Times have changed

How the Harley world has changed over the last 45 years.  It is ironic that some of the people that one time wanted to call the cops on me now are my customers and some even ride with me.

I was never much of camper so when I traveled I preferred to stay in a hotel.  Usually my Brother Dan and I would ride pretty hard until we got to our destination, the last thing we wanted to do was pitch a tent when our day was done.   We would park about a block away from a hotel and one of us would take our leathers off, change, walk over to the hotel and get us a room, then go back get our bikes and ride up.  It was great to see the Hotel staffs faces when we pulled up on our old Harleys.  Today we pull up in front on our Custom Harley Davidsons and are told that we should park our bikes there so the staff can keep an eye on them.

What may seem very odd too some of you is that up until the 1980s very few Harley Davidson dealerships sold Harley T-Shirts, you had to go to an aftermarket custom shop to by one.  A fellow by the name of Gary Bang was one of the main Harley T-shirt printers until one day Harley decided to start protecting their logos.   Some of the Harley logos they use weren’t even designed by Harley themselves.

Another thing was in the old days Harley Davidson offered very few custom parts and accessories.  Back when I started the only place that you could buy a custom aftermarket or high performance part was from a custom shop.  Companies like Custom Chrome and Drag Specialties didn’t start until the early 70s.  I remember seeing the first Harley accessories catalog, it was about 20 pages.  One of the best sources in the 70s was Easy Rider Magazine who used to have about 10 catalog pages from a company called Jammer at the back of their magazine and biker information from the great editor Keith Ball bikernet.com .  Then came out books like Hot Bike and Street Chopper that featured some of the custom pioneers like Donnie Smith, Dave Perewitz, Arlen Ness, Little John, Don Hotop and many more.  Those weren’t the days where you customized a bike by catalog.

Today we have so many choices of how to personalize our Harleys.  Harley Davidson has an amazing accessories and performance catalogs.  Distributor with huge catalogs like Bikers Choice and Drag Specialties, thousands of online stores, small manufacturer’s big manufacturers and the list goes on.

Myself and my team have built Yales Motorcycle Parts online store ymphd.com  an easy to use biker friendly website where you get to custom, aftermarket, restoration and high performance parts for your Harley Davidson.   Our simple 2 click navigation gets you to parts that fit your year and model in only 2 clicks.

Check us out and let me know what you think ymphd.com

Thanks

Yale