Babes With Bikes

2007-09-13
By Tiffany Forte

LaVicieia Sturdivant’s love affair with bikes started at a beauty shop, when a group of biker guys walked in.  She noticed their confidence, their swagger, their togetherness. That sold her and months later, she and a group of women from Chicago’s West Side created their own bike club.

Spectators no longer, they just had to ride.
      
Sturdivant soon joined the Entyce Ryders club, which at the time was the newest all-ladies club to hit the city’s West Side. The move looped the women into an exclusive, national family of bikers who fraternize, ride and help the community. (They also look pretty cool in their pink and black leather gear biker gear.)

They’re not the first all-chick bikers group, and they certainly will not be the last, but they are definitely part of a growing trend of female bikers who are flipping their gender roles and having fun doing it.

Good thing the fellas like it.

“They’re tired of riding on the back of men’s bikes,” observes Rickey Gadson, 40, a professional drag racer who was raced by a female biker. “There are so many women that ride now that when a woman sees another woman riding, that’s a sign of independence.”
        
At a recent Chicago gathering of sport bikers sponsored by  the #1 Stunnas bike club, some 20 percent of the crowd was female. The three-day event featured a meet-and-greet, a stunt show and a picnic. It was like a family event – though few people were related by blood. And all the women got their props.

Yet the stereotypes are still out there.
Tonya “Baby Doll” Benjamin, of San Diego’s Hurricane Biker Girls club says though her club has received much love nationwide, female clubs go through a lot to gain respect from their male counterparts.

“Because the Hurricanes are physically attractive and care about our looks, people think we’re bimbos, stuck up and can’t ride when it fact we are just the opposite,” says Benjamin.

Regardless of what personal experiences each rider has, they stay in it due to their passion and love of motorcycles and this community. Sturdivant enjoys the reactions she gets and the inspiration she gives to others—and with that comes responsibility.

She says: “Our purpose is to provide values such as respect, responsibility and unity as well as meeting the needs of the community. That’s where our mission comes in.”

See bike rally photo gallery 

Tiffany Forte is a freelance writer. She contributed to the bikers story in the October issue of EBONY.