South Park Was Right about Grown Men Who Ride Harley Davidson's

There’s something oddly theatrical about watching a convoy of middle-aged men—most of them well into their fifties or sixties—thunder down a suburban road on their Harley-Davidsons, engines roaring with all the subtlety of a jet engine at take-off. The leather waistcoats, the chrome-polished exhausts, the performative revving at traffic lights—it’s less a mode of transport and more a travelling tribute act to outlaw masculinity. Earlier today, I witnessed just such a display: a cluster of bikers, unmistakably Hells Angels, rolling through town with the kind of bluster that seemed entirely indifferent to other road users. Indicators? Optional. Speed limits? Merely a suggestion. Consideration for pedestrians or cyclists? Laughable. It brought to mind that gloriously irreverent episode of South Park—“The F Word”—where the show skewers exactly this kind of behaviour. The bikers in that episode aren’t dangerous villains; they’re annoying, attention-starved men whose loud engines are a substitute for lost relevance.