Featured Cityweekend article: The Expendables Hit the Open Road
We are featured in Beijing’s magazine Cityweekend. You can read the article here:
On a sunny, smoggy Saturday morning, The Expendables, an eight-man biker gang largely composed of Germans, trickle into their office space-turned clubhouse in 798 to meet up before a long ride to the China North International Shooting Range near Changping.
Written by Mikala Freasbeck
Ahead of the ride a friend warned, “You know, that’s how Hunter S. Thompson got his start, although it ended with a severe beating from the Hell’s Angels.” Leather vests, a couple of long, unkempt hair-dos and a penchant for hanging out at Café de la Poste aside, this Beijing-based biker gang exudes more charm than the surly, outlaw air one expects from a biker gang. In the year-and-a-half since they decided to form a scooter club, it has evolved into a full-fledged motorcycle club with a charter, chapters in Beijing, Chile and Germany, “hangers-on” and, of course, custom black leather biker vests.
Indeed, their leather vests—emblazoned with a kind of antelope skull and crossbones and the group’s name in custom-made patches—are completely badass, but the guys wearing them tend to be ornery, chatty and, dare we say it, gracious. The “President” washes our coffee cup himself before serving up some of the blackest, strongest coffee in Beijing and not one hair on “Maestro’s” blonde head is out of place. Perhaps this congeniality should be expected from a biker gang that doesn’t seem to have a rival in its midst and took its name from the idea that its members are all in Beijing because they felt they had been, well, expendable, in their home countries.
Inspired by the biker gangs that assembled in the United States in the 1950s and ‘60s in a rush of pure Americana and the American fondness for the freedom of the open road, The Expendables say their group is less focused on bikes, and more on the group’s “formalized brotherhood,” as the “President” refers to it.
“It’s a great thing to hang out with your friends and formalize it,” he says. “We don’t try to be badasses or anything.”
The amount of noise and the number of motorcycles cruising around quickly betrays any clandestine quality their location could have. With a divinely-stocked bar, a corridor filled with parked bikes and a set of busted up electric blue sofas, this group of men have truly made this former factory space their own.
After “Jacky Boy,” the group’s perennially tardy member whose name derives from his fondness for Jack Daniels, finally shows up, the gang embarks, driving in formation through the streets of 798 and stopping to gas up before hitting the highway.
The “President” makes a point to mention that a ride of this distance is rare, as they’re mostly a city club that embarks from 798 and ends up at Café de la Poste. “There’s enough bars to stop in along the way,” he says.
Shorter rides also make sense because all their bikes are secondhand, and are prone to break-downs. Many of the bikes, sidecar-equipped or not, come from a repair and secondhand sales shop in 798 that “Mountain” comes close to recommending when he says they “have a pretty standard rip-off rate.” (By the end of the day, the bike that carried Mountain in the sidecar broke down several times on the highway, leading Mountain, who is also known as the “Punisher” and the “Animal,” to walk away from it at one point, saying, “There’s nothing for me to do there. I can’t say anything and pretend like I know what I’m talking about.” So, bikers, yes. Mechanics, no.)
After what feels like an eternity, but was really probably about 90 minutes on the highway, the gang files through the gates of the shooting range and quickly parks their bikes, eager to burn up ammo.
There’s a bright orange Lambourghini ostentatiously parked in front of the door to the range, suggesting that the shooting range is not full of hunters or gun aficionados, but China’s wealthy looking for a fun afternoon outing.
A quick, chaotic trip into the “gun room” to pick out weaponry and decide on amounts of bullets and magazines finds the majority of The Expendables exhibiting something close to glee. “Kalishnikovs! Kalishnikovs!” they clamor. The same kind of elation rolls over into the shooting booths as triggers are pulled and magazines emptied loudly.
Ammo isn’t cheap, so this leg of the journey is short. About half of the group is at least a little bit lethal, including those who stop to grab ice cream in the gift shop before heading back to town under an increasingly dark sky that eventually gives way to rain.
Our eyes stinging from gunsmoke, motorcycle exhaust and the dust of the Beijing highway, the burst of rain is a refreshing and exhilarating end to the day, and a signal that it’s time to take shelter. In Café de la Poste, no doubt.
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