Death of a Biker Bar
By Mike O'Rourke
Although I no longer imbibe, ride a motorcycle, or frequent bars, the demolition of a biker bar emits reverberations in the psyche. Its disappearance is a metaphor of the uniquely American organization of life in the U.S. today.
A rock thrown in a pond propagates concentric ripples. Submerged volcanos propel tsunamis. The death of stars impacts the galaxy.
In a blazing hot market, skyrocketing real estate lures developers. A bar owner can retire comfortably. And just like that, bulldozers arrive.
Swarms of bikers congregate. All differ in beliefs, cultures, ethnicities. They’re of varying financial status.
The trip itself shares, at the very confluence of a Venn diagram, a collective thumbing of nose against structured, orderly society, and a veneration of and longing for the wild.
Many motorbike aficionados find an economical mode of transportation. My friend who needed more ends on his candle plowed into a stop-light-runner and died.
The cowboys of our heritage moved to the city from the arid rural West, along with the hillbillies from the South, where they obtained jobs. The relocation from countryside to cities is a defining aspect of the twentieth century’s first half (cf. Larry McMurtry, In A Narrow Grave, 1968, Encino Press.)
Hunter S. Thompson, in his book Hell’s Angels (1967, Random House) documented the group’s motorcycle trips.
The film Easy Rider trippingly extolled the cross-country trip, its subversiveness a homeric Odyssey.
Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey wrote sagas of riding across the country.
Truckers today are the backbone of the country’s skeletal structure, in high demand as the heated economy surges. Many immigrated here with valuable skills honed abroad.
A voyage into the great outdoors rails against life’s uncertainties. In the song A Horse With No Name, the band America said, “Under the cities lies a heart made of ground / But the humans will give no love.”