r/BoomersBeingFools • u/CyanShadow42 • 1d ago

What is it with boomers and Harleys?

Some background: I am a lifelong motorcyclist, who likes to do lots of different kinds of riding, so I have a few different bikes. I'm also a bad influence and people who spend much time around me usually end up riding too, so my wife now rides and has a bike of her own. Between us we've got 5 bikes in the garage, all different types, and none of them Harleys because all of them together don't add up to the price of a new Harley and if I wanted that kind of bike I'd rather buy a Royal Enfield for all the 1940's tech without the $25,000 sticker on the gas tank.

The other day my MIL, the boomiest baby boomer to ever boom, upon seeing our garage, comments that she's "never seen so many motorcycles" with disgust almost dripping from the words. I point out that in her own neighborhood, I've seen a few garages with several Harleys that look almost identical except for color and a few accessories and suddenly having multiple bikes seems okay in her mind. I wish that was the only case of boomers being like "motorcycles bad but Harleys good" I've experienced, but it's just one of the more obvious and recent instances. Make it make sense please.

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u/OblivionGuardsman 1d ago

Following WWII and Korea guys came back and had GI pay money burning a hole in their pocket and the advancement of motorcycles and the expansive construction of the interstate highway system under Eisenhower made them popular. Soldiers that had been through the shit saw motorcycles as a way to travel freely and fast and became a symbol of American individualism and rebellion against the settling down and just accepting you're a 9-5 lunch pail guy that ignores his past. Harleys were basically a PTSD coping mechanism that became seen as this symbol of machismo. Boomers saw their dad's were into it and it became a thing they carried on. Remember, everything boomers like is a twisted projection of the things their parents valued, they tried to be good little sheep but their warped minds and hearts lost the essence of it but kept the bullshit.

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u/CyanShadow42 1d ago

That explains the Harley side of the equation (and I've heard similar in a few documentaries so I have no reason to doubt it) but it doesn't explain why all other bikes are "bad" in their minds. Seems like every argument I've heard would apply equally to Harleys as well, and the really old guys I met on Harleys thought my Triumph was cool.

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u/OblivionGuardsman 1d ago

Because most other bikes were produced by the former Axis nations, BMW, Honda, etc.

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u/CyanShadow42 1d ago

I wish that didn't make sense because I can see them saying that while unironically driving a Toyota...

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u/OblivionGuardsman 1d ago edited 1d ago

They used to say it. It took a long time before japanese cars were accepted in the market. My WWII gen grandpa told me as a kid to never buy Mitsubishi cars because they made the engines for the Japanese Zero. I can't really blame the generation that was actually shot at and bombed by Zero's, and German fighters powered by Mercedes-Benz predecessors. The boomers carried on the tradition of anti-axis products but softened on the German stuff and eventually the Japanese stuff after everyone realized it was actually better quality than U.S. vehicles. But a lot of that has still carried over into motorcycles, which culture has a large segment of white nationalism that parade around as "clubs". But they are really just cells of hate groups.

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u/CyanShadow42 1d ago

I mean... I don't want a Mitsubishi but that's more because I'm a subie guy and the WRC rivalry.