Bike Week 2009 Article at Skatepark of Tampa

Bike Week 2009

Posted on Monday, March 30, 2009 by Ryan

Pictures by Ryan Clements and Jenna Becker
Captions by Ryan Clements

The images below can also be viewed as a slide show.

Besides the Daytona 500 last year, it had been a while since I had been to Daytona Beach. So Jenna and I took the ride over to from Tampa for Bike Week 2009
Over the past few years a lot of skateboarders have been getting into the motorcycle thing. Trendy? Cool? Not cool? Totally your call, but skateboarding will always be my first love
All day and all night, bikes ride up and down and park on Main Street to show off. This guy had a cool, old chopper and quite a crowd around him. Someone asked, "What does it sound like?" So he kick-started it up and revved the throttle. It was really loud and the cops were right on him. They wrote him a ticket
This bike is made by the same company that you see on TV that has that show American Chopper or whatever you call it. They are Orange County Choppers and this bike was sick
I wouldn't really call this thing a motorcycle
I'm the biggest fan of choppers like this one. Check out the handlebars made of pipes
I specifically took this picture so Red Bull Sarah would say something to me about it. I didn't see a Red Bull chopper all weekend, but they had their stuff going on over where the Jap bikes were located. We didn't go over to that area
I used to think, "Someday I'll own an RV and travel all around." Nowadays I'll just get one of these
This is the Cabbage Patch. It's about 15 miles SW of Daytona and it's an OG biker bar that was cool to hang at for a beer or seven
Everywhere we went we met new friends. This guy bought the entire tray of shots from the shot-girl and was giving them out for free
If she keeps growing in the middle she's going to look like she ate a keg, not just drank off one
I don't recall what in the world was going on here, but I was entertained to say the least
There was a lot of this at every bar
I was trying to get a shot of this dude's jacket and his friend tried to pull him out of the way because he thought that I was going for the girl's ass in the previous pic. When he turned around I was like, "I was actually trying to take a picture of your jacket." I thought maybe he might be pissed, but he had the opposite reaction and turned around and posed for the shot
I've read books and watched Gangland episodes on the the Mongols, Hells Angels, Banditos, etc. I'm pretty fascinated with the whole outlaw biker gang thing. So in search of different jackets at Bike Week I ran across a lot of these...not exactly what I was looking for
I'm into learning about these motorcycle clubs. Apparently the Boozefighters have been around for a long, long time...even before the Hell Angels
It's not exactly a motorcycle club, but you see a lot of US Veterans representing
As I mentioned, there was a lot of this at every bar
I really debated not using this pic, but I just had to
I've never claimed that bikers have the best attire or haircuts
When I was a kid I thought the The Guardian Angels were cool. They would roam the streets of big cities like Philly and NYC as vigilantes to protect the citizens where the police either wouldn't go to or couldn't handle the crime. I don't think that I've heard much about them in 15 years, or maybe longer, until I ran into them in Ybor one night when I was walking home from my go-to spot, Rock N Sports. There was something going on that night, but I can't remember what. Either way, the Angels were there to keep Ybor safe. If you want to join a gang, this is good choice

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