KALAMAZOO, Mich. – Booze. Nudity. Exploding road kill. Swarms of exhaust- and noise-spewing two-wheeled vehicles racing around town, raising heck.
Sounds like just another motorcycle rally, except that the gangs of bikers who converge on this western Michigan town every Memorial Day weekend to race, carouse and annoy the local population all have brought rides they can pedal when they run out of gas.
Welcome to the Sturgis of mopeds.
Mopeds, in case you don’t know, are cheap, pokey, puny, lightly regulated motorbikes that you can also pedal like a bicycle to get started, which also is useful when the engine quits, or when the hills get too steep for the little 50 cubic centimeter motor.
They enjoyed a brief spasm of popularity in the United States about 30 years ago, thanks to an oil embargo and an energy crisis. JC Penney even sold a model once.
But even back then, they were a bit of a joke. If motorcycles are macho Marlon Brando in “The Wild One,” and scooters are romantic Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday,” then mopeds are nerdy Jimmy Carter in a cardigan sweater lecturing a wasteful nation to turn down its thermostats.
So, no surprise that when gas prices went back down, the machines were relegated to the back of the garage by owners too embarrassed to be seen riding them.
But now that gas prices are back up, mopeds are back, too.
In the past few years, the dinky bikes that can get 100 miles to the gallon but only go 30 miles per hour are enjoying a weird little renaissance as hundreds of young riders are recovering, restoring, riding and racing vintage mopeds older than themselves.
They’ve created a subculture of the dorky cool, turning the dinky motorbikes into souped up, pimped out machines, going on cross-continental rides and forming chapters of what they call the Moped Army (www.mopedarmy.com, motto: “Swarm and Destroy”).
And like Hunter S. Thompson, who rode and wrote about the Hell’s Angels in the 1960s, last weekend the Pioneer Press decided to go along for a little two-stroke mayhem.
EPICENTER OF THE REVOLUTION
Dozens of riders were gathered Friday afternoon outside 1977 Mopeds, a moped-only shop in downtown Kalamazoo owned by Daniel Webber Kastner.
“I think we’re more of a gang than a club,” said Kastner, one of the founders of the Moped Army.
When the Moped Army began here 10 years ago, the handful of riders in town started having a Memorial Day barbecue to ride, fix bikes and share knowledge.
Now it’s “literally the biggest moped event in U.S. history,” Kastner said. He was expecting 300 riders this year in what’s grown into a sort of moped version of Sturgis, the famed South Dakota motorcycle rally.
One of the riders was Zac Amendolia, a 24-year-old who came with the San Francisco Moped Army branch called Creatures of the Loin.
Amendolia has been riding only about a year, but he brought a custom moped that he built, a hybrid of a Puch engine welded onto a Kreidler frame, painted in radioactive green glow-in-the-dark paint and wired with LED running lights.
Mopeds originally were powered with engines of about the same size used on a decent chainsaw, but artist/waiter Amendolia and other have tweaked their rides with bigger cylinders, new tail pipes and other performance enhancements.
What appeals to young riders, said Amendolia, is that vintage mopeds are cheap and easy to customize. “It’s the closest thing to the ’50s hot-rod culture going on,” he said.
They are the anti-SUV, fans say. They use little fuel, and they’re small and light enough to park on sidewalks and haul inside apartments – perfect for a city like San Francisco, where it’s often impossible to find a space for an ordinary vehicle, Amendolia said.
Parking hassles sparked a moped presence in Kalamazoo, said local resident Chad Burke, a 29-year-old Pfizer microbiologist who owns 150 mopeds. When Western Michigan University started charging several hundred dollars for on-campus parking, people used that money to buy mopeds and park at bike racks for free.
As a youth, Burke started buying used mopeds in town for as little as $50 each. Now his basement and garage, his mom’s garage and his friend’s garage are filled with his collection of about 150 different machines. “It’s somewhat of a compulsion,” he said.
His bikes once were exhibited in an art gallery and come from around the world, everywhere except America. “There weren’t ever any mopeds made in the United States,” he said.
LOW COST, FEWER RULES
A new moped can cost about $1,000 to $1,800. But that’s still cheaper than the bigger-engine scooters, moped fans say. “Scooters are dumb,” said San Francisco rider Dominique Lewis. “They’re for chicks with high heels.”
Another plus for mopeds: Most states have fewer regulatory requirements for mopeds compared to cars or motorcycles. In some places, a moped doesn’t need to be insured or registered.
“You’re living off the grid,” said Nate Eversole, a moped rider from Louisville, Ky., who rode the 375 miles to Kalamazoo on his moped, towing a broken moped the last few miles.
“I only ride mopeds. I don’t own a car,” said Pat Lowery, a 32-year-old stagehand from a Virginia Moped Army chapter called Hell’s Satans.
Part of the point of the moped movement seems to be stretching the performance of a vehicle that seems inherently limited.
“It’s taking the absolute minimum vehicle and pushing it to the absolute limits of speed and distance,” said Dave Brzezicki, a 32-year-old moped rider from Kalamazoo.
If you think you can’t get very far on a moped, consider Graham French and Lee Levenberg, a couple of San Francisco riders who used the rally to screen the world premiere of their documentary film, “Moped to South America” (www.mopedtosouthamerica .com), about an epic 13,000-mile, five-month ride last year on 1979 Puch Maxis from San Francisco to the southern tip of Argentina.
“It was a bad idea,” said Levenberg, 19.
“It was a good idea,” said French, 26. “I don’t know, why did we do it?”
It may be the first movie in which moped riders are depicted as heroes instead of nerdy losers. But the moped riders at Kalamazoo say they embrace their disco-era machines precisely because of their reputation as the geekiest thing on wheels.
“Anyone can get on a Harley and look cool,” said Josh Dahl, a 31-year-old teacher and moped rider from Boston. “On a moped you need to earn your cool.”
Is it cool or ridiculous to turn a moped into a chopper? Or to drag-race mopeds? Maybe it’s a little of both. “They’re kind of an enigma to some degree,” Burke said.
But until recently, moped love often was a solitary pleasure. Many moped riders said they didn’t know there were others into the machines until they discovered the Moped Army. “Detroit is not like a big moped town,” Gabe Cherry said, 30, a Detroit ad agency writer.
“I’m probably the only one in town who has a moped,” said Mark “Salty” Soltvedt, of Black Creek, Wis.
But at the Kalamazoo barbecue, mopeds choked the streets as packs roared around town, barhopping or on long rides along country roads, with frequent pauses to fix mechanical problems. Wherever they went, they raised a piercing din like a herd of angry lawnmowers.
“Riding in a group, man, there’s nothing to compare to it,” said Harold Smith, a moped rider from Arizona who shot off fireworks as he rode.
At a party, hundreds of riders filled a closed bar’s parking lot, shooting fireworks at each other, spinning their machines around in a circle and getting drunk. “Most of these rallies end with blood and police,” said Tyler Emrick, a 20-year-old Kalamazoo resident.
The Puddle Cutters – riders from Portland, Ore. – got out a knife and started cutting themselves and then smearing their blood on dollar bills. It was an initiation rite of paying “blood money” to join the chapter, explained one rider. To complete the ritual, you can tattoo stitches over your scar, he said.
It’s not uncommon to see boxing and nudity at the rally. “Think of it as a really crazy family reunion,” said Amber Adams, a Western Michigan University student.
During the long weekend, the moped riders drag-raced on a two-lane country road, lying on their bellies on their bike seats to reduce wind resistance. They wiped out in the mud during dirt races. They stuffed a dead woodchuck with fireworks, spray painted their bodies, got tattoos at an outdoors tattoo station and bleated their joy buzzer horns.
There were bands and karaoke and a custom bike show and a no-rules race (“please try not to die or get hurt … severely”), where riders decided for themselves whether to ignore the traffic signals and one-way-only street signs in the downtown to be first.
“It’s where we basically get in trouble with police,” said Kalamazoo rider Charles Mercadal.
Chris Stewart, a 28-year-old Chicago art director, said the growing moped scene now includes young urban professionals, old-school motorheads and “hipster dork kids,” who somehow all seem to get along.
“They’re wild and crazy, and they mess things up,” said Brzezicki, “but if you’re in trouble, just say the word and there’s 100 people who will have your back.”
Richard Chin can be reached at rchin@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5560.
