The Love Ride and California Bike Week have been cancelled, victims of a weak economy, according to Love Ride founder, Oliver Shokouh.
The self-proclaimed ‘largest one-day motorcycle event in the world’ is no more. Only two weeks before Love Ride 26 and California Bike Week was to take place, Love Ride’s founder, Oliver Shokouh, announced that this year’s event has been canceled. Low ticket sales couldn’t offset the costs of holding the rally, forcing Shokouh to make the difficult decision to pull the plug on this year’s event.
“This was a gut wrenching decision for me,” says Shokouh. “Our problem boils down to one thing, the economy.”
The event’s roots harkens back to 1981. About that time,
Harley-Davidson became an official sponsor of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) and the young owner of Glendale Harley-Davidson, Shokouh, decided to do his part by holding a little fundraiser in the back of his shop called Biker’s Carnival. The first event raised $1500 for MDA. The official Love Ride would premier in 1984, with Peter Fonda of
Easy Rider fame as the first guest host and Robbie Kreiger of the Doors one of the first performers.
The event would continue to grow, raising money for many charitable causes like the Special Olympics of Southern California, the Children’s Hospitals of Los Angeles, in addition to the MDA. Last year the event raised over $1 million dollars for charity and had raised over $21 million for non-profit organizations since 1984. Last year’s entertainment lineup included heavy hitters like ZZ Top and the Foo Fighters.
As a consolation, Shokouh is holding an autograph session with Peter Fonda at his Glendale Harley-Davidson dealership on October 23 from 4-10 p.m. There will also be a showing of Fonda's original cult classic,
Easy Rider, during the event. People who have already registered for Love Ride 26 will receive a pin, patch, and t-shirt to an event that didn’t take place. For a refund, a special hotline has been set up at
(818) 246-5618 ext. 141. Packages ranged from the $65 donation for the basic Entry Ticket to the $1500 Special Love Ride 26 donor's package that comes with a custom embroidered jacket. Glendale H-D will also be hawking Love Ride memorabilia on Saturday and Sunday in an attempt to recoup some of the debt already incurred by the Love Ride Foundation.
Shokouh continues to try to help out the causes he's supported for the last 26 years and donations to Love Ride beneficiaries are still being accepted and are tax deductible. He stated that he still intends to award the top ten fund-raising prizes that were featured in the Love Ride 26 brochure.
