Why?! Oh why?!!!

[Guzzistajohn]

Ape hangers as we know them got started in World War I. Seems that sending messages via a "Dispatch Rider" was more reliable and more secure than using other methods. However, seems some of the enemy sympathizers or outright enemy combatants wanted to peek at what these folks were carrying. For the riders, speed was their only real security, so they rode as rapidly as possible. However, they tended to ride along the same route... carrying messages... one something of a schedule. So those who wanted to intercept them started using a simple device... a piece of wire strung across the road... about neck high for a man on a motorcycle. It worked quite well in regards to making him stop and share the contents of his message case. Well, the rider never seemed to complain much anyways... likely due to that whole head/body separation thing.

Once word got around to what was happening, some ingenious individual decided that the easy way to solve this was to extend the handlebars to go up above the riders' head. This way the wire was either snapped by the bars with no injury to the rider, or simply pushed up out of the way and the rider continued on, again, unbothered.

After the wars end, a lot of dispatch riders came home to the US and started working on bikes. Having become comfortable with higher bars, and liking the distinction they provided, they replicated those battlefield modifications. And the rest... is history.

Good story Captain Trivia!  That's a new one on me!

[Rich A]

  Saves on deodorant (Guzzi Content)

Pits in the wind!

[Rick in WNY]

Good story Captain Trivia!  That's a new one on me!

Yes, I am a bit of a collector of useless trivia... one of my character flaws I guess.

The idea still had merit in WWII when Jeeps were used. Fortunately, these were well documented and photographed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_cutter_(jeep)

[Lannis]

Ape hangers as we know them got started in World War I. .....

Well, whether this is a "folk etymology" or just a tall tale, I don't think that the people you see riding with apes today got the idea from WWI dispatch riders.    There was a time you NEVER saw out-of-control apehangers, and I don't think that the ape-hanger boys are suddenly now trying to emulate bikes from 100 years ago because it makes them look cool, or makes them look like they are prepared for wires strung across Main Street.

Take another moto-aberration - cars jacked up in the rear.   It's pretty obvious to everyone that the guys that did that were trying to emulate drag racers, and make their car look tough and fast like a dragster.    Or modern youngsters that take beat up hatchbacks and try to make them look like rally cars.

Maybe it's like one of those school-of-fish or flock-of-birds things .... one well-admired tough biker dude started doing it, and then some other people did it, and then a bunch more, and then suddenly it was "The Thing" to do .... ?

Lannis

[Rick in WNY]

Oh Lannis, I didn't mean to insinuate that modern ape-hangers had anything at all to do with the battlefield expedient dispatch-rider anti-decapitation devices...

The point is, that is why tall bars were first created and used. As for it being a folk tale... umm, well, then, the fine folks at the Harley Museum are guilty of perpetuating it. Or rather, that is where I first heard about it, and it just makes sense when you consider how things were done back then. Since neither of us was around back then, we kinda have to rely on the history as recorded by others and recounted to us.

As for how the higher bars of yesteryear turned into the wacky mile-high armpit coolers you see now... well I have an explanation. It's a simple case of one-up-man-ship. Joe the dispatch rider comes home, buys a bike, and puts high bars on it because he was used to riding with them. Other people see it, copy the idea, and start going higher... those get seen, copied, and go higher still... Like you said, a century later, I doubt any of them know why they're even a thing... but they keep it going anyways.

[coast range rider]

The current use of ape hangers relies little on the logic of that historical reference from WWI. I recall seeing a recent study done on the current use of ape hangers, where statisticians discovered that the higher the handlebars were, the lower the IQ of the rider.

[Huzo]

It’s a lifestyle thing isn’t it ?
How many guys with clip ons really need them, or knee scrapers, or touring screens, or carbon fibre, or...or....

[rocker59]

Today as I was leaving a flying event a H-D bike rode by me. It was the same version as you see in the stock photo, beautiful and totally stock looking except...it had shoulder high, narrow tubed apes. Why would one even consider doing that to this model?



GliderJohn

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but the bike in the photo is not a stock Harley Davidson.  It's a heavily modified Sportster-based tracker that someone has slung  Metric Shite-Tonnes of money at.

I don't know what you saw, but it wasn't the above bike with apes.

[JeffOlson]

This is why:



What they really want is a Stingray bicycle...

[Gliderjohn]

From Rocker59.

I don't know what you saw, but it wasn't the above bike with apes.

Then someone went to a lot of effort and expense to look just like what I pictured. It was not any run of the mill Sportster.
GliderJohn

[larrys]

When I started riding in the early 70's, ape hanger bars which had been popular in the 60's were already falling out of favor. Some states back then, CT was one, passed legislation limiting the height of the bars to 18" above the seat. Not that anyone complied, but CT has the law on the books. I have never understood why they came back...
Larry

[rocker59]

Then someone went to a lot of effort and expense to look just like what I pictured. It was not any run of the mill Sportster.
GliderJohn

 
Was it one of these?


Or, one of these?



 

[Gliderjohn]

The exhaust was higher and darker, like the picture I posted.
GliderJohn

[Kev m]

They are used by people who understand what it looks like in a full on panic stop when the leverage from the tall bars create beautiful custom effects that you just can't get any other way.
In other words,  they fold over.

I've got an old acquaintance from the XLforum who had ridiculous apes for years and rode the snot out of his bike all over north America.

That is till he was getting in the highway somewhere in New England one morning. He'd just merged with traffic at speed when the risers finally failed under the leverage and he found himself doing about 65 mph with handlebars in his hands that were no longer attached to the triple trees!

He somehow managed to grab the trees with his left hand while braking with his right hand and foot and pulled over to the shoulder.

That was his last day with apes.

[Gliderjohn]

That would be bit to much excitement in a morning!
GliderJohn

[Lannis]

It’s a lifestyle thing isn’t it ?
How many guys with clip ons really need them, or knee scrapers, or touring screens, or carbon fibre, or...or....

Yebbut, you can argue (and I will) that clip-ons, knee scrapers, touring screens, carbon fibre accessories, frame sliders, etc actually IMPROVE the performance of the bike, or the safety, or the comfort, even if the rider never scrapes a knee or goes 120 MPH.

Apes do nothing but LOWER performance, and though you can't measure comfort and safety, they certainly go in the wrong direction.

I could understand it if they LOOKED good, but they look stupid.   That's the hard part to figure out ....

Lannis

[john fish]

Ape hangers as we know them got started in World War I.
After the wars end, a lot of dispatch riders came home to the US and started working on bikes. Having become comfortable with higher bars, and liking the distinction they provided, they replicated those battlefield modifications. And the rest... is history.

Doubtful. 

[rocker59]

Ape hangers as we know them got started in World War I. Seems that sending messages via a "Dispatch Rider" was more reliable and more secure than using other methods. However, seems some of the enemy sympathizers or outright enemy combatants wanted to peek at what these folks were carrying. For the riders, speed was their only real security, so they rode as rapidly as possible. However, they tended to ride along the same route... carrying messages... one something of a schedule. So those who wanted to intercept them started using a simple device... a piece of wire strung across the road... about neck high for a man on a motorcycle. It worked quite well in regards to making him stop and share the contents of his message case. Well, the rider never seemed to complain much anyways... likely due to that whole head/body separation thing.

Once word got around to what was happening, some ingenious individual decided that the easy way to solve this was to extend the handlebars to go up above the riders' head. This way the wire was either snapped by the bars with no injury to the rider, or simply pushed up out of the way and the rider continued on, again, unbothered.

After the wars end, a lot of dispatch riders came home to the US and started working on bikes. Having become comfortable with higher bars, and liking the distinction they provided, they replicated those battlefield modifications. And the rest... is history.

Rick,

Have you got a link to this info?  I've never in my life heard this etymology for "apes".  Not to say those WWI GIs didn't do something to their bikes to deal with "clotheslining", but show me some photographic evidence or print media reference to the GIs doing this, or of "ape hangers" existing before about 1965.   As much motorcycle reading as I've done over the past 40-years, I've never seen or heard of "apes" existing before the 1960s. 

[Gliderjohn]

Looked at well over 100 photos of WWI dispatch bikes. Not one showing anything close to apes or any other way of dealing with wire for that matter.
GliderJohn

[john fish]

Also, forward controls on motorcycles were developed in WW1 by the military to detect mines.  The riders would tap the ground in front of the bike to detect exposed detonators.  Riding barefoot for increased sensitivity, of course.

Tassles hanging from the hand grips were used to tie up prisoners, of course.

[Shorty]

You want abomination? I got a truckload right here:   

[flynguzzi]

In a way this makes some sense...…… but none for me thanks...

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

Also, forward controls on motorcycles were developed in WW1 by the military to detect mines.  The riders would tap the ground in front of the bike to detect exposed detonators.  Riding barefoot for increased sensitivity, of course.

Tassles hanging from the hand grips were used to tie up prisoners, of course.

  

[drburt]

pic hosting

[drburt]

[RinkRat II]

   Okay Okay I give. I had 'em back in '64

 

   Paul B

[Chuck in Indiana]

Of course, my memory is about as long as.. oh, never mind.. but the first time I remember seeing apes was in the 60s..

[Ncdan]

I like the ape hangers I installed on LeMans, I get a good bug collection every time I ride in a wife beater t shirt and it looks really tough with my tatoos.

Ok John, a picture is required for this one:)

[wirespokes]

Peter Fonda didn't like riding that chopper at all. He found it extremely uncomfortable and could only stand riding it as long as it took to shoot that take.

Yeah, the Billy bike was much cooler, though Fonda's was the iconic one.

With the Barcalounger riding position there probably isn't any other solution than ape hangers.

[kirby1923]

Bars in the ape hanger class was a fad like the ridiculously wide tire fad is today.

The wider the better, makes you look like...bad ass?

:-)