---
title: "Rare Photos of a 1960’s Gay Motorcycle Club"
description: "A cultural affinity for leather jackets isn't coincidence."
date: "2016-04-14"
modified: "2016-04-14"
authors:
  - name: "Ben Keeshin"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/ben-keeshin"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/motorcycles/3004/rare-photos-of-a-1960s-gay-motorcycle-club"
categories:
  - "Motorcycles"
  - "News"
  - "The Garage"
---

# Rare Photos of a 1960’s Gay Motorcycle Club

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

The summer of 1967 was, famously, "The Summer of Love," during which over 100,000 of flower-bedecked and sexually liberated youth descended on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to catch a Janis Joplin show—or, as [Joan Didion reported, turn their toddles "on," to LSD](<https://nstearns.edublogs.org/files/2012/03/Slouching-toward-bethlehem-184kxww.pdf>). Though California was the hippie movement's epicenter, counter-cultural waves of sexual permissiveness and civil rights activism were washing through most of the country's urban areas, and even a few of its idylls. That year, 1967, [urban photographer Sylvan Rand](<https://www.sylvanrandphotos.com/#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=0&a=0&at=0>) got a ride from New York City to rural New Jersey on the back of a motorcycle, where he spent a weekend documenting a rare community: a gay motorcycle club. Unlike the Hell's Angels, who rode as a full-time gang, this crew of men led quiet, perhaps sequestered lives during the week, becoming a group of leather-clad, amorous guys only in the privacy of farmland hundreds of miles from the cities in which they worked. The fishing equipment, as it were, [remained unused](<https://youtu.be/44ZZN9BqlEE>).

The rare photos, now digitized, offer a poignant glimpse into the midcentury lives of a subculture whose big civil rights push during the later Sixties wouldn't bear fruit for decades. Plus, there's a good smattering of vintage American iron.

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-1.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-1.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-2.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-2.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-3.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-3.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-5.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-5.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-4.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-4.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-6.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-6.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-7.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-7.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-8.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-8.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-9.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-9.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-10.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-10.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-11.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-11.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-12.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-12.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

![motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-13.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/motorcycle-run-sylvan-rand-art-13.jpg>)
**Sylvan Rand**

## Author
Ben Keeshin is a former staff writer for Maxim, and before that, contributed writing to the digital sides of Road & Track and Vanity Fair.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://twitter.com/BnKshn>)