Out on the Open Road, Ready to Do Good

It’s a Wednesday evening, and in Culver City the charity fund-raiser committee is meeting. There’s the chairman--he’s the one with the beard, ponytail and diamond stud earring. And there’s the chairman of the tattoo contest--another bearded fellow, only this one’s arms are covered with flame tattoos.

Not your garden-variety party planners.

These are bikers--Harley Davidson devotees--hoping to raise $100,000 through Beach Ride ‘99, which is expected to attract 10,000 bikers from California, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon to San Buenaventura State Beach in Ventura July 11.

Their charity?

The Exceptional Children’s Foundation, a Los Angeles-based organization serving developmentally disabled children and adults.

An unlikely alliance, indeed. And, acknowledges foundation Chief Executive and President Robert D. Shushan, “there were some people wondering about it” when the first ride was proposed nine years ago. Today, he has only praise for the bikers.

“They are remarkably dedicated . . . very, very devoted to making this a successful event,” he says.

It started with two bikers: Art Naddour and Fred Wilson. Shushan had recruited Naddour for his board, knowing he had a brother-in-law with Down syndrome who’d been in the Exceptional Children’s Foundation program. When he proposed Beach Ride, Naddour recalls, the board was at first “very leery. Many still had an age-old fear of biker gangs and feared it would give the foundation a bad name.”

But balancing this was the foundation’s need for more visibility. Says Naddour, “It’s not easy to push an image of retarded children.”

Adds Kia Andersson, a Harley rider and former Beach Ride volunteer now in charge of special events on the foundation staff, “We don’t have a cure. [Developmental disabilities are] not going to go away.”

Naddour, a retired Westside auto and motorcycle restorer, and Wilson, head of security for 20th Century Fox films, maintain their links to the foundation. Naddour is immediate past president of the foundation and vice chairman of the Beach Ride ’99 committee, on which Wilson serves.

This night, with the Beach Ride less than four months off, the committee is having its monthly meeting. Seeing a reporter is present, Chairman Leonard Cowan, a Harley-riding Woodland Hills CPA, jokes, “Everyone left their guns outside?”

The business at hand is familiar to anyone who’s ever helped plan a fund-raiser, such as the hope of getting angels (no, not Hell’s) and getting the most bang for the entertainment buck. Entertainment Chairman Owen Lewis rejects some suggestions--”They’re big artists, but they’re not for a motorcycle ride.”

Miller, the beer people, will be approached again. They gave 3,000 cans of beer last year. And, quips Cowan, “that’s just what Art [Naddour] drank.”

At home at this moment, people are watching Monica Lewinsky pour her heart out to Barbara Walters. But in this room, the committee is debating whether to spend $2,000 for a rock radio spot and what to do about the high “flake-out rate” among Beach Ride volunteers.

Nevertheless, Naddour promises “three bands, a bike show, a tattoo contest” and the Mr. and Miss Beach Ride competition, an event in which both stand onstage flexing. But, he emphasizes, “nobody who takes off any clothes will be a winner. We don’t want to demean the charity.”

There will be 200 vendors selling tattoos, T-shirts, leather jackets and bike parts.

And, Naddour adds, this will be a public-friendly event.

“We’ve had 50,000 riders go through Ventura, and we have not in seven years had a fistfight--except last year where a wife beat the hell out of her husband. She didn’t like the way he rode up there.”

Security will be high. And, it might be mentioned, there will be about 70 bikers from the Christian Motorcycle Riders Assn. in the San Bernardino area. All bikers, including Hell’s Angels, are welcome--so long as they each pay $25.

A highlight will be the customized bike competition.

“Some are really wild,” Naddour observes, “and maybe a little bit obscene.” Some, with price tags of up to $100,000, are never ridden, just towed from show to show.

Well-represented will be “The Uglies,” a bike group that boasts as members actors Peter Fonda and Larry Hagman. And there will be about 1,000 from the HOGS (the Harley Owners Group).

Beach Ride ’98 raised $80,000, and this year, says Chairman Cowan, “we’ll be real happy” to net $100,000 to $125,000.

Image has been a problem for bikers, Cowan acknowledges.

“There’s that stereotype, the biker image, the gangs, the one percenters, the outlaw motorcycle clubs.” A decade ago, he adds, that image was “pretty close.”

But now here are bikers volunteering for a most respectable charity. Among them: the chef at the Motion Picture and Television Home in Woodland Hills, a former film stuntman and a couple of Los Angeles Police Department officers.

“They love being bikers and having their own culture,” Naddour says, but otherwise they’re just ordinary folk giving back to the community.

Micah McCloskey, a Harley customizer in Canoga Park, is chairing this year’s tattoo contest. His skull-and-crossbones belt, untamed beard and flame tattoos belie his philanthropic bent. He’s been a Beach Ride volunteer since 1992.

“I wanted to get involved in some charity work,” he says, “and this is a good cause.”

Beach Ride ’99 will be held July 11 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at San Buenaventura State Beach in Ventura. Information: (800) 696-3727.