I ride a Sports bike… yeah an old clanger (thanks you tarts 
) and I know a lot of people on here also on Jap Plastic Fantastic. There’s also a lot of Street Fighter style and learners… BUT, and here’s the rub… we’re all bikers, so I guess the real question is, if you are one of that “Harley” lot (I know, I’m a “walk the fine line” kinda guy) do you feel welcome here, or is LB a Jap/Sports style site or is it genuinely a "London Bikers] " kinda place… ?
Whaddya reckon eh… ?
I haven’t see any HD riders on LB rideouts. :Whistling:
Considering we have people on cruisers, scooters, tourers, trikes and sports bikes, etc, etc, etc…to name but a few…I certainly don’t think this site panders to one group.
bikerboy mark used to take his Buell on the odd rideout…just to make everyone else feel superior :D:D:D
but dont see many cruisers on rideouts, get the odd nutcase like 7wheels out on his trike scaring the bejeezus outta peeps :D:D
Out here in Spain it’s the Jap riders who are “that bunch”. Loads of retirees riding new Harleys around making lots of noise and they don’t like it if we tail their ride outs on normal bikes… They are known as “The 45 MPH Club” so we don’t stay with them longer than possible…
Last year someone had a Harley on one of the BCRs :w00t:
So gutted I missed out on that one !
in my experiance when people come to LB stuff like BMM , no one cares what you ride, its all about 2 wheels, or maybe 3 and occasionally 7 !!
seen sports bike riders admiring the Harleys etc and visa versa, might not be your bike choice but you have to admire them.
perhaps its some particular groups of riders eg harleys that generally choose not to get involved with LB , i know ive always been welcome at HOG meets in the past on my Honda…
each to their own , but i generally think everyone is and has been made welcome by LB’ers.
Ok…while it is certainly true that lb members are very accepting of riders of any type of bike, it is dominated by sports bikes and shall i say main-stream bikers and bikes .
Not a bad thing because i think that is very much where the ‘brand’ is pitched and some may not like the use of that term but i am pretty sure advertisers on the site are not attracted by the number of people who really join in with the rideouts and meets they see the stats provided by jay .
Main stream bikers are often dismissive of other groups and bunch a lot of them in the ’ hairy biker ’ brigade with no understanding of the lifestyles .
But it goes both ways , i had hardley even spoken to a modern sports bike rider before joining lb .
Next time you are reading whatever bike mag you read in wh smiths take a minute to read the 'whats on 'sections in back street heroes or 100% biker…the odd harley and one trike at an lb meet probably won’t seem very significant then .
And just for the record i would class harley riders ( as opposed to bikers that ride harleys ) as being very much in the mainstream these days so don’t really understand why the don’t have a larger presence on lb .
You’re right… in that biking in general is seen as pretty mainstream these days.
When I started (mid-80s), there weren’t that many bikes on the road, and we were seen as rebel bad-boys, often up to no good.TBH, we did all we could to encourage this view, and you would never see a fellow in the city on a bike.We were all 350 LCs, bomber jackets and doc martens, terrorising high streets in the evening and falling off in the countryside at the weekends.
From what I’ve seen of LB, it caters equally to everyone
OK, there is a majority of sportsbikes on here, but that just reflects the UK market.Hell, even scooters are catered for - something that would have been laughable in a motorcycle club when I were a lad.
i did on a bcr run once, bloody thing shifted, happened to be the time i come off tooo…hmmmm im blaming the hd then 
not forgetting when ben had a little midlife crisis and bought one 
Nice that we seem to be welcoming of anything on two wheels…but…what if a BMW C1 turned up? That would test our inclusivity;)…lol
As an aside - I couldn’t remember the name of said bike and mistakenly googled BMW C2 - might be a cage - but that’s some cage…http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=c2+bmw&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&start=0
Im not feeling very welcome anymore… Where is the mention of supermoto’s? 
We are the ones that keep up the hooligan name :w00t::D:cool:
I only got into online bike forums after I emerged from my 10-year custom bike phase (during which I owned a Virago 750). Didn’t really get into the “Virago Owners Club” scene as I couldn’t really relate to the other members, from the ones I met at bike shows. Never got into mainstream online fora as I assumed they would all be sportsbike-oriented so no way I could keep up on rideouts, and didn’t fancy being the object of others’ ridicule, and otherwise felt no real need to join. Getting the Bandit changed all that. Having been on this site and TLB the past couple of years, I now realise my fears were misplaced.Many who buy a Harley also buys into the lifestyle which means sticking to your own, and generally not mixing so much with non-Harley riders, which probably explains why there are so few (if any) Harley owners on this site.
I think this is a great pity as Harleys, and custom bikes generally, are an important facet of biking culture and history, and regardless of your view of those bikes, they are at the end of the day still motorcycles and the riders face the same dangers and discomforts as we do.
And having ridden a few Harleys myself, I can tell you that they are not as slow as some would lead you to believe. A Heritage Softail ridden properly during a Jetstream rideout by someone who (unlike me) knows what they are doing, would put many an LB power-ranger to shame, I can tell you :laugh:
Isn’t it a persons attitude not what he rides? Isn’t that he rides more important?
We can break bikers in to many sub divisions such as commuter, fair weather rider, racer, weekend warrior ettc. But isn’t that you are social and friendly enough.
I feel excluded already!
Okay ~ definitely not one of those ‘Harley’ lots. I don’t have ‘MOMMY’ tatooed over a beer belly with a gay leather fringed tassled cosmetics bag on my pillion seat and questionable taste in coloured bandanas, heading into a 40’s something mid-life crisis wanting to recover one’s youth, and doing it like only a middle-aged balding cruisin’ Harley guy knows best.
These ones…are very welcome
I kinda think LB is kind of all inclusive, based on geography/locality and culture. Even scooters are welcome
I ride a Harley…I never thought of feeling unwelcome on LB…should I? 
Saying that I haven’t been on a LB ride-out just yet as I only joined a few months ago. I think LB is about all bikers regardless of make and style of their bikes…
Interesting. Was at the Ali Pali thing yesterday with Brighton Dave, a friend of …er… some years. Now, if you didn’t go to the show, the focus was very much Harley and custom bikes.
We were discussing, over a pint or two of course, why it was that neither of us could not get enthusiastic about HD’s. After all, most of the ones built over the last ten years, say, are pretty decent bikes and while I loved Daves ex racer Kawasaki and he liked my middle of the road trail bike, and we both spent ages dribbling over the KTM’s, Ducati’s and MV’s, neither of us had any hankering to own an HD. OK. Then throw in the few HD riders I’ve known have been very nice guys and would have fitted very well into LB.
As someone said, it’s probably more that they have their own forums/clubs/lifestyle with a lot more common ground between them.
In brief, they don’t need Londonbikers.
The official policy is that we love crusers at LB:
Well if its good enough for Garret its good enough for us.
doesn’t matter what you ride.
Britain in general seems to have a propensity towards sports bikes(myself included) but from personal experience the majority of bikers are quite inclusive of any make or model and would gladly own/ride a variety of bikes of all shapes and sizes.
I for instance would like to fit a fireblade and a triumph scrambler in my front garden along with my GSXF, but my bank manager and my OH say no :(.
