Every year towards late August a handful of rare souls converge together to wreak havoc on the streets of Brooklyn, like some horrid natural phenomenon emerging from the sea to consume an entire city. The sheer anticipation of the solid one-night rumble attached to your motorcycle, surrounded by the sharpest cavalcade of your most trusted friends, is almost enough to say fuck it and sit at Perry’s Place in Kensington for the remainder of the night. Sense kicks in before another shot is poured and we round up the men, fire up the oil and head north in search of any blood that gets in our way.
Once on the interstate super highway, any driver to do us wrong finds a deluge of vulgar acts in their headlights, essentially making the highway a safer place for the next guy on two wheels, who may find himself in the path of the same now enlightened driver. This display of road justice may include performing sexual acts with your motorcycle tank while slowing the ignorant driver to a crawl.
After battling through heavy traffic on the BQE, we arrived at our destination at the Works Engineering shop. Now this is no back-alley, ram-shackled hut, rather, a highly-fortified, monstrous structure where we can hide from the creatures that appear after a 3:45am last call at the Matchless bar. Somewhere I had stopped taking pictures as I became too diluted with whiskey and beer, but I managed to snap off a few photos in the shop as our friend and host, Ray, entertained with new stories.
No one expects the morning to feel good. The only thing you can do is play catch-up with the weird sauce for the few hours missed while your brain rested. We rolled our bikes out from the catacombs of Works and parked them against the curb, while onlookers of the new york vintage motorcycle show took pictures and rallied down north 14th street. It is a much better show when you emerge from the inside looking out, smelling of road grease, stale booze and a wretched back ache from the floor/roof you made a bed that night—It’s the only way to prepare for this motorcycle show and looks more authentic than some wide-eyed gawker. Eventually we set out for food down Bedford Ave., looking as if some brutes were set loose from their cage. Shirtless Mike made sure to carry our strange vibes to the fullest exposing would be brunch eaters to a full chest of hair.
Somewhere around 1:30, I scouted out Manhattan in search of some threads and found no traffic to be had from Brooklyn to the tunnel (our exit strategy for later that day). I made my way back to the show and met the rest of our group.
After “looking hard” for the rest of the show, we decided to pack our remaining energy into the trip home over the Williamsburg Bridge, across Canal St., through the Holland tunnel, over the detoured Pulaski Skyway, down route one and into PA for a toll-less venture back to our philth down south.
26 responses to “Rulers’ Run”
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Jumping Jesus! That’s literature!
The Ghost of H.S. Thompson could not have explained it better.
Thank you my friend.
Sure am bummed I hadn’t known about this because it looks like a goddamn blast.
reading this was probably the best thing i’m going to do all day.
thanks devyn!
epic
Now that’s some good fucking prose. Well said and well shot Devyn!
Great writeup man! Definitely made me feel like I missed out on something legendary. There’s always next year.
Now we just need Dr. Guzzi’s photos to fill in the blanks of those lost hours.
lol this is SO GAY
That has to be the most try hard trite shite I’ve read this year. You’re trying so hard to look authentic that you’re not even slightly.
[…] Sorry guys we’re all kinda busy and bored with the site at the moment. To all the people sending feedback and recommendations we’ll get around to reading them soon. In the mean time have a good laugh and read this, been cracking us up ever since we saw it. https://www.chinonthetank.com/2013/08/rulers-run/ […]
I’ve seen that “Bullshit Hipster” website. It’s for aging sport bike riders who miss the 1990s. They post videos, and then they reassure themselves that they are better than other riders by making subpar jokes and agreeing with one another. It’s like a men’s support group for aging bros and crotch rocket riders. It’s quite sad actually. Anyway, those guys are f*gs.
Fuck me drunk. This is some of the lamest shit I’ve ever read, and some of the lamest posing I’ve ever seen. What a pack of soft-cock tryhards.
Oh yeah and how fucking dare you compare this to HST’s work. You cunts really are clueless.
Ben, you are a moron! HST would never be seen with the likes of these punk bitches.
Hi Devyn. I see that the Bullshit Hipster Bike Videos guy, Harvey, is complaining because he feels vastly inferior to you. That’s funny. He’s a sport bike Ducati rider who runs a Kwik-E-Mart in Sterling, Virginia called High Up Food Mart. He’s Apu from The Simpsons but he wants to be Rob Van Winkle from Cool as Ice.
I don’t even ride motorcycles, but to me it looks like a bunch of people desperately trying to recreate 60s motorcycle culture by shopping around for vintage clothes and old, shitty bikes. It’s a bunch of bros trying to look like some kind of Hells angels, non conformist motorcycle gang. I’m pretty sure all you guys have real jobs and work like everyone else. Wake up, you’re no different than any other wannabe motorcycle group in any other big city in the country. It’s easy to look at old pictures and go out and buy old clothes, old bikes and get wasted and try to be shitty on the weekend before you go back to your design job on Monday. Wake up boys, you’re just the same as every other boring person on a bike.
What trend are you gonna buy into in 5 years once motorcycles aren’t cool anymore? By the way, why do you feel like it’s necessary to document this stuff? Why not go out and just do it for fun with your friends? Come up with something different boys, it’s already been done, you’re really not that as cool as you think you are. See you on the next bandwagon.
Hahaha I love the troll comments. Getting made fun of by the internet is pretty entertaining.
Damn, you guys really have a hard-on for us. If you look at this post in the context of the rest of the site, this is just us having fun. There’s everything from a honda cub to a ducati 1098 in our group and this site is chaulk full of how-to’s and motor rebuilds. At least we offer something constructive as opposed to an anonymous hipster-bashing website that spews nothing but self-righteous negativity. Sorry we fucked your girlfriend.
@Devyn
Come on man, that’s totally out of line… you know the guys who run hipster bike website do not have girlfriends. haha
Let me see if I understand this correctly.. you ride your bikes to a bar, get drunk, get back out on the road and be stupid, bragging about riding intoxicated, eventually ending up at a buddy’s garage where you thankfully park and commence your nonsense on foot.
Then a bike show happens the next day and the highlight is a member of your group with chest hair that dares to bare it to the world (omg the nerve) and then you buy pants and ride home while calling yourself “Philth.” Way to go, thats as cool as giving yourself a nickname. I sure hope we never meet in a dark alley, I might be inspired to …ah, lost it. It was gonna be good tho, Hunter S Thompson would’ve approved. Oh well, I’m glad your chronicled all this so we know how cool you are. And im glad you’ve got a diverse mix of bikes too. I genuinely am. And don’t worry, I have a normal job too, thats why we met on the internet and not how real bikers meet. See, neither of us are who you and your posse are pretending to be. And thats ok too, because those ppl are all about 60 now. So keep playing dress up and making the rest of us mostly law abiding average Joe’s look like asses too. Dont forget to write about it in your journal and put in on the internet for us to give you the attention you desperately crave. You’re welcome 🙂
^^^ What does this guy want to do to us in a back alley?
Great story Devyn. Thank-you. It sounds like you had a lot of fun.
I like your blog. Keep up the good work.
The pictures are great, but it is your writing that is a masterful distillation, extracting the true essence of what it means to be a douche bag hipster.
“Once on the interstate super highway, any driver to do us wrong finds a deluge of vulgar acts in their headlights, essentially making the highway a safer place for the next guy on two wheels, who may find himself in the path of the same now enlightened driver. This display of road justice may include performing sexual acts with your motorcycle tank while slowing the ignorant driver to a crawl.”
Really? You guys are idiots. Unfortunately, we’ll end up reading about someone from your posse catching a cap in their ass (or brain) from some even more idiot, unstable cage driver. Get extremely drunk, and ride down the highway. Nice job guys…
I enjoyed this!!!!! some excellent bikes at that show. fuk these klownz that cant take a joke.
Wankerfest.