Pork Chop grew up riding dirt bikes in the Bayview. Thirty years after he first got on a bike as a toddler, he’s still popping wheelies outside Youngblood-Coleman Playground, where he and his friend Molly used to play in the sandbox.
“When I say that’s my sandbox friend, that’s really my sandbox friend,” Molly said, laughing.
The two men, both 33, tore up and down Hudson Avenue one October evening as neighborhood kids looked on. Other bikers rocking shiesty masks, hoodies, and Jordans came to meet them. The group hit “knee knock” wheelies and scraped their fenders on the asphalt for 30 minutes before peeling off toward the bay for a sunset ride.
The bikers, some of whom ride unregistered motorcycles without helmets, all asked to be referred to by their nicknames. For good reason — riding a motorcycle without a license plate is illegal. And in San Francisco, frustration with dirt bikers has become so pronounced that Mayor London Breed recently introduced and signed into law legislation making it a misdemeanor to promote or gather for a sideshow or dirt bike event.
When dirt bikers took over a Mission intersection in August, Sharky Laguana was pissed. Laguana, who sits on the city’s Homeless Oversight Commission, said the bikers spoiled his dinner.
“Eventually more showed up, and they started doing wheelies, going in circles on Valencia. Forty-five minutes later, they were still there, burning tires in the intersection. The restaurant smelled like burned rubber. We didn’t finish the pizza,” Laguana posted on X.
But in interviews with The Standard, bikers say they’ve found both community and a stress outlet in “bike life.”
“You sit at a job for eight hours a day,” said Pork Chop, who works as a security guard at a school. “You want to do something fun with the next four or five hours besides going to bed. Are you gonna gamble up all your money? Go to the bar and buy a bunch of drinks? Go to the cannabis club and buy a bunch of weed? Or are you going to get a bike?”
‘I’m not gang-banging’
Molly said he would sometimes spend a day riding, then return to the Bayview and hear that someone had been shot or that police officers had come by. Every day he was out on his bike, he said, was a day he wasn’t “in the line of fire.”
But bikes didn’t keep him out of trouble completely. In 2017, Molly, along with two other bikers, was arrested on assault charges after a fight with a ride-share driver on the freeway. Court records show Molly was convicted of assault, battery, and malicious mischief. The court sentenced him to 15 days in jail and 18 months of probation.
Pork Chop had his own close call, but not with the law.
Leaving the Double Rock neighborhood on his bike one day in 2017, he heard shots ring out. Pork Chop said he started weaving, trying to dodge the gunfire. The first bullet hit him in the right wrist; another hit his left forearm, shattering the bone.
Pork Chop said he was targeted for crossing neighborhood lines. He’d made friends through riding with people from all over the Bayview, including from zones with longstanding tensions. But not everybody was on board.
“I was trying to bring together all the neighborhoods,” Pork Chop said. “I’m not gang-banging. I’m not a member of nothing.” He added that he lost his older sister to gun violence in 2007.
After he was shot, Pork Chop skidded out and, clutching his broken arm, started to run. A stranger sheltered him in his house, Pork Chop said, giving him towels to stop the bleeding and calling an ambulance. When he had healed, he started riding again.
Pork Chop said Breed’s new legislation unfairly targets Black and Latino youth who are just trying to have fun. “You like stealing happiness from kids?” he asked.
In a statement, the mayor’s office said Breed has been a strong supporter of marginalized communities, and the legislation is meant to hold accountable those who break the law and put others in danger. Dirt bikers say their culture isn’t only about danger — it’s also about responsibility.
The next generation
Pork Chop and Molly mentor kids in their neighborhood. With his legal trouble behind him, Molly said, he’s using his story to warn younger riders to keep a cool head on the road.
“I be trying to game up these young kids when they be on altercations with drivers,” he said. “Like, ‘Look bruh, we already illegal. Y’all can’t be doing that.’”
For four years, Molly has hosted a community event called Bay Day, which brings together cyclists and dirt bikers of all ages. Each year, he’s fed 300 people, and this year he raffled off an electric dirt bike donated by the British company Ebox. Kids under 15 got raffle tickets for free, Molly said, because he wanted to inspire them to get into biking early.
“When I was younger, before I had bike life, I was doing a whole bunch of stupid shit,” said Molly, who has been riding dirt bikes for more than a decade. “Once a youngster gets a bike, they learn about maintenance. They learn this shit ain’t free. They learn they gotta take care of all these different things.”
Now, Molly’s slowing down on the stunts. He has a six-month-old son, and he just started a job at a hospital. He plans to continue hosting Bay Day, and down the line he’d like to open a bike shop.
“I know I could make an impact, at least with 20, 30 kids who are interested in bikes,” Molly said. “They could have somewhere to come, somewhere to be like, ‘I’m not chilling on the block today. I’m going down to Molly’s shop today and I’m gonna work on my bike.’”
For now, he just wants to keep his head down and focus on his family.
“Now that I got my own kid, everything is really for him,” Molly said.
Pork Chop mostly rides his Harley Davidson these days, but he’s still popping wheelies. Everyone needs an outlet, he said.
“Ride a bike for two minutes,” Pork Chop said, “and I bet you would knock all your negative energy that you have in your body.”