Sipping a cup of coffee, he surveys the endless parade of panheads, rigids and non-Harleys pulling in and out of Neptune's Net.
"Ever since they started coming in to it, they've made everything so unaffordable. My first motorcycle was $1,000. Now you've got to pay $20,000," said Reno, who started riding at 15. "I used to go to Laughlin. It cost me $30 for a room. Now it's $1,500 for four days. They're pricing people like me, people that started it, right out of it."
Classic bikes
Every Thursday night, the Cretins vintage motorcycle club throttles up Los Feliz Boulevard past the Big Foot Lodge, doubling back on the sidewalk to park in front of this Atwater Village hipster bar.
Triumphs from the '50s and '60s, Hondas from the '70s and more obscure rides like a 1950 Vincent Comet and 1967 Triton sit side by side, their proud owners lighting up cigarettes and walking around Brando-style in cuffed jeans and patched leather jackets.
Let other bikers straddle the latest in quick-start, fast-acceleration technology. The Cretins prefer the classic lines and unreliability of old machines.
"We're kind of the forgotten class, the outcasts of the motorcycle world," said Cretins member Eric Orr, who owns 10 classic bikes, including the chopped-up silver Honda he was riding that night.
"What I find quite interesting is when I'm out riding on a vintage bike, I'll ride past sport bike riders and not get any reaction, but when I'm on my modern bike, I'll get waved at every time," said Jonnie Green, a native Brit who works in L.A. restoring classic English bikes.
"It's the same with all walks of life, though, isn't it? You'll get that with a guy that drives a Ford and he comes across a guy that drives a Chevy. There will be a divide there. I really don't think it's limited to motorcycles; it's just human."
Dirt bikes
Asphalt doesn't forgive. That's why you'll find so many riders punching it across the desert sand and on dirt tracks, where the earth helps cushion the fall.
Dirt bike culture is largely separate from street bike culture. Unless the bikes are dual sports -- built for both dirt and street -- you won't find them commingling with hogs, crotch rockets and vintage bikes.
With dirt bikes, the division is primarily internal -- playing out between the guys who ride tracks and those who do it on the open terrain.
The sport of motorcycling saw explosive growth throughout the '90s, much of it in the high-flying sport of dirt biking, thanks to the X Games.
