Outlaw Country
http://metrotimes.com/culture/outlaw-country-1.1054469
A daughter exhumes her father's photos of his '60s biker brethren.
And you've not seen anything like it
By Travis R. Wright
Published: October 27, 2010
Grown men in leather, dirty beards and fingerless gloves riding
Harleys aren't always as grizzly or as grimy as they appear.
Some could be criminal lawyers, anesthesiologists or marketing gurus
in boots flaunting vicarious thrills on drop-dead expensive bikes,
with their trophy blondes and Bloomfield Hills houses in the rearview.
But this writer grew up around true-grit bikers, guys who wore
rockers and rolled patches; guys who belonged to 1-percenter
motorcycle clubs. Guys with "M/C" patches on their backs so you knew
exactly who you were dealing with. These guys weren't the casual
cruisers, they are, often, truck-stop bruisers.
American Motorcycle Clubs go back to the Depression era, but it was
the 1947 Hollister, Calif., clash between the Boozefighters ("a
drinking club with a motorcycle problem") and the local fuzz that
changed American culture. The event was somewhat immortalized,
inspiring Marlon Brando's 1953 film The Wild One and anything after
that involved two wheels and a cigarette. After the Boozefighters
fracas, the American Motorcycle Association released a statement
claiming that 99 percent of motorcyclists are law-abiding citizens,
and 1 percent are outlaws. Hence the "1 percenter" tag embraced by
hardcore motorcycle clubs the country over.
In the summer of 1935, a bunch of motorcyclists gathered at Matilda's
Bar on old Route 66 in McCook, just outside Chicago. The men entered
as unaffiliated roughnecks and left a unified gang, christening
themselves the Outlaws.
In 1963, the Outlaws were the first official 1-percenter club east of
the Mississippi. Expansion followed in '65, and the club established
charters in Milwaukee, Detroit, Cincinnati and elsewhere. By the
'70s, the Outlaws were national. Today, they roll throughout Canada
and across Europe, from Italy to Serbia, with a strong presence in
Germany. Some claim they're the largest motorcycle club in the world,
now that they've rooted in Japan and Australia.
Jim Miteff was a husband, father, biker, businessman and photographer
from Detroit. He could build a bike from the floor up before he
joined the Outlaws as a founding member of the Detroit charter in
1965. And while some in the gang tucked knives and guns into their
belts and boots, Miteff rode armed with wrenches and cameras, even on
stormy rides to Milwaukee. The local Outlaws dubbed him "Flash."
(That's him with the camera on the preceding page.)
In those days, when the various Midwestern charters were meeting
regularly under the direction of the mother chapter in Chicago, the
group was without a Detroit clubhouse, so the Miteff's home in
Dearborn Heights became a crash pad for Flash's extended family. He
documented it all too, beautifully, from the house party comings and
goings to the long highway rides, bar nights and courthouse mornings.
For what Miteff's eldest child doesn't remember, his photos filled
the gaps: "We constantly had two to 20 Outlaws at our house at any
given time," says Beverly Roberts, who only began to compile her
father's photos a few years ago. "It was a pretty crazy house.
Parties all the time. Somehow [my parents] managed to juggle it all.
We were good, educated kids. The guys were rowdy, but they were
always extremely nice to my sister and me. I actually couldn't have
felt safer. It was one huge adventure."
Miteff's photos of those early days reveal a kind of aimless
adventure and misfit anarchy, as these guys were caught between the
greaser '50s and hippie late '60s. Flash was there in the very
beginning, when they were wild, when they'd wear Nazi garb and touch
tongues for reaction.
For Miteff, the adventure lasted from 1965 to 1969 critical years
for Detroit and for the country. He left the club in good standing.
But what he documented was pure outsiderist Americana. He knew it
too. "The pictures are sacred and he kept them that way," Roberts says.
So it is that Roberts, with the blessing of the club, has published
in two volumes her dad's photos. Bringing them to light was an
adventure in itself, one that saw her reunite with a somewhat
estranged "family" and rediscover parts of herself in the process.
See, reprinting or publishing the Outlaws skull-and-pistons logo is
forbidden, or so it's said. To protect club privacy and uphold his
sworn oath, Flash made sure his images never went public.
Then, in 2008, Roberts compiled negatives for what would be Portraits
of American Bikers: Life in the '60s. The Flash Collection. First she
started selling prints at biker conventions, testing the market for
the photos. Reactions were split. People loved the photos but thought
she was crazy for printing and selling them.
"It's not my goal to expose anything about them that they don't want
the public to have access to," Roberts says. "I can respect that
because these photos were part of my private life for so long
they're like my family photo album. In publishing them, I'm also
saying, 'Here's my life, my upbringing, for the world to see and
judge.' That's as uncomfortable as anything." (Surely some won't know
what to make of all the swastikas, switchblades, bonfires and doe-eyed women.)
Roberts was also selling her dad's prints on the same eBay store
where she sold dollhouse miniatures.
People noticed, especially a few members of the Outlaws. Soon after
throwing them on the Internet, she was in touch with Jingles, a club
elder who handled its PR.
Jingles and much of the old Outlaws guard dug what Roberts was
dishing, and these books wouldn't have been possible without his
help. Unfortunately, Jingles was diagnosed with throat cancer shortly
after getting approval from the club to go forth publishing with Roberts.
"A lot of people in the club thought Jingles could be spending what
was the last year of his life in better ways than working on this
book," Roberts says. "But I worked with him and talked with him every
single day and I believe he did exactly what he wanted to the last
year of his life. And he wanted to see my relationship with the club
settled in a way that I could continue to work with them on these
books after he passed. Both of those things happened."
The Jim "Flash" Miteff photos fantastically capture the rebellion of
America's early bikers caught between eras guys who turned a
commotion into a lasting culture, two wheels at a time.
Portraits of American Bikers, Life in the 1960s: The Flash Collection
and Portraits of American Bikers, Inside Looking Out: The Flash
Collection II are self-published works by Beverly V. Roberts with the
permission of the Outlaws. A third volume is in the works.
.
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