Iron & Resin Hooligan Hoedown (Photo: Nathaniel Chaney)
“Millennials are killing” insert anything that is showing signs of declining sales in the last couple of years. If all of these headlines are true then motorcycles, according to CNBC, are next on the list of doomed industries. Apparently the hundreds of riders who attended this years Iron & Resin Hooligan Hoedown didn’t get the message.
Of the many events hosted by Iron & Resin each year, Hooligan Hoedown is a personal favorite. Heading out with a crew of riders, crisscrossing the countryside and rolling up at a campout populated with other bikers. What could be better? Sharing stories, entering crazy jousting matches, and listening to quality music are only some of the festivities at the campout. I’ve been for the past two years and both were special in their own way. Furthermore, one of the best parts is watching all the various bikes and owners hanging out together enjoying the last rays of California summer.
Motorcycle jousting; the main event of Hooligan Hoedown (Photo: Nathaniel Chaney)
While walking around the campground it struck me how the majority of riders were around my age (31) or younger. My personal experience just doesn’t jive with the news blaming slumping sales in America on millennials. Yes California is the highest motorcycle owning state, but it’s also one of the biggest states. I’ve met tons of people through Instagram that share a passion for motorcycles and are millennials.
European Riding
On a recent trip to Spain it is amazing to see how many people ride vespas and motorcycles—especially young adults. In fact, motorcycle sales in Europe continue to trend in a upward direction since the financial crisis. One of the reasons for this could be attributed to many Europeans getting their first introduction to the freedom of driving on the family scooter instead of the family car like in America. Also distances driven are significantly shorter in Europe. Many towns are close together and full of tiny alleys where motorcycles and scooters make practical sense. One resident we chatted with made the comment that Americans measure distance in time rather than kilometers, adding to a sense of how Americans view distance differently. We have wide open spaces where we drive massive motorhomes, SUVs, and trucks that act as second homes.
Riders taking a break and sharing good times (Photo: Nathaniel Chaney)
Also while motoring around Spain (and other countries for that matter) there is a distinct difference in biker culture. Mainly, riders do not give each other the ‘motorcycle wave’. Why? Because if you were to do that in Europe your hand would almost never touch your handlebars. Motorcyclists in Europe seem to be riding as much out of need as for enjoyment. However, in America most of us ride less out of a requirement to commute* then as a hobby. We ride to get away, we ride for freedom and we wave in solidarity to others that reaffirm our life choices and join us on the road. It’s passion that we see when we look at our bikes and dream about them at work.
Motorcycles: Hobby or Passion
Of my wife and I, one of us (her) came from a motorcycle family were both parents rode. On the other hand, no one in my family rode motorcycles. So I wasn’t introduced to the culture when I was growing up. Other than a few fantasies of owning a bike I probably would have never tried it. However, Alex (my wife) threw the gauntlet down by signing up for the CHP motorcycle safety class. With this in mind, I wonder how others who didn’t grow up in motorcycle families come to the hobby? I don’t have answers to these questions, but I sure would love to here your stories in the comments below.
Motorcycling, unlike other pursuits, requires a bit of an investment to get started. Unless you grew up on dirt bikes, you have to wait till you can get a license before you can ride. Then there are the start up costs of buying a bike, getting the gear, dealing with insurance. That can be a mighty hurdle for younger adults to get over in order to get on a bike. Combine this with the fact that driving in general is down among youth in America and it’s no wonder there is a decline in ridership.
So maybe motorcycling is shrinking in the US. And maybe millennials aren’t riding in as great a numbers as their parents. Yet, what I saw this last weekend at Hooligan Hoedown were young people, rolling up on everything from retro classics, to cruisers, to ADV bikes sharing laughs, stories of the road, and most of all passion for these wonderful machines that let us grip freedom and braaap the hell out of it.
Geeky Stats
*As a side note, just to support my inklings, according to a Pew research center poll about 14% of households in America own a motorcycle or scooter (but for this I will just assume motorcycle). In 2016 there were 125.82 million households in America. And according to a 2013 U.S. Census Bureau study of commuting, so few responded with ‘motorcycle’ that this was grouped in under “Other means of travel”. All ‘other means’ only represented 1.3% of all commuters.
So doing a little back-of-the-napkin calculations: 14% of 125.82 million households is roughly 17.6 million motorcycles (this excludes people that own multiple bikes and obviously all bikes that are not street legal). Now multiplying 17.6m by 1.3% (here I am assuming that all ‘other means’ are using motorcycles) would give you 228,992 possible commuters. This number is probably highly overstated, but using it as a base then 228k motorcycle commuters would represent only 2.8% of the 8,385,327 registered motorcycles according to the department of transportation.