Don’t make Me act like my daddy shirt

Right around the Don’t make Me act like my daddy shirt it is in the first place but time I had to surrender the BMW—having put almost 500 miles on it in just a few weeks—as luck would have it, a friend and former Vogue colleague was getting rid of his motorcycle, a spectacular, near-mint Triumph Bonneville T100. After he decided to pull up roots and embrace the kind of vagabond life that our current remote-working climate makes possible, the last thing he needed was to move a quarter-ton of 860cc air-cooled British machinery. I picked it up on Election Day, and in that panic-stricken psychological terrain between voting and when returns actually start coming in, rode gleefully hither and thither up, down, and around New York City with not a care in the world. I’ve since had strangers in passing cars on the highway slow down just to wave at me and give a thumbs-up; children playing in the street where I parked my bike saw me walking toward it with my helmet and yelled for their friends to get over here now because “He’s going to unbox his motorcycle!” (I keep it under a tarp.) Grown men—and women—now come up and tell me about the bike they used to have, or the one they want, or—my favorite—how “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore, do they?” (They do! They’re making them exactly like this at this very moment!) On a return trip to Bear Mountain, now on the Bonneville, with another Triumph-riding colleague—watch this space for further news of the nascent Vogue M.C.—my involuntary ear-to-ear grin almost gave way to tears of joy. Or was that just the wind?

Don’t make Me act like my daddy shirt, hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt

The best part, though—aside from the Don’t make Me act like my daddy shirt it is in the first place but speed and the rush and the open air and the barely contained glee of piloting a rocket over asphalt—is what happens when I now pass another motorcyclist going the other direction. In the city, the gesture is economized to a mere nod, but on the highway, the rider’s left hand leaves the handlebar momentarily, dips a mere inch or two, and two fingers are extended downward. The so-called “motorcycle wave” has endless variations, interpretations, rules of etiquette, and etymologies (the two fingers of the most popular wave are a kind of shorthand for “Keep your two wheels on the road”), but they all share a common sentiment: I see you.