Since it’s the first Wednesday of the month we would usually be either running our VC moto meet up or, since lockdown, running our moto Q&A on our Instagram. This month we’d like to pause and take the opportunity to celebrate some incredible BIPOC in the motorcycle world whose stories continue to inspire us.

Read on to find out more about these incredible riders, groups and organisations making waves in the motorcycle world and follow their stories.

#westandtogether #weridetogether.

Images by @akasharabut

The Caramel curves are a groundbreaking women's bike crew based in New Orleans. Their mantra is not only to have a great time riding, but to look good doing it.

The group is made up of 13 women brought together by their passion for motorcycles and their desire to bike with other women like themselves.

In July 2005, a month before their city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, founders Nakosha Smith and Shanika Beatty, along with a few other women, started riding together and named themselves the Caramel Curves. “We called ourselves “caramel” because of the colour of our skin, and “curves” because we’re curvy women, and we take curves on the bikes,” Ms. Smith said

As the city rebuilt, so did the group, and in 2006, co founder Ms. Smith started calling women to ride together again as a way to heal. Even more women make up their social club — a support group that helps with their events such as fund-raisers to buy bicycles for young girls.

“I think we’re breaking down barriers here within our own motorcycle community. We’re creating a legacy”.

“Being a Caramel Curve is about being a woman and loving to ride a motorcycle,” Ms. Beatty said.

“Even if you just had a thought that you may want to do it, come on, girl, you can do that”

15 year old Zimbabwean MX racer Tanyaradzwa Muzinda is inspiring a new generation of racers.

Tanya and her family are breaking ground by breaking down barriers in the world of motocross in the hope of one day racing in the FIM Women’s Motocross World Championship.

She came in third place at the 2017 HL Racing British Master Kids Championships at the Motoland track in England.

"It was my first race overseas and I managed to finish in third place. I also left a record for being the first female rider to win a round since its inception," Muzinda said.

In 2018, Muzinda was also named Junior Sportswoman of the year in South Africa by the Africa Union Sports Council Region Five Annual Sports Awards.

Despite the financial difficulties Tanya faces competing at an incredibly expensive motorsport, it has not stopped Muzinda from giving back to people in her community. Tanya uses donations and her Motocross prize money to support children from poorer families, especially girls who are often kept home from school. In August, she paid tuition for 45 students to attend school in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, and hopes to pay for at least 500 more students by the end of 2020.

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The awesome Jalika Gaskin is a motorcycle racer and part of Alp racing, California (builders of the “Asymmetric Aero”) - the team that achieved a land speed record crowning their bike “the world’s fastest Triumph.”

After joining Alp in 2007 Jalika became the Crew Chief when Alp Racing started racing in August 2011 at Bonneville Speedweek. Not long after, they achieved the land speed record in their class.

When she’s not directing the build of the world’s fastest bikes, Jalika can be found ripping around LA on her custom built pre-unit Triumph Tiger chopper.

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Gevin Fax is an incredibly inspiring and prominent figure in the women’s motorcycle scene; passing on her experiences, welcoming a new generation into riding motorcycles, working tirelessly to build community and to inspire others.

Growing up in Los Angeles as an African American in the 1960s, Gevin found that the world wasn't always forgiving. She learned to ride when she was just 10 years old after taking a trip to a dirt bike track with her family. After her brothers slowly lost interest in riding Gevin never did, continuing to ride until today where she is now a prominent figure in the international women’s motorcycle world and is part of the Litas. Upon joining The Litas, Gevin found a community of acceptance through a global network of riders.

Gevin is also a professional SAG stuntwoman with a pretty incredible list of skills including but not limited to: Knife, Spear and Tomahawk Throwing, Butterfly Blades, Horseback Riding, and Motorcycle and Auto Precision Driving.

“I was kid that was definitely into my own head. Motorcycles were a way for me to escape. A way for me to escape a crappy day, a way for me to escape feeling inadequate because of the colour of my skin or that my hair wasn’t straight. It gave me something that was individually mine”

If you haven’t seen it yet check out this incredible video by William Desena about Gevin’s story and the Litas.

Brittany Young is the founder of the ground breaking charity B360 Baltimore - an organisation that works to teach students as young as five years old to “build, code, design, 3D print and test” using dirt bikes.

Young started developing the idea of using the Baltimore's prominent dirt bike culture to teach kids about Science, tech, engineering and mathematics in 2016.

Much like the children she works with, Young said she knows what it’s like to feel unheard and have undeveloped talent. The 29-year-old said she got in trouble a lot as a kid, until she was gifted a chemistry kit and discovered her love of science.

Between working three jobs — including one at a Baltimore City Community College program that funnels GED students to NASA - Young has made it her mission to not only teach students about the tech and science that is typically embedded in their love of dirt bikes but also to change the perception that riders are ‘criminals.’

As a ground breaking entrepreneur and speaker Young founded B360 after seeing similarities in dirt bike and motocross cultures, and one glaring difference: the demographics of the riders and the way they’re treated for their passion.

“Many of the students grew up fixing their own bikes, unaware that what they were doing was a highly technical skill.”

Find out more about B360 check out https://www.b360baltimore.org/about-b-360

Bessie Stringfield (1911 – 1993) was an American motorcyclist who was the first African-American woman to ride across the United States solo.

In the 1950s, when women were relegated to housework, either in marriage or as domestics, Stringfield was married several times and worked as a maid yet revved and roared through Florida’s palm-tree-lined streets on her Harley-Davidson, earning the unofficial title of “Motorcycle Queen of Miami.”

Her legend was big enough to warrant a posthumous induction into the Hall of Fame of the American Motorcyclist Association in 2002, nearly a decade after her 1993 death.

A masterful storyteller, Stringfield amazed people with her accounts of being chased off the road as she traveled through the Jim Crow South; performing stunts on the Wall of Death at carnivals; and serving as a civilian motorcycle dispatch rider for the U.S. Army in the 1940s.

Due to her skin color Springfield was often denied accommodation while traveling and would sleep on her motorcycle at filing stations. Due to her sex she was refused prizes in the flat track races she entered.

Her lasting power was in her presence, especially in the eyes of children, during a period when seeing a black woman commanding a Harley-Davidson was unprecedented.

In the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, 23 year old Lakeyria Doughty is only of only a handful of prominent female figures in the bike life scene making a name for herself as the “Wheelie Queen”.

After getting her first dirt bike at just 13 years old from her father, Lakeyria has ridden ever since and has most recently been featured in the new movie Charm City Kings that follows an infamous group of Baltimore dirt-bike riders.

Lakeyria is flying the flag for a new era of rider breaking through to the mainstream and has been featured as a figurehead of her scene through collaborations with brands such as Gucci and G Star.

THE RIDERS YOU NEED TO FRESHEN UP THAT FEED.....