Moped Madness: Adventures with TL-Affiliated Moped Gang "Creatures of the Loin"

Mopeds, mopeds, mopeds... What in the god-damned hell is a moped, you ask? Honestly, I've been hanging out with these kids for weeks now and I'm not sure. As far as I can tell, they're like a cross between a scooter and a bicycle—meaning they look like a miniature motorcycle, but they have bike pedals. Also, they don't make or sell them in the United States, so if you own one, it's at least 30 years old and breaks down around once or twice a week. (Seriously—no joke.) As a result, you have to dedicate huge blocks of time to their maintenance and risk being stranded in the Sunset at pretty much any given moment. In a nutshell: they're totally unreliable and incredibly dangerous, which essentially makes them the sexiest form of transportation in the city...

I first learned about "The Creatures of the Loin" about two months ago through a friend of mine and immediately scammed one of their phone numbers. Being a naturally timid person (okay, not really), I waited a good week or so to call him and presented myself as the esteemed Editor-in-Chief of a major Tenderloin newspaper (okay, that's not true either). I did, however, ask him if I could come down to Edinburgh Castle, conduct an interview and maybe write some kind of fucked up piece about them—although admittedly I might not have used the words "fucked up"...

Apparently, "The Creatures" are a local branch of the Moped Army, a national association of moped gangs with factions in various cities in the US. The original SF branch was founded by Graham French (among others) in early 2005 and is populated by literally some of the hottest people in the city. So hot, in fact, that when Graham and this other guy, Lee, returned from their epic moped ride to Argentina, one of the other original members had shacked up with Graham's girlfriend, thus creating a rival moped gang.¹

When I first set out to meet them I had no idea what to expect, so I brought along my digital recorder and a staff photographer in the hopes of impressing them with my pseudo-journalistic abilities. Supposedly I was meeting this guy Justin, who was a friend of the guy I'd scammed the number from, who was a friend of my other friend, and so on...

Like a true champ, he met me at Edinburgh Castle (an hour or so late) and introduced me to everyone while I attempted to conduct interviews—despite the fact that my microphone kept slipping down the front of my vest, rendering the entire recording unusable... Not to be deterred, however, I returned a few weeks later because Justin said he'd "soup up" his moped and we'd "double up," which sounded promising... But this, of course, never happened, and I was forced to return yet again a couple of weeks ago for one last attempt at my article...

"What's up, baby!" I screamed, slinging my arm around Justin's waist. "Am I going to ride with you tonight or what!!??!!"
"Yeah, so like, I didn't have time to fix my moped or whatever, but don't worry," he said as he grabbed my ass, "I bet we can find someone who'll ride ya."
"Dude!" I screamed. "That's like the fourth time you've grabbed my ass!"²
"Hey," said this guy named Craig, "Lee's got his Magnum tonight. I'll bet he could ride you."
"Magnum, huh?" Is that a like a clever euphemism?"
They blinked to make sure I'd really said that.
"Yeah, man, his Magnum's so fast."
"Maybe that's not a good thing?" I said, laughing.
Sensing that their level of enthusiasm was not on par with mine, I offered to buy Justin a shot of Jameson.
"So do you have a helmet?" he asked.
Honestly, I was surprised I might need one. According to the research I'd done, we were not likely to go faster than 10 miles per hour.
"Uh, no..."
"Well, I don't know if anyone will ride you without a helmet... We might get pulled over..."
"I have a bike helmet at my house," I suggested.
"Okay, that might work..."
His misgivings were unnerving, but I was determined to ride on a moped if it fucking killed me.
"Hey," I said, approaching Lee who was playing pool. "Mind if I ride on your Magnum with you?" A part of me wanted to ride with him just so I could keep spinning lame jokes off that. (What girl doesn't want to ride a Magnum after all?) But it turned out he didn't have any foot pegs, which meant I'd have to dangle my feet off the side or whatever.
"Dude. Aren't we gonna go like 10 miles per hour?" I asked. I was tempted to tell him I had lots of experience holding my legs up, but I restrained myself.
"Actually," he said, "I can go up to 40."

Whoa, I thought.

After more or less begging everyone, I managed to find a guy named Brett who not only had foot pegs but had a bike with a weight capacity of over 150 pounds—a rarity in moped circles. He still made me go back to my house for my helmet though, and to make a long story short, despite the madness that ensued when I went inside, I returned calmly five minutes later to find Brett adjusting what appeared to be the rubber band holding his engine together.

"Uh... Are you sure this is okay?" I asked.
"Don't worry," he assured me, the machine sputtering to life. "I can go up to 45 miles per hour."

Hot damn, I thought. Now I was really excited.

When we pulled up to the gas station on Van Ness where the others were waiting for us, I can only imagine how retarded I looked. Originally, my vision had been to borrow someone's dope motorcycle helmet and pull up with aviator glasses and a scarf trailing rakishly in the wind behind me... Instead, however, I was wearing my ultra-ultra-retarded bike helmet.

"Hey," said Justin, "You found your helmet!"
"Yeah, it required a minor archaeological dig," I smiled, "but what the hell!"
"Let's ride!" someone shouted. And with that we raced up Pine Street toward Gough at a daring speed of nearly 15 miles per hour. The idea apparently was to fly down Gough Street, circle toward Market, and zoom down Embarcadero toward In-N-Out Burger.

About six minutes into our adventure, however, a big guy ahead of us started fish-tailing, flopped around a few times and landed on his back in the middle of Market Street.

"Oh my god!" screamed a girl behind us.
"Bruce! BRUCE!!" people shouted, tearing off their helmets.
There appeared to be fluid leaking from his spinal column.
"Oh my god! Oh my GOD!!!"
"What in the hell is the matter with you?" he said angrily, regaining consciousness.
(It turned out the fluid was just beer.)
"Are you okay? Oh my god! Oh my god!!!"
"Do you have any numbness?" I asked, but he claimed he felt fine.

Apparently, what had happened was that one of his tires had hit the MUNI tracks, which had caused him to lose control—the beer in his backpack, through an ironic twist of fate, had absorbed a lot of the impact so that the wind had been knocked out of him, but there was little other damage as far as we could tell.

Yet another tragedy averted by alcoholl, I thought.

Photos this story © Colin Hussey 2007

He told the police the beer wasn't his, of course, and we backed up to the curb to distance ourselves from it as they piled him into the ambulance. The girl who'd been screaming was his daughter, so she rode with him to the hospital, and Lee and a few of the others locked up their mopeds somewhere. Most of the others were already at In-N-Out Burger by then, and to top things off, the guy at the 7-11 across the street refused to sell me cigarettes because I didn't bring my driver's license.

You might say it was time to leave...

Despite our near death experience, I let Brett ride me home and ran gleefully down the street to my apartment, skipping, retarded helmet dangling from my gloved hand. I heard later that Bruce was okay (mostly), having sustained a couple of broken ribs and a mild concussion, and that he'd ridden his moped to pick up his prescriptions, so no harm done!

That was easily the most fun I've had in weeks!

For more information about mopeds check out:
The Creature's of the Loin
Moped Army (National Group)

Also, let me just say that this is one of the nicest groups of people I've attempted to infiltrate in the recent past. In spite of all of my references to their being "kids" (etc), I actually found the Creatures to be an inclusive group of people spanning a wide variety of ages, interests and backgrounds (with approximately 40% female membership). I wish I had time to write more specific details about some of them!

I might have to get a moped myself one of these days!

1 Seriously, I am not kidding.
2 Justin and "Marshall Law" from Officer Down are the same person.