Why Cruisers Make Better Riders, Not Lazy Ones

DanF9 | Nov 10, 2025 — I was recently chatting with an experienced rider who briefly commented on their choice to move from a lifetime of cruiser riding to supersport. A reason given was the tendency of cruisers to turn you into a lazy rider over time.

It got me thinking. And I was surprised to spot my own prejudice on the matter, when it came totally naturally to me to think that cruisers could make you lazy. The immediate association being: laid back attitude, enjoying the ride, not fussing over the details, and all the common tropes we know (and that are popularized by pop culture).

But it's total bollocks, isn't it? Why is the act of patience and enjoyment often linked to laziness, even outside the world of motorcycling?

Cruisers Humble You

Put a beginner rider on a standard "naked" bike; they'll usually do alright in most scenarios. Now, get that same rider on top of an 800-pound tourer, bagger, or chopper... different story. In fact, these motorcycles are borderline unrideable without adequate experience. I'm thinking of the time Dennis Hopper had to let Peter Fonda ride the "Captain America" chopper in Easy Rider, because he was unable to handle it himself.

And it's a very common experience for naked or supersport riders. They get on a bagger one day and make fun of it, usually pointing to its weight. They'll say—"This isn't a motorcycle, it's a whale!"—or something like that. But behind every outward criticism lies a touch of insecurity (well, perhaps if you're Freudian), and the nasty comments are rarely evidence of the motorcycle being "poorly" built, but rather: the rider feeling like they just can't get a grip on it.

Big cruisers humble you, especially the first time get on one. It doesn't take a genius to notice that they take serious skill to ride: the balance and strength you need to have at slow speeds, and the endurance you need to develop just to hold on to the handlebars for more than an hour (think ape-hangers or custom chopper bars). Now take all this, add a passenger, about 8 hours of riding, and you've got a pretty basic travel day on a cruiser.

The Balance Between Ease & Struggle

I kind of make it sound like cruisers are just uncomfortable. Some are, sure, but it's really not the case for most. Evidence being the sheer number of new seat and comfort purchases. The entire point of a cruiser is to, well, cruise. That typically happens when you pick up a bit of speed, and the ride becomes easy. Still, even Tom Cruise will tell you that handling a heavy cruiser at low speed is no easy task.

The beauty of a decked-out tourer is that you can look like a total badass (or clown, depending on experience) wrestling it like some bull in the parking lot, while feeling like you're floating on the interstate. Same could happen on a sport-tourer, but the contrast is poetic on a cruiser. Designed to be both stubborn and liberating, dancing between the two as you move slower or faster.

It's not surprising that this also mirrors the ethos of cruiser gangs. Life is easy and beautiful one day, and it goes to all hell the next. The bike reflects that way of life, or so I'd like to think.

The Legacy of Custom Builders

Cruisers come with their fair share of hardship. They also have something to teach you, regardless of your opinion on them being "optimal" machines or not. It might be a set of limited skills (you can't expect to keep dragging pegs across the asphalt and learn to love it), but we shouldn't just ignore that idea because of preconceived notions like "It isn't optimal in so many scenarios, therefore it's not for me." Trying it, at the very least, will show you that it's a completely different realm that exists within the same universe, one that can teach you if you let it.

All this to say: you're the one with the power to make the ride more or less difficult, comfortable, edgy, or whatever you please. This is what legends like Clifford "Sonny" Vaughs pursued, with the art of the custom chopper. Most people think it's all aesthetics, but it's not. It's playing with the limitations of physics, challenging your own skill, and doing it your way.

I tip my hat to you, Cliff, and to all the cruiser riders out there with the knack to ride these ever-mysterious, yet profoundly human machines.

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