The Motorcycle Show
I have a long history over the past twenty-five years with the New York Motorcycle Show. It is always held at the Jacob Javits Center on the West Side and it is in the winter, either in December like this year or in January, as in the past. There is nothing unique about the venue, convention halls are all mostly the same. The amazing thing isn’t that the venue looks like it did twenty-five years ago, but that the show booths themselves look exactly like they did twenty-five years ago. We all know that motorcycle technology has advanced meaningfully in the past quarter-century, so why are the booths so similar? What has changed (at least in my perception) is the average age of the showgoers. To put it bluntly, we are all mostly old now. This is a decidedly aging population. That seems a bit inconsistent with what I see on the road. What I see is an evenly spread demographic with as many young people (men and women) and many older guys with women on pillion.
I want to reach a conclusion about these observations. I suspect that unlike golf, tennis and skiing, which I do feel are going through demographic shifts that will change the landscape of those sports, motorcycling will change in many ways, but will stay attractive to younger riders. Motorcycle Shows may not appeal to younger riders for some reason and that may be what I was witnessing. I did, however note that there were two interactive booths that were getting lots of younger person attention. One was a wheelie booth where riders could don a helmet and get on an electric motorcycle set up on a bench to learn how to do wheelies. This was less about getting a bike up (we all know how easy that is to do on purpose or inadvertently) than about how to find and maintain that balance point so you can ride down the road on your back tire and impress all the surrounding motorists. That looked like a cool reason to come to a show if you are prepared to look a bit stupid. At least you go away with some sort of feel for the wheelie.
The other booth was a test ride booth, which is not so unusual at a motorcycle show (though less common in urban settings without adequate outdoor track space). What was interesting was that the bikes being test ridden were all electric. That is a clear new trend in the sport. Testing may be the only way riders can come to realize that electric motorcycles are as much or more fun that ICE bikes. Additionally, there were a number of electric bicycle manufacturers on display. Strangely, most of those bikes were not on the floor like the motorcycles such that you could straddle one and see how it sat. That may well be on purpose. Straddling a big motorcycle evokes a powerful and uplifting feeling. I imagine that straddling an electric bike might just make you feel wimpy, insignificant or unstable. The trick with electric bicycles is probably to let people test ride them since the movement ease is the big selling feature for urban youngsters. Thus, I predict that motorcycle shows will start to take the form of less look and sit events and more test ride events.
Twenty-five years ago, I saw and fell in love with the first Honda Valkyrie. It was a black and yellow beast and the ad was the best part. It laid out the full length of the eight-foot wheelbase and said, simply, “The fat lady has sung.” I bought the first to be delivered in NYC Valkyrie in that yellow and black configuration. It was a great moment in my motorcycling history to drive that unique monster up to the Marcus Dairy in Danbury to shock and awe the attendees. My long history of riding and enjoying BMW’s stands unmatched for consistent motorcycling excellence, but no single moment of motorcycling pride could match riding up on my Valkyrie.
I’ve been back to the show off and on for years and this year I went because my riding pal Chris suggested we go. We spent two hours looking at bikes and gadgets of all manner. It is harder and harder for me to find differences in models and styles. All the major manufacturers seem to offer one of every basic style in both a big (usually 1300 cc) and a medium size (650 – 800 cc). There is the crotch-rocket style we all recognize. There is the all-terrain style that is rarely really far off-road but looks adventurous. These are the clear volume winners the world over and they all have some adventurous name that involves Africa. There are also hip stripped-down street racers that are supposed to look like you threw it together in your garage and just want a big tough engine with a seat and two wheels to get you where you want to go. Everyone seems to offer some form of scooter for the new urban set, but few look different until you get to the ones that look like old garage hot rod scoots. The home-made look seems to be very in vogue.
One of the more interesting booths we saw was the Royal Enfield booth. That is a regal name that invokes the best of Triumph, BSA and Norton from the late 1960’s. Indeed, the engine blocks are all basically a 1969 Triumph 650 engine with the same mechanical aspects. Having field-stripped my 1970 Triumph TR650 Tiger on more than one occasion, I can attest to a high degree of familiarity I saw in the engine cut-away demo. It looks like nothing has changed in that engine in 50 years. What is different is that these Royal Enfields are not made in England, they are made in India. In fact, it is the fact that Royal Enfield is not a retro brand, it has been a continuously producing manufacturer of bikes that have supplied the Indian masses for the past fifty years. They have honed their cost model and the big advantage they offer is to provide a 650 cc bike in several models at price points that represents the 1969 price times the cumulative 50-year inflation of 601%. This bike is half the price of a comparably-sized competitor. If you have a good tool set, it’s probably a decent and fun buy.
The biggest difference in the show from twenty-five years ago is that I don’t have the stamina to stand around and walk around without a break to sit and relax in between booths. If these shows are going to continue to cater to the older rider set, they had better start putting in more comfortable seating so that our dwell time is not eclipsed by our lower-back stamina. So, the report on the Show is more test tracks for the youngsters and more sofas for the oldsters.
