CLUB MANIA: NEW CLUBS, MORE BULLSHIT

CLUB MANIA: NEW CLUBS, MORE BULLSHIT
BY: $O ICY
THROTTLE BURNERZ MC
UNIONDALE, NY

For those that don’t know me, They call me $o Icy.  I’m the VP of Throttle Burnerz MC out of Uniondale, New York.  The club has been around since 2004, but I’ve been in the MC circuit since early 2008.  I’m going to talk about a situation in NY circuit that started out bad and has just gotten progressively worse as time has gone by:  the influx of “New Clubs” that constantly pop up on the set and why starting a new club is more commonplace than prospecting for an already established club in the NY circuit.

I’m sure that if you’re reading this blog and are a member of a club in the NY circuit(5 Boroughs and Long Island). If you don't know this, get ready for a shock. There are currently well over 200 clubs on the New York set, including MC/SC/AC/SUV/VC.  If you were to divide this evenly for the sake of argument, this would give you at least 40 of each type of club in the New York Circuit alone and there seems to be a new club being formed daily.  I don’t see why it’s necessary to have over 40 of the same type of club in the same area so what better way for me to figure this thing out than to chop it up with the presidents of some of these “New Clubs” that are popping up and see why they chose to go this route as opposed to checking out the existing clubs on the set. Why didn't they go one of the established clubs having some research to see which one would fit them the best and prospect for that club.  

 These are the most common scenarios that I’ve encountered:

Scenario # 1 – This is a “New Club” where a few members of an existing club left the existing club as a group and decided to start a “New Club”.

“Why did y’all leave your old club to start a new club?”

Prez: “We couldn’t deal with being in that club anymore. We didn’t see eye to eye with them and decided to start our own club”

“What’s going to be different/special/unique about this new club than the club you just left?”

Prez: “We’re Loyal!  We can do this thing better than they did and we’ll show them!”

Is it just me or did I just hear this fool that just LEFT his club say that they started their own club because they’re LOYAL?!?!  I’ve officially entered the twilight zone!  The LOYAL thing to do would have been to work out your differences with your original club and move forward.  Instead they chose to take the “Easy” way out, leaving an established club to start a “New Club”. 

Scenario # 2 – This is a “New Club” that comes on the scene, and all the members are related.

“What made y’all decide to start a new club when there’s a lot of clubs on the set already?”

Prez: “We figured that it would be better to start our own club since we’re family instead of joining a club with people we don’t know like that!”

These guys have completely missed the purpose of joining the circuit entirely!  You don’t need rags to hang out with your family; that’s why they’re your family.  The common bond you share with your club members is the love of what those 2 letters on your rags signify, in my case the love of riding Motorcycles (MC).  

The third and final scenario I’m going to discuss is the most common one that I encountered when speaking to the Presidents of “New Clubs” on the set:

Scenario # 3 – This is a “New Club” where the members are all new to the circuit (usually a group of friends). 

 

“What made y’all start this club?  There are a lot of established clubs on the set already, did you look into joining any of them before you decided to start this club”

Prez: “No.  We wanted to join the circuit, so instead of degrading ourselves by prospecting for one of these old clubs we decided to start our own club.”

This is what I like to call the recipe for destruction in the NY circuit.  The classic “Everybody wants to be a chief, nobody wants to be an Indian” mentality is what is destroying the NY circuit and causing this abundance of New Clubs, “Pop-Up Clubs”, and Fly-By-Night clubs to surface on a daily basis.  There is NOTHING degrading about prospecting to be in a club.  On the contrary, once you prospect for a club and earn your rags, you will respect them more and will be more respected by your peers.  Look at historically Black Fraternities as an example; if your frat brothers find out that you got your letters by “Skating” instead of enduring the pledging process, your letters hold no weight at all!   

The best comparison I can make to show the damaging effect of new clubs constantly popping up in the circuit on the integrity of the established clubs in the circuit and the credibility of the circuit as a whole is to compare it to money.  The more new money you print, the more you devalue the existing money as a whole.  The end result is there being a whole lot of money in circulation but it’s not even worth the paper it’s being printed on.  It's basic economics and we can take these economics and apply it to the circuit. There is no true demand for more clubs. People are just forming new clubs. There are plenty of clubs out there, too many as a matter of fact so the overpopulation will cause an overage which therein makes the clubs available a commodity 'cause everyone becomes watered down. Eventually it leads to an economic crisis and that's where the MC community stands in NY today.

If things keep moving this way, the end result will be a whole lot of clubs in circulation, but they won’t even be worth the price of the cuts on their back!   So instead of adding to the problem, we need to become a part of the solution.  Instead of starting that new club, find an established club on the set that you think you can make a contribution to, and help make them even stronger.   

Let’s put the value back in the NY circuit and keep it Sucka Free!