New Book - Band Of Bikers

You never know what you're going to find!

The recently released Band of Bikers 1962/1972 is a collection of found photographs from the sixties and early seventies and is probably the last thing you'd expect to find abandoned in a basement. Sure, there are scads of leather-clad mustache aficionados, but they're not doing what you think they're doing. At least not on-camera. Instead what emerges from this unaltered, uncaptioned, unfettered album, which author/hoarder Scott Zieher found in the basement of his apartment building after a neighbor died, is an almost shockingly sweet band of brothers escaping a fairly judgmental world with a few weekend rallies in the sticks. 

These pre-Flickr/pre-digital/pre-Photoshop subjects don't mug half as hard as their modern-day counterparts and are less concerned with getting a great Facebook profile photo than with enjoying each other's company and the serenity (and security) of the countryside. Like any found art, Band of Bikers relies heavily on context. In this case, what seems like a mundane batch of lazy Sunday photos you'd find in your parents' basement becomes a souvenir of rebellion from the days of Stonewall — when the simple act of assembly was cause for persecution.

Band of Bikers 1962/1972 is available now from powerHouse Books.

Comments

[Jack Fritscher]

Besides this insightful book, there's another new book about gay bikers--with their names.

For an eyewitness written and photographic history of 1960s and 1970s gay bikers and gay leather riders as documented in the legendary "Drummer" magazine, see the book titled "Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer -- A Memoir of the Sex, Art, Salon around Drummer Magazine from the Titanic 1970s to 1999."

This book won the gay National Leather Association award for "Best Book of the Year 2009." The trade paperback is available at amazon.com.

The author has also posted the entire text of this gay leather-biker book as a FREE leather-community service accessible to all at www.JackFritscher.com.

[Bearindfw]

This book is well worth owning just for the photographs. Its just a shame the author who found the photographs didn't do the research to provide the photos the context they deserve.

Some of the leather clubs pictured still exist. Some like the Cycle MC are long gone but information about them is out there on the web, in that case thanks to the Leather Archives and Museum.

So the book is really fun, it just doesn't have much context for the photos. But it is a glimpse into an amazing time in our collective history. Its a shame that so many of the men in the photos are not still around today.

Get a copy for your coffee table. Its a good way to introduce folks not into leather into understanding that this is a community that has been around a long time.

[Mitch Cardwell]

I've just gotten mine. It's intriguing. Good book.