Bikers Beware

If you've never spent a sunny afternoon in a biker bar surrounded by heavily bearded, heavily tattooed, heavily drinking and leather clad members of the UMF whose every other word is a loud and enthusiastic obscenity, which they often have to shout to be heard over the steady rumble of the decked out Harley Davidsons...well, you've been culturally deprived.   The air is blue with exhaust fumes and foul language, the laughter is raucous and filled with sexual innuendo, the beer flows like a river and clearly, no body part is exempt from piercing.
On stage, the musicians go slightly wild, they gyrate and shimmy and slam bodies - the crowd loves it and screams for more.

It's not, as they say, my first rodeo but it is the first truly close and extended encounter with this many of them in a relatively small space.  I find a barstool close to the stage, order my diet coke and leave the change in a donation can - the gathering is to raise money for a fellow musician whose recent heart attack has left him unable to work or pay the bills - and the bikers have turned out in force.  They're a rough looking crowd in their ragged blue jeans and opaque blue sunglasses, most all wear sleeveless black tee's under the traditional black leather UMF vests, each colorfully decorated with patches promoting guns, bikes, drugs, freedom and republicans.  I'm out of my element, I realize, feeling very much like a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs but I've come to photograph and photograph I will.  It's broad daylight, I tell myself, and surely these people can't possibly be as menacing and dangerous as I'm tempted to think.  I pick out one, a grizzled,  heavy set individual with an eye patch, slouched against a railing with both grimy fists wrapped around a beer, and tap him on the shoulder.

Hey, I tell him, raising my Nikon and giving him what I hope is a friendly grin, Look over your shoulder at me.

To my surprise he obliges.  You want I should smile?  he asks in a voice somewhere between a growl and a nicotine raspy whisper.

I consider this for a fraction of a second and then instinctively say no.

Thanks, I tell him.

Welcome, he tells me back and shrugs.

After that it gets easier - I point my camera, they pose, I shoot.  The danger has all been in my mind and when I pack up to leave, a husky, bald headed biker with insanely bad teeth and a Hatfield-McCoy beard gives me a grin and slings my camera bag over his shoulder.

Lemme git that for ya, little lady, he says and gives me a wink.

I wouldn't dream of refusing.  Bikers are people too.