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Boomer bikers bring boom to an industry

Older, wealthier motorcyclists mean the bikes are no longer anti e stablishment symbols.

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published October 16, 2006

NEW PORT RICHEY - John Connors was a teenager when he started riding, a new father when he stopped.

He was a retiree and a grandfather when he started again. Only this time around, he brought more cash.

Connors, 59, got himself a motorcycle. It is a 2005 Harley-Davidson Road King, and the retired wallpaper business owner paid nearly $20,000 for it.

"When I was a kid, it was Hells Angels," Connors said, referring to the infamous motorcycle gang. "Today it's completely different."

Different because middle-class baby boomers like Connors have created an era of prosperity for the motorcycle industry. The typical motorcyclist today is older, wealthier and better educated than he was 25 years ago. His bike can run upward of $30,000.

And that has meant motorcycles aren't the antiestablishment symbols they used to be.

The Harley-Davidson dealership in New Port Richey decorates for Halloween, sells pink baby T-shirts and places a polite note next to a set of fragile items: "Please Ask for Assistance Before Handling Cookie Jars."

And this past weekend's biker rally in downtown New Port Richey was the work not of rabble-rousers, but of two institutions that embody American establishment:

City Hall and the West Pasco Chamber of Commerce.

City Manager Scott Miller, who rides a Harley, sees the Cotee River Bikefest through the dual lenses of a motorcycle enthusiast and a civic booster. This leads him to describe the event in a way that the outlaws of yesteryear could not have predicted.

"It brings professional people to New Port Richey," said Miller, who had been riding for 40 years, since he was 16. "There's one thing about bikers: They spend money."

Taking in the view

The baby boomers, people born between 1946 and 1964, have been the driving force in motorcycle sales, says Donald Brown, a motorcycle industry analyst based in Irvine, Calif.

And the motorcycles that appeal most to baby boomers, said Brown, are the cruisers and touring bikes - as opposed to the sport bikes that younger audiences are snapping up for their intense speeds.

Boomers are less interested in going fast, and more about ambling about to soak in the scenery.

Cliff Morris, a 58-year-old New Port Richey private investigator who rides a Harley Ultra Classic, said, "You get to think a lot. It's not like when you're in a car and listening to the radio."

Like Connors, Morris rode as a young man, then took time off when he had a family. His kids grew up. He got a divorce.

"It was my time," he said. "I was 23 years behind. Once you're hooked, you're hooked."

Morris was sitting in a rocking chair in front of the Harley dealership in New Port Richey, waiting for his bike to be serviced. To answer what his motorcycle looked like, he pointed to another man's bike in the parking lot. That man's motorcycle, however, had a sticker that said "Outlaw" on it.

Morris said that word didn't sum up his draw to motorcycles. "You won't see 'outlaw' on mine."

Men aren't boys any more. Their reflexes are not as quick, their endurance not as great.

But Morris and other men said riding motorcycles has not become harder with age.

New Port Richey Mayor Dan Tipton, 54, who has a Harley with a base price of $23,000, said only one thing has become more difficult in the years since he was growing up and riding in the city.

"More cars," said Tipton, who owns an interior construction firm.

Miller said it isn't age that's a problem, but inexperience. He said he gets nervous when someone new to the sport buys a motorcycle without taking an instruction course and says, Want to ride?

Changing profiles

The history of motorcycle riding is a history of cultural shifts, class, political changes and economics.

Texas Tech University professor Randy McBee, who is working on a book about motorcycle riders, says two California motorcycle rallies in the late 1940s - Hollister and Riverside - shaped the public perception of bikers being outlaws.

McBee said his research shows that the bad behavior emphasized in media accounts at the time was not as widespread as it was portrayed. But the images lingered.

Add to that Cold War paranoia, when Americans were scrutinizing each other's behaviors and the motorcyclist, free on the open road, seemed to "reject the images of domesticity," he said.

Though the 1960s and 1970s saw increased attention on groups like Hells Angels, it was also a period when the country was importing a lot of well-made Japanese motorcycles that appealed to middle class people. The numbers of registered motorcycles exploded.

"It's when you started seeing commuters with their attache cases," McBee said.

Meanwhile amid a faltering economy and major layoffs, he said, working-class riders were being squeezed out of the market.

The 1980s marked the rise of wealthy bike owners, like stockbrokers and lawyers, who wanted the coolest machines. Around this time, Harley was turning itself around by marketing to an untapped pool of middle- and upper-middle-class people.

Money for motors

Motorcyclists say you don't have to be rich to own a motorcycle, of course. You can put some money down and finance it. You can save up.

But you certainly need more money than you used to, a fact reflected in the shrinking percentage of motorcycle owners who work blue-collar jobs.

Miller, whose Harley cost him about $22,000 in 2000, said, "These motorcycles aren't cheap."

"It's like buying a car," said Connors, who is the president of the local New Port Richey HOG Harley Owner Group chapter.

Demographic shift

In a marketing report, Brown, the motorcycle analyst, wrote that the boomers presented the motorcycle industry with "its own Endless Summer."

But every endless summer does, in fact, end. Brown said in an interview that he expects boomers to continue to gravitate towards the touring bikes, the spacious motorcycles with windshields, radios and luggage compartments. Such models are suited for a retired couple taking a slow wind through the Smoky Mountains.

The next question, he said, will be how Harley and others will do with the next big consumer market, Gen Y.

Harley started planning for the demographic shift several years ago, he said, coming out with a faster, sportier model aimed at a younger crowd.

End of the road?

Back in the rocking chairs on the porch of the Harley dealership, three middle-aged motorcycle men pondered the question: When will they ever stop?

Rick Bollinger, a residential contractor from Palm Harbor, shook his head no.

"I'll never give it up," agreed Ken Burger, a disabled veteran, also from Tarpon Springs. "When I can't get on there anymore, I'll find somebody to put me on it."

Morris thought about it a moment, and then spoke up.

"When I can't find anybody to put me on it," he said, "I'll stop."

Jodie Tillman can be reached at (727) 869-6247 or jtillman@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 16, 2006, 06:31:00]