San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Anthropologist studied women on Harleys
Merritt College professor took up low-riding while researching her book, ‘Bike Lust’
Barbara Joans’ motivation in moving from the back seat of her husband’s Harley-Davidson to the pilot seat of her own Low Rider was academic. She was a cultural anthropologist interested in the sensation of screwing back the throttle and letting all that power roar out from under her.
What Joans discovered in her study became the book “Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society,” published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2001, when she was 66 and had more years of open road ahead of her.
A tenured professor of anthropology at Merritt College in Oakland, Joans also lectured at San Jose State, UC Santa Cruz and other Northern California community colleges and universities. She worked her book into the curriculum and would sometimes arrive for work on her Harley to stimulate student interest.
Joans enjoyed being on the move, having relocated five times from New York to Santa Cruz and back again. During her later life, she shuttled between a garden apartment in the Marina District of San Francisco and a retirement community in Santa Cruz. After suffering a stroke in June, she moved into assisted living, where she died in hospice on March 6. The cause of death was cardiac pulmonary failure, said her son, Howard Schwartz. She was 89.
Joans left behind some motorcycles in the garage, going back to the years alongside her husband, Ken Harmon, on his bike with Fog Hogs, a San Francisco Harley group, and riding in the Pride parade with Dykes on Bikes, the lesbian club. She claimed to have ridden once or twice with the Hells Angels, and she rode side by side with her husband, each with a grandchild on back. She was at ease in academia, and she was at ease with greasers who wrench.
“Barbara took delight in being a contrarian, but at her core she was a searcher for answers to the mysteries of life, be they religious, political or cultural,” said her close friend Flora Resnick in an email. Phyllis Chesler, famed feminist author of “Women in Madness,” called her “an utterly unique human being and a genuine nonconformist” in an online tribute, “fearless, loyal, accomplished, and a bit of a wild woman.”
In addition to two books, Joans wrote a monthly magazine column called “Bike Rest with BJ” in the journal Thunderpress (now American Rider). As an anthropologist who studied subgroups, she was always grappling with the sexual attitudes that come with the motorcycle lifestyle, and the difference between women who ride on the back, which is how she started out, and women who ride up front.
“I’m an old-time feminist from the ’60s,’’ she told the Chronicle during an interview to coincide with the release of ‘Bike Lust.’
“The women in my book are redefining sex roles — what it is to be a woman
in American society. But they don’t do it with any big slogans. They do it in their everyday ‘I’mriding-a-big-bike-and-that’swhat-a-woman-does’ way. They’re very proud of who they are, and I’m very proud of them.”
Joans did not ride on a motorcycle, front or back, until she was in her mid-50s, and by then she already had a reputation for being tough and cantankerous. Her first rebellious act was in 1970 when, while living in New York, she joined an all-day sit-in to take over the editor’s office at Ladies Home Journal to demand that a feminist point of view be reflected in the magazine. The 20 or 30 protesters finally left with a promise to publish eight pages of feminist writing in a coming issue.
When she got to California later that decade, she became the faculty sponsor for the first Gay and Lesbian Club at Cabrillo College
in Aptos. Joans was straight and married but open to all stereotyped groups and would live among them for the purpose of academic study.
Barbara Joan Levinsohn was born on Feb. 28, 1935, in Brooklyn. Her dad, Rubin Levinsohn, ran Lawson’s, a men’s clothing store in lower Manhattan. Her mom, Eleanor, taught junior high in Brooklyn. Barbara attended Midwood High School with Woody Allen, and graduated in 1952. She graduated from Brooklyn College in 1956 and went on to earn her master’s from New York University in 1965 and her doctorate in anthropology at City University of New York in 1974.
While an undergrad, she met fellow student Irwin Schwartz in a philosophy class. They were married immediately after graduation in 1956 and had two sons, David and Howard, before divorcing in 1970. She adopted her middle name as a last name, adding an “s” to make it sound like Jones.
“After their divorce, she took a big turn into the counterculture,” Howard Schwartz said. “That’s when she moved to Santa Cruz and we started going back and forth all the time.” When he once asked her why they had to keep moving, she answered, “in New York I had the nights and in Santa Cruz I had the days.”
At first, she made the move every few years with the boys in tow. In 1975, she married Harmon, a computer programmer living in New York, and he became part of the shuttle, always driving.
“My mom didn’t like to fly,” Schwartz said. “She would drive out first and my brother and I would fly to meet her.”
While in Santa Cruz, she commuted over the hill to teach a course in feminism and social change.
Suffering from Crohn’s disease in the early 1980s put an end to her cross-country commute. Her last jobs in New York were at the New School for Social Research, where she instituted the women’s studies program, and at the Free University. In 1989, she finally got a tenure-track job at Merritt College. She served as both head of the anthropology program and director of the Merritt Museum of Anthropology until her retirement in 2013. Her course offerings ranged from sex and society to magic and witchcraft. Along the way she was chosen as teacher of the year for the entire faculty.
“She was very charismatic and was the center of attention in most rooms she spent time in, not just classrooms,’’ said Leslie Fleming, who also taught anthropology at Merritt. ‘She was innovative and her students loved her. She loved them, too, which is especially important at a community college.’
After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, she and Harmon took advantage of the dip in real estate prices to buy a flat in a three-unit building on Alhambra Street in the Marina. While living there, the Harmons took up road riding. Joans took a beginner’s riding course on a Honda Rebel, and fell into the usual trap of always wanting a bigger bike. She graduated from a Honda Rebel to a Harley Sportster to a Harley Low Rider, which tops out at 120 mph.
“She went from being scared to do it to actually teaching other women how to do it,” said her son, who never got past the moped stage. Many of the people she taught got interested through the book “Bike Lust,” which was not a how-to manual but a why-to inspiration. Joans led by example into her late 70s. Her husband died in 2021.
“The bike could transform its rider right out of middle class boredom and into exotic adventures,” she wrote. “The bike offered unpredictability. The bike beckoned. The road, the unknown and the mysterious, lay just beyond the next hill. It was irresistible. It still is.”