Hog heaven
Boasting bikes, exhibits and food, $75 million Harley-Davidson Museum opens next month in Milwaukee
MILWAUKEE, Wis. -- Three years before Peter Fonda made his counterculture classic, "Easy Rider," he starred in another biker movie, "The Wild Angels."
One film critic called it OK -- "after about 24 beers." But as overwrought as "Angels" can be, the 1966 drive-in special did include a spellbinding speech that Fonda, playing a socially disaffected Hell's Angel gang leader, delivers during the funeral of a friend.
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HOURS: Official opening is July 12. Summer hours (through October): Weekdays: 9 a.m.- 6 p.m. (Open until 8 p.m. Wednesdays.) Weekends: 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.
PRICES: Adults (18-64): $16; children (5-17): $10; kids under 5 are free. Students and seniors (65 and over): $12.
INFO: (877) 436-8738; www.harley-davidson.com
As an exasperated minister asks of Fonda's restless rogues, "What do you people WANT?" Fonda has an instant, in-your-face answer: "We want to be free! We want to be free to do what we want to do! And we want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man!"
As the preacher cringes, Fonda continues, "And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time. And that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a party!"
That (minus the loaded part) pretty much sums up the new Harley-Davidson Museum opening July 12 in Milwaukee: a 130,000-square-foot celebration of the fun and unbridled freedom of motorcycles and the open road. Born to be wild, indeed.
Milwaukee-based Harley has long had a "complicated relationship" with the image of leather-clad, motorcycle-riding rebels, acknowledged the new museum's curator, Jim Fricke. The company refused, for example, to supply bikes for "Easy Rider," the 1969 flick featuring Fonda and Dennis Hopper as a couple of chopper-driving dopers, he said.
And yet the company knows "people get into [Harleys] because there's a bad-ass attitude about them," said Fricke -- even if your typical Hog rider these days is more likely to be an accountant than an anarchist.
In a way, the museum reflects that dichotomy. A $75 million palace, the facility includes a sit-down restaurant and banquet facilities on 20 acres of orderly landscaped property; yet it's also wrapped in boxy, masculine architecture that's broodingly blue-collar. Like a sleeveless Harley T-shirt, the buildings boast a brawny-armed exoskeleton of riveted beams. Inside, lobby lights look like hanging tailpipes and the staircase that takes visitors to the second floor exhibit space is built of a starkly gray galvanized steel.
And yet amidst the building's industrial posings are more than 100 -- dare we say lovely? -- two-wheeled works of art. The colorful motorcycles not only sparkle gorgeously like gems but are engineering jewels, as well.
The museum is a diamond in the rough, much like Harley-Davidson's history. In 1901, boyhood friends William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson managed to affix an engine onto a bicycle but the contraption proved underpowered. In the Davidson family's backyard shed, the pals developed a more sophisticated version and entered it in a 1904 race at Milwaukee's State Fair Park. It placed fourth but an American success story was set.
Within a few years, the partners came to believe the company had a future and began saving and storing at least one model off the production line annually. Their foresight is now coming to fruition. That collection -- including a 1903 model, Harley's "No. 1," with wooden handgrips and a leather drive belt -- serves as the heart of the new museum. In a grand parade, models from every year glisten through the halls of Harley's Hog Heaven.
"People ask if they've been restored,'' Fricke said. Most have not. "They're original. This is the way they were when they were made,'' he said.
Fricke points to a 1938 model with four miles on its odometer, clicks that might have come "from pushing it around" the Harley archives at the company's Milwaukee headquarters.
Some of the cycles sport a few scratches and dents. "We don't really want them to look new. We want them to look used,'' he explained.
The 1929 Model C was marketed as a way to enjoy "the sport of a thousand joys'' and, today, about 300,000 Harleys are purchased annually, mostly by weekend warriors. But the museum also shows how motorcycles have been used for work: a 1916, olive green three-wheel version was sold -- for $425 -- to deliver mail. Also on display are Harleys used by police and military over the last century.
There's more than just bikes at the museum, though. One particularly impressive exhibit explains how engines in general -- and Harley's famed V-Twins in particular -- run. A touch screen allows visitors to examine the inner workings of more than a dozen motors, including hearing how they sound, from the busy racket of a 1909 model to the rich "potato-potato-potato" rumble of a 2007 Twin Cam 96.
And, of course, there's "Easy Rider." The film's original choppers were destroyed after the filming. But with the help of Fonda, who co-wrote the movie, Harley was able to recreate his character's stars-and-stripes "Captain America" bike.
Another replica is that of the XR 750 that Evel Knievel used (unsuccessfully) in his 1975 attempt to jump 13 buses in London's Wembley Stadium. The greasy daredevil ended up breaking his hand and pelvis.
One bike that is not a replica is a blue 1956 beauty that Elvis Presley bought four days after launching his first big pop hit, "Heartbreak Hotel." The bill came to $1,143. (The young rocker purchased it on installment from a Memphis dealer, $50.15 a month.) The exhibit includes Presley's original insurance application on which he identifies his job as "vocalist -- self employed.''
There's more than just a rear-view mirror look here: a robotic arm shows how "Softail" frames are meticulously soldered at a Harley assembly plant in York, Pa. And in a working garage, mechanics can be seen maintaining the museum's collection of some 450 bikes.
Harley owners are remarkably loyal.
"There's a sense of camaraderie our riders feel when they fire up their Harleys," said museum director Stacey Schiesl.
By one estimate, about 5 percent of the company's revenue comes from licensing the Harley-Davidson logo for use on everything from bar stools to beer mugs to the ubiquitous black Harley T-shirts and riding jackets. Biker blowouts in Sturgis, S.D., have attracted tens of thousands of Harley riders annually since the 1940s.
While Harley has offered factory tours at its Wisconsin engine plant, the company knew that for riders, Milwaukee might be America's motorcycling Mecca but there wasn't much for bikers to see or do here. After years of discussing a museum, the company finally chose a former brownfield site at 6th and Canal in Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley district.
Motorcycles will get exclusive, close-in parking on specially designated orange paths that run in the middle of the streets through the museum complex -- a scheme that mimics the Sturgis gathering and will provide space for 1,500 bikes. Appropriately enough, Harley used discarded crushed highway pavement as infill.
"We wanted it to feel urban, like a neighborhood within the city,'' Schiesl said of the site.
Harley expects the museum to draw 350,000 people annually, riders and non-riders alike. Fricke, who curated a Seattle music museum before coming to Milwaukee, said the goal is for people "to leave here saying, 'That was a great time but I didn't have time to see everything.' "
During a preview visit on a warm, mid-June Monday, hammer-toting construction workers were putting the finishing touches on the museum. A reporter noted that there were a number of Harleys in the parking lot and some of them appeared to be owned by the carpenters.
Schiesl said that reflected the "labor of love" nature of the project.
But isn't that a Suzuki parked over there, too?
"We'll get 'em on a Harley, eventually," Schiesl said with a smile.
The new Harley-Davidson Museum is a good kickstart. As they say at the races:
"On your mark...Get set...Go!''