Anthony Hulse

“Choose carefully. Avoid Rag, Tag & Bobtail. Avoid those who play it safe. They won’t offer a helping hand, and they can’t advise you. They’re boring, and that’s just about all that can be said about them. They are dead and obsolete. That’s it. They exist, they happen, but they don’t actually live.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Bessie Stringfield epitomised the Carefree Scamp. She wasn’t trying to be any sort of inspiration for black women or female bikers. She was just living her life. It was her road and she knew that no one else could ride it for her”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“In an age when most black women belonged to the ‘servant class’ – sweeping the yard, making the beds, cooking etc. – Bessie, orphaned at five, asked the Irish lady who took her into her home in Boston when she lost both her parents if she’d buy her a motorcycle.
And with the simple advice, “Just don’t get hurt” and even though “nice girls didn’t go around riding motorcycles” her adoptive mother bought her a 1927 Indian.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“At the tender age of 19 Bessie Stringfield commenced traveling across the United States. She’d toss a penny onto a map of the States and wherever it landed was where she’d go, and this was at the height of racism at its ugliest, yet this never stopped her. Though often denied accommodation because of the colour of her skin, she would find a place to sleep with black families or, if this wasn’t possible, she’d simply sleep on her motorbike at filling stations, using her rolled up jacket as a pillow”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe