Industrial Heroes
Every region has their industrial super hero. For Silicon Valley it's
Hewlett-Packard's Garage and so forth. In Milwaukee it's the Harley and
Davidson brothers and friend in 1903. Garage. Same deal. And so, I hit the
Harley-Davidson Museum.
Monument to local industrial heroes
I initially parked a bit away from the building in a car parking slot.
But before I could take off my helmet, a security vehicle
descended on me; lights flashing. Motorcycles go right in front
of the museum entrance! Ultra convenient. Where you would expect
handicap parking.
Parking at the level of handicapped spot convenience
I did get some ribbing about daring to come see
the Harley Davidson museum on a BMW. The ribbers went out of their
way to praise the beauty of the bike, though.
The museum holds hundreds of HD bikes, across the decades. You need not be a
motorcycle enthusiast to appreciate some of the designs. In fact, one of the
owners went to art, and design schools, and his role was to come up with new ideas.
The revered founders of Harley-Davidson. That would be
Hewlett and Packard in Silicon ValleyThe motorcycle design brother: went to art and design
school. In Silicon Valley he'd have left Harley-Davidson,
and joined Apple. Non-disclosure dispute to follow.
HD made it big when they landed a contract with police. Which they lost years
later due to unreliability of their bikes. Ah, yes, when the engineers die
or retire, the business school guys move in to fix the company.
"Let's cut the QA department. What do they do, anyway?
Nobody seems to complain about quality out there."
Poster foreshadowing WWII propaganda poster art
The association with police was a boon. this ca. 1935 poster foreshadows
the worldwide style of WWII posters. The Nazis, the Soviets, they all
played on fear, helpless women holding their dead child.
Ah, and the promise of sex goes along with the fear factor. Powerful combination to this day
The modern HD is currently in decline. Multiple reasons: Covid, young
people going for other types of bikes, and…the CEO, a German, Jochen Zeitz.
Like Carli Fiorini, he came in with brand new ideas. He described himself repeatedly
as being the Taliban, setting things straight. An ill chosen simile, given that half
of the HD customer base is ex military. Actually, ill chosen all around.
A light table of happy customers. Despite my snark, the museum
is well done!
His second idea was to confront the HD employees with a DEI
"Black history literacy" challenge. According to Fox, he wants employees to
know about critical race theory, systemic racism and other nonsense, like that
there used to be involuntary slavery in the US of A. A call for boycotting HD
followed from the base.
If I'd had a choice of companies into which I'd introduce diversity and inclusion
ideas, Harley Davidson would not spring to mind. Did for Zetz, it seems.
