What's with the skulls, etc?
#23
01-18-2010, 09:28 PM
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All of that stuff is one good way of just flippin' the bird to the Grim Reaper...that was my answer when someone asked me about the Aces & Eights Dead Man's Hand on a couple of my shirts...just sayin'...
#27
01-19-2010, 04:09 PM
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I like skulls as well. I would love to get a skull tat of some sort and may, but I have to think if I will regret it when I an old man. Skulls right now are too popular to be cool I think. Even ghetto homies are wearin them on belt buckles and shirts wtf? Skulls look cool though no doubt. I was skully when skully wasnt cool. lol
#30
01-19-2010, 07:14 PM
Everybody will surely have their very own extra special reason for going skull-crazy.
But there is actually a history.
Remember that biker culture originated among the returning vets after WW2. A lot of those guys couldn't quite return to civilian life as they knew it before the War and probably suffered from what we now know to be PTSD. So, what did they do? They stuck together. And while MCs were around before the War, they evolved into the kind of organizations that the nation finally noticed famously at Hollister.
What does that have to do with skulls? Well, these vet-riders, in order to show how much of a bad *** they were, would decorate their bikes and jackets with stuff they took off of dead/captured enemy soldiers during the war. So, that meant a lot of swastikas, eagles w/ swastikas, German helmets, etc. It was a real prize to get an Iron Cross from a vanquished/captured German. (We now see them in catalogs as "Maltese Crosses" because who wants to buy an Iron Cross? The real Maltese Cross is something else.) Even rarer were the skull insignia that came from the uniforms of German soldiers serving in elite SS divisions.
Whenever you saw a biker from a different MC, you knew exactly what his "experience" was.
(That tradition did not carry on for vets of the Korean War because no one wanted to display Communist symbols in those days. And the Viet Nam vets simply displayed their own insignia.)
So, like I said, everyone has their own very special sooper-dooper unique reason for putting skulls wherever they can. But, if they didn't sell these things..... And they sell them because it's a tradition in biker history.
Shame that people don't know where the tradition came from. Especially since people claim to like the Harley tradition and that Harley riders also tend to like to honor vets.
But there is actually a history.
Remember that biker culture originated among the returning vets after WW2. A lot of those guys couldn't quite return to civilian life as they knew it before the War and probably suffered from what we now know to be PTSD. So, what did they do? They stuck together. And while MCs were around before the War, they evolved into the kind of organizations that the nation finally noticed famously at Hollister.
What does that have to do with skulls? Well, these vet-riders, in order to show how much of a bad *** they were, would decorate their bikes and jackets with stuff they took off of dead/captured enemy soldiers during the war. So, that meant a lot of swastikas, eagles w/ swastikas, German helmets, etc. It was a real prize to get an Iron Cross from a vanquished/captured German. (We now see them in catalogs as "Maltese Crosses" because who wants to buy an Iron Cross? The real Maltese Cross is something else.) Even rarer were the skull insignia that came from the uniforms of German soldiers serving in elite SS divisions.
Whenever you saw a biker from a different MC, you knew exactly what his "experience" was.
(That tradition did not carry on for vets of the Korean War because no one wanted to display Communist symbols in those days. And the Viet Nam vets simply displayed their own insignia.)
So, like I said, everyone has their own very special sooper-dooper unique reason for putting skulls wherever they can. But, if they didn't sell these things..... And they sell them because it's a tradition in biker history.
Shame that people don't know where the tradition came from. Especially since people claim to like the Harley tradition and that Harley riders also tend to like to honor vets.