club. The members were all subjugated to the whims and demands of their other halves and it drove me absolutely insane. A few weeks ago I posted a blog as to the Top Ten MC Mistakes and one of them was discounting the destructive nature of a spouse or other half to an MC.  I saw that firsthand as these women saw their husbands “hobby” as a leisure interest and not one of absolute paramount importance.  This was not going to work.  My wife knows of my passion for motorcycles and MC culture so she tolerates quite a bit but that’s because I’ve learned how to balance the two. I’ve had to give up a few things to make it work, but she worked with me and together, I was available to both the MC and more importantly my family at home.  I found that most guys either didn’t have the conviction to stand up to their wives and their selfish demands or just didn’t take the life as seriously as I did.

I don’t expect everyone to be like me. I study MC culture like my life depended on it. I research clubs, personalities, incidents and bikes daily. It’s gotten to the point where I go online more so for motorcycles then porn. I never expected members to be that fanatical however I refuse to have members in a club who are not only ignorant of MC culture but they have no interest in learning it. It baffles me as to why someone would join a MC and not want to learn about the community they’re joining. To me it says you have disrespect pumping through your veins and you’re not truly serious about the life. Those people should join an RC and not an MC.  

One member eventually disappeared off the face of the Earth, terminated his FB account and moved in with his girlfriend in New Jersey. I never heard from him again and while I was irked I would’ve been more irked if I had patched him in only to have him do that afterwards.  Another member who was trying desperately to work around his wife was struggling so much to fulfill his obligations as a founder and his demands at home eventually I just told him to focus on home and not worry about this all boys club over here. I believe what I told him was, “None of us can give you pussy so that automatically makes her more important than any of us.”  He agreed.

The numbers were dwindling and we hadn’t even gone through with the meeting to present our club idea and by-laws to the dominant 1% club in the area. In fact that was the first time I vetoed the members in the club. None of them were as well versed in MC culture and history as me so they didn’t understand why we had to meet with the dominant club and “ask permission” as some of them saw it. I tried to explain that it wasn’t so much asking permission but it was a necessary cleansening process that ensured the already over saturated MC community wouldn’t be bogged down with another Sucka MC.  The members voted against it and I immediately vetoed that order due to my insistence of following traditional protocol.**  

By the time I actually sat down to announce my intentions to the dominant club I was down to three members and tradition stated I needed at least five to form an official club. Because they were so impressed with how I presented my club and our intentions coupled with how buttoned up I was, they were going to allow the club to form on the contingency I got my numbers up but before they could give me their final blessing I pulled the idea of forming my own club off the table.

What was the point of forming a club with three or four members when you could just ride together without 

 the politics and weight of the MC designation on your back? Yes, I desperately wanted my own MC but it was no longer making sense. The logo I wanted was voted out, the seven members had dwindled down to four, three who showed up on time or at all, and my initial feelings of gusto were now being stonewalled by doubt and a bit of anger.  

And then I said to myself, “And you haven’t even formed a club yet and this is how you feel?”

I respected MC culture too much to half ass my way into it.

Another nagging issue I had was I felt there were already too many got-damn motorcycle clubs out here already. Did I really want to add to the congestion? Yes, I know everyone starts a club with the idea that their club is going to be different and wonderful and all that but until it does, it’s just another club and for a club to have any sort of true footprint in the community, it needs longevity. Until longevity is conceived it’s just another club to add to the mix.  I also know a few people start their own clubs to avoid the grueling prospecting period in established clubs because their egos cannot allow them to be “nobody” for a period of time but that certainly wasn’t the case for me so I had to ask myself, “Why do you want your own MC?”

The reason wasn’t as complicated as I thought it was going to be. I wanted to form my own MC because outside of a One Percent club, I knew ultimately I was going to be unsatisfied with any other type club. One Percenters*** are the top of the food chain so why would I merely want to be a link instead of being one of them. That posed a few challenges for me however.  Generally One Percent clubs aren’t integrated so the ideal clubs I would’ve wanted to prospect for would never have taken me. Secondly, the other major outlaw club I truly looked up to and respected didn’t have a NY chapter.  Third, there were no black One Percent MC’s on Long Island at the time. With the exception of a fistful of clubs, I regarded most the clubs on Long Island as Sucka MC’s (because they were ignorant of traditional MC protocol) and secondly, the larger ones were sport bike clubs and I was completely uninterested due mainly to the fact I enjoyed riding distance. Blasting up and down on the Southern State Pkwy is not motorcycling to me.  

Lastly though I had been riding for more than eleven years, most of those years spent as an independent rider. Not enough people knew me on the set that I felt I could justify launching my own club and commanding the respect a President should have not just because of his patch, but because of who he was.

I had to come to grips that it just wasn’t my time.

A Republican White House cannot govern nor be governed by a Democratic Senate. I have little patience for excuses and have even fewer patience for willful ignorance. I’m not suggesting my guys were ignorant because they most certainly weren’t,  but I realized I was bringing them into an MC culture that at times handled its business like the “old men” used to do: with fists. This was no place for some of them and it’s no place for some of you reading this blog right now.

Yes, you can become a Congressman without having served a day in your life in any formal government organization. Your mistakes may be televised nationally but this country is a forgiving one; Outlaws aren’t.  I realized mistakes made by my members could get them killed and I wasn’t prepared to deal with that. I knew I wasn’t going to form an MC that was interested in throwing trophy parties, doing fish fries or any of that common day to day bullshit. My MC would have nothing to do with social clubs, car or truck clubs and we certainly wouldn’t have any women in our ranks that weren’t Property.  I wasn’t interested in guys who had any intentions of using their bikes to get girls. I didn’t want to win any popularity contest as a club that attended every party in numbers and won trophies  (even though half your team showed up in cars)

We were going to ride. We were going to ride together. We were going to ride hard and we were going to ride far.

I wanted a traditional MC who rode American or British bikes (preferably) and dressed in all black. I didn’t want anything to do with sport bikes; it was cruiser, naked or café and no exceptions.  It was going to be an all boys thing where men could be men and where brothers if necessary, handled disagreements with punches to the face and where the jokes were always crude. Jack Daniels was what we brushed our teeth with and vodka would be considered an aperitif to whiskey. I wanted to be in a group of men who loved being with each because the love of our bikes brought us together and the love of each other’s company would keep us on the road.

Looking back on it, I still want that.

I guess in retrospect I avoided a bad marriage because with that group of guys it wouldn’t have worked though to this day we all still talk and interact in some capacity and I ride periodically with all of them, though never together.

It’s still a house divided I suppose.

Thank God I still have the keys…and the tattoo.

Stay Sucka MC Free, y’all

*I purposely seek the counsel of 1 Percents and Outlaws specifically because in terms of the MC community they are the top of the food chain and their club protocols, value and brotherhood are in my opinion, the magnum opus when it comes to all things MC. I make no apologies for my support of their MC acumen

**Many African American clubs refuse to acknowledge the dominant 1% white club because they feel since those clubs don’t come out to their functions; they shouldn’t have to go through them to do anything. It’s a small minded way of thinking and one that can get you hurt. More importantly, being the “Big Black Fish” in a little black pond never allows your club to move past a certain level. You’re beginning with limitations to your growth and influence. African American clubs should look to the history of The East Bay Dragons as a model of how to grow their clubs on the “white” side of things as well on the black hand side. (Sucka MC Blog discussing that coming soon)

***Out of pure ignorance many of you believe that One Percenter automatically means criminal activity. Truth is I know plenty of white collar people who work together to steal money from poor people. You may know some of them: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, etc. etc. One Percenters are the ultimate physical expression of brotherhood anyone in the MC community can be associated with. They put each other and their motorcycles above nearly everything else in their lives and that’s the sort of devotion I’m looking for and want. One Percenters represent ultimate brotherhood, not ideal criminality.