Mutant Bike Culture Past and Present Johnny Payphone Rat Patrol Chicago

In the past, there was no mutant bike culture. All bikes were mutant bikes: nobody knew what a bicycle was supposed to look like! For a hundred years, bicycle makers (often individual craftsmen) constructed a great variety of human powered vehicles in an attempt to improve the industry-and what was better was not always what persisted. At that time, it was quite natural to travel at pennyfarthing-height; after all, men and women had gotten around at that height for centuries. Bikes that tall were “ordinary,” and when the now-common diamond frame was invented it was called a “dwarf safety.” Tallbikes as we think of them now were also common, both for lamplighters and for exhibitions and parades. Wacky bikes big and small prevailed. The chopper, however, is a more mysterious phenomenon.

Whatever route it took, the chopper can undoubtedly be traced from disgruntled WWII vets chopping motorcycles, to kids modifying bikes in the early 1960s. Thus began a Silver Age of mutant bikery, when every kid had his forks jammed down into the blades of another pair. Flipped-frame tallbikes were common, and in April 1964, Popular Mechanics ran an article on how to make a tallbike (history says Jake took this article to Per to ask him for help in making the first Black Label tallbike.) Then the Eighties came along, and the culture diminished a bit—though lone wackos continued to freakbike as junk frames from the tenspeed boom became more and more available. So what caused the current explosion? The Internet certainly had something to do with it, and many people have been inspired by the C.H.V.N.K. 666 website. I think the culture of waste has had a lot to do with it too, as well as the entrenchment of punk culture.When you've got a bunch of bikes laying around, and a bunch of broke DIY-ers, eventually a bike's gonna get chopped. I like to think of the simultaneous arrival of CHVNK and the Black Label Bike Club (in the early 1990s) as similar to the appearance of pyramids in both South America and Egypt. The two styles—choppers and tallbikes—vary, but both were certainly inspired by the intervention of some higher force. M23 of the Rat Patrol UK refers to this as the Great Freewheel, and it is the same force that names your bikes, causes you to miraculously survive deadly traffic situations and causes whatever junk you were just thinking you needed to appear in the alley. Another manifestation of this force may be the fact that no matter where you go the world over, freakbikers get along. With the influence of the CHVNK site came the second wave of clubs, like SCUL, CRUD, Cyclecide, Dead Baby, the Choppercabras, and Rat Patrol. These are the ones I heard about when I first became aware of the culture in 2002, and if I have neglected any I would love to hear about them.

Nowadays, of course, there are clubs in every city in North America. Punk kids everywhere are disaffected and living off of waste. We've lost our ties to our past, but we still have an innate need to belong to a tribe, so “gangs” arise in many subcultures as surrogate families. Clubs have sprung up in other countries, such as the UK, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands; freakbikers visiting the developing world have left the love of tallbikes and choppers behind. Most famously, a member of SCUL brought freakbikes to the Andes, Rat Patrol brought them to Guatemala, and members of the BLBC inspired freakbikes in Thailand. But no club is spreading throughout the world more insidiously than the Scallywags.

Scallywags travel abroad on missionary trips and immediately set to welding up bikes with the Christians they meet. The only culture more club-prone, crafty, and free of worldly wealth than the punks are the Christians, and there are armies of Christian punks out there. Scallywags have spread this way to Poland, Brazil, and New Zealand; the previous page shows tallbike fire jousting between Minneapolis and New Zealand Scallywags.

With Europe secure, Rat Patrol turned its attention to other continents. I traveled to Ghana for six months to form Rat Patrol Ghana, and fellow Rat Danny Danger soon followed with a four-month stint there, followed by a year in Tanzania to form Rat Patrol Tanzania. Since America will always be a battleground, Africa is our stronghold.

Conquering South America is proving to be more troublesome. Bike freakery is rampant there; the bicimachinas of Maya Pedal have technology more advanced than our own, and I predict that this continent will hold its own as mutant bike culture goes global. Australia has been secured by the Rat Patrol OZ, but the most bike-friendly continent is also the most elusive. To my knowledge, no club has yet established a chapter in Asia. I've heard of no solid bike clubs—only whispers of individuals in Sri Lanka, or the odd picture of a tallbike from India. Should any bike club wish to join the battle for world supremacy, they would be wise to avoid the turf battles of Western vs. Eastern Europe, or Oz vs. New Zealand, and instead pluck the ripe fruit that is Asia.

You can hear my appearance on NPR discussing our international efforts by going to: www.chicagopublicradio.org/worldview/ and clicking on the chopper.