Made In The USA: Grifter
I'm putting this up on Saturday just to make sure you aren't tempted to watch it at work. Just look at the redhead in particular. My G-d, I was born twenty years too soon.
When I was at See See Motor Coffee in Portland a couple of months ago, I tried on a few Grifter items and ended up buying a set of their bison-skin natural-finish gloves. So far they've held up very well to all sorts of weather conditions. Compared to the TourMaster gloves I used previously, they are more comfortable, offer more security when trying to grip the handlebars in wet weather, and do not transfer any dye to my hands. They also look pretty bad-ass.
On the negative side of the ledger, the gauntlet portion of the gloves is far too short. Part of the reason you wear gloves on a motorcycle is to protect those vulnerable blood vessels in the wrists, and I don't like the way the Grifters terminate about in the middle of the joint.
If you watch the video or look at their website, however, you'll see that Grifters are not meant to be part of a comprehensive touring-motorcycle safety package. They're for the kids in the Pacific Northwest or Paris or Tokyo who want you to see their tattoos when they're riding. Nor am I anywhere close to the proper demographic for their clothing, although I was riding a cafe'd-out Honda CB in 1999 back when the Grifter model guy on their website with "peaceinsidemyhead" tattooed on his forehead still had training wheels on his bicycle.
More impressive to me than their almost try-hard adherence to the hipster aesthetic is their straightforward commitment to American manufacturing. So I'll be buying a few more things from their catalog, although it will no doubt grieve their marketing team to know that one of their more visible product endorsements comes from a middle-aged father who paid for his YZF600R back in the day by writing a computer program. And I remain entirely un-tatted.
Scars, on the other hand? Scars I have. I've suffered and inflicted enough scarring in my life to ensure that if I ever had "peaceinsidemyhead" tatted anywhere, it would be a lie. There's a great scene in the first season of "True Detective" where some biker pal of Matthew McC's says, "I embrace the outlaw lifestyle!" or something like that. Plenty of people think you can tattoo yourself into the outlaw lifestyle, but here's the truth: before the needle touches the skin, you know if you're really cut out for it, and so does everyone who has ever loved you.