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Petrolettes Festival

Text by Lois Pryce | Photos by Kim Maroon

By Kimberly Maroon

Original article text published in Red Bulletin

On a makeshift stage overlooking Germany’s oldest street-racing circuit, Irene Kotnik whips up the crowd, declaring her mission in trademark rousing style: “Unity! Empowerment! Sisterhood!” Petite, blonde, and most often seen tearing around on her custom Triumph chopper in fitted black denim overalls, Kotnik is the founder of Petrolettes, the world’s first motorcycle community for women. And today she’s front and centre at the Petrolettes Festival, Europe’s largest women-only motorcycle event.

Although Kotnik is frequently forced to justify this strictly women-only rule to disgruntled – or simply curious – men, she rejects the ‘militant feminist’ tag. “It’s not a political stance,” she insists. “The idea was just to create a space for me and my friends. I didn’t think about the implications. I just wanted to meet women with the same passion, so I set up this playground – by the community, for the community.”

She has clearly identified a gap in the market. What started in 2016 as a gathering of 250 riders for an illicit street race on the outskirts of Berlin is now an annual festival, held in different locations across Germany, attracting hundreds of women motorcyclists from every continent and drawing big-name sponsors. Kotnik had first dabbled in motorcycling eight years earlier, when she passed her test for the purpose of accompanying her father on his lifelong dream of riding America’s famous Route 66. “But the other bikers we met were all old men on huge cruisers, with beer bellies,” she says. “It didn’t appeal to me as a scene at all.”

It was in 2013 that, by chance, Kotnik found herself at Wheels and Waves – an ultra-chic festival in Biarritz, close to the Spanish border in south-west France, where vintage motos meet surf and skate culture. She was hooked. “I knew I had to go back to Berlin, buy a small, naked bike and customise it myself.”

But she had no riding buddies back home, or certainly no female ones, and the mainstream motorcycling events with their macho atmosphere and Lycra-clad models – “like we’re still in the 1970s!” – left her cold. So she took to social media and started seeking out women on two wheels. Petrolettes was born.

This being 21st-century moto culture, Petrolettes is an app, too, connecting more than 12,000 riders in 43 countries who use the platform to share tips and find riding buddies. Kotnik came up with the idea during the pandemic. “The festival wasn’t viable during lockdown,” she explains, “but people were still keen to get together for a socially distanced ride-out. But there was so much admin and so many emails, just organising everything and everyone, that I realised an app could do it all for me!”

Every generation is represented, and every style of moto culture on display.

The idea had been bubbling away for a while, inspired by a solo ride she made down the West Coast of the US in 2015. “I used Facebook to find female riders to stay with along the way, and I thought to myself, ‘Hmm, would I show up and sleep on a random guy’s couch? There should be one central platform for women riders to connect and offer each other help.’”

The couch-surfing aspect of the app is its most-used feature, and there’s an interactive map with a dot for every Petrolette across the world. Each member lists their offerings on their profile: bed, bike, workshop. It’s the essence of Kotnik’s community ethos in practice. And it works. In the run-up to the festival, a British Petrolette is making plans to stop over at a German member’s place on the way home, while an American rider has arranged to stay with a Parisian member as she continues her European tour after the event.

Petrolettes Begins

Friday afternoon sees riders rolling in, accompanied by a number of photographers from Boston and New York, and the star of the show, Iranian pro track racer Behnaz Shafiei. This group has been assembled in Berlin for the 300km ride to the festival by Cäthe Pfläging, co-founder of all-female motorcycle club The Curves and the city’s DIY community bike garage, Craftwerk.

Behnaz from Iran, Cäthe of The Curves, photographers Kim and Heidi from the US (credit: Casper Van Der Ven)

Arriving on her Harley from the opposite direction is Alischa Jewko from southern Germany, who used the app to find fellow Petrolettes in her area after splitting up with her boyfriend. “We used to ride together in a local bike club,” she says, “but when we broke up it was clear that he would be staying in the club, not me. Some of the club members don’t even ride, so it’s obviously more about being a guy than the motorcycling.”

At the Petrolettes Festival, it’s all about the motorcycling – but crucially it’s not only about the motorcycling. It goes deeper than that. Sure, there are high- octane thrills to be found in the sprint trials, and your traditional biker fare in the shape of a pop-up tattoo parlour, and riff-heavy guitar bands (all-female, natch). But there is also a yoga tent and a masseuse offering sessions to aching and grateful riders, many of whom have ridden hundreds of kilometres, from as far afield as Portugal, Italy, Poland, the UK and the Netherlands.A

As Friday night rolls around, the bikes continue to roar in, some arriving solo or in pairs, others in packs. The parking area fills with an array of machines, from vintage ’70s trail bikes and custom scramblers, to colossal shiny new BMW tourers, stripped-down café racers and badass Harleys. Unfazed by the unseasonably low temperatures and rain, tents are pitched and panniers unpacked.

As the women congregate around the stage for Kotnik’s opening speech, it’s evident that there’s no cookie-cutter Petrolette ‘type’. Every generation is represented, and every style of moto culture on display, from chic Parisian retro glamour to full facial tattoos and rat-bike grunge. The message is clear: all women are welcome, or, as Kotnik is keen to point out, “all womxn”, which includes female identifying, non-binary, intersex and trans.

CJ who rode solo from the UK, adjusting her pack on her bike

Riders try out Brixton Motorcycles in the demo area

It’s this spirit of inclusivity that drew Canada-born, Berlin-based musician and entrepreneur Yvonne Ducksworth to the group when she attended the first Petrolettes Festival in 2016. “I’ve been riding motorcycles all my life,” she explains, “but as a woman of colour in Germany, I’m super-wary about attending biker events. I’m always wondering if there are [German right-wing political party] AfD guys around and I’m aware of how people are looking at me. But when I came to the first Petrolettes Festival, honestly, I almost burst into tears! Normally I’m a really chatty, outgoing person, but I just stood there quietly, overwhelmed, taking it all in. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, ‘At last, I’ve found my crew.’”

Ducksworth has been a part of the Petrolettes inner cabal ever since. On Saturday afternoon, she’s busy (wo)manhandling a 2,000w speaker down to the start line of the racetrack for the sprint trials, blasting out AC/DC all the way.

Welcome to Schleizer Dreieck

This year’s festival takes place at the Schleizer Dreieck track, a legendary street circuit of the former GDR, which came into being almost by accident when, in 1922, a German racing driver and engineer noticed that three roads close to the sleepy town of Schleiz made for a perfect test circuit. It soon became one of world’s finest ‘natural’ courses, but following WW2 and the division of Germany into East and West it was limited to hosting competitions between other Communist countries. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, its races opened up to the rest of the world again. But in the health-and-safety- conscious 2000s, the track was deemed too dangerous. So in 2003 the course was dramatically redesigned to allow safer, if less thrilling, races to take place. Now, the German TT and other high-profile competitions are back, ripping it up through the town every summer.

Racers line up to try their speed skills on the track

Yoko Rae takes to the 1/8 mile sprint races

For those not testing their limits on the track, daytimes also offer guided ride-outs in the local area, as well as practical workshops on various aspects of motorcycling, including mechanics, balance, adventure photography, and off-road skills. These sessions have a flavour you’re unlikely to find at your regular biker rally. Most notably, they include open and honest discussions about fear, which, Kotnik points out, are unlikely to be heard among a gathering of male riders. Here, however, it’s an integral aspect of motorcycling to be accepted and overcome.

In the field beside the racetrack, Dakar Rally veteran Tina Meier is coaching an off-road skills course and tackling the problem head-on. She uses concepts from her other job – as a yoga teacher – to instill the mind-body confidence required to conquer the dirt.

“Downhill is downward dog, uphill is cobra,” Meier says, demonstrating the different riding positions. Then she gets the group to take part in an ingenious challenge: riding across the rough ground while taking their left hand off the handlebars to catch hold of a ball on a string. This action, she says, takes the focus away from looking at the terrain ahead, and sends a subliminal message to the brain that your body can essentially perform both movements at once.

“Riding off-road is like entering a flow state,” Meier explains. “You can’t learn it by following wordy instructions.”

This association between motorcycling and a Zen state is a theme that crops up in conversations throughout the weekend. Sohar, a rider from Rome who’s also a yoga teacher, has been motorcycling for just a year but has already covered 10,000km on her Honda NC750S. “For me, riding is like yoga, because it confronts me with my fears and insecurities but also my need for independence and adventure, and my love of velocity. And, like yoga, the internal processes are individual, but connecting with the Petrolettes means sharing, and learning that we all face similar problems. That can be pretty empowering.”

“I had no experience of making clothes. I could just about make a straight line with a sewing machine.” — Céline, 2MileSix

Another hot topic of conversation around the cluster of merchandise stands is the pitiful offering of mainstream women’s motorcycle gear. It’s the usual complaints: nothing fits hips and tits, and anything specifically designed for women is pink. Céline Froissart, a rider from Paris, took the matter into her own hands after a particularly galling experience in a French motorcycle store. “I was looking for riding jeans,” she says, “but they were all low-waisted. So I asked the guy in the shop if they had any high-waisted styles, and his response was that women needed low-waisted jeans because they ride pillion and have to show off their thong.”

This conversation provided the impetus for the creation of 2MileSix, Froissart’s clothing line for women riders. “I had no experience of making clothes,” she laughs. “I could just about make a straight line with a sewing machine.”

Nevertheless, she quit her job in aerospace communications and set about designing a range of high-spec jeans, jackets and T-shirts that are as stylish as one would expect from a two-wheeled Parisienne. “They’re manufactured in France, and…” she adds, pointing to an elegant, tailored jacket in burgundy leather, “they are made for boobs.”

“These women won’t accept the old crap anymore.”

Helping out on the 2MileSix stall is Froissart’s equally glamorous friend Marie, from Rennes, who recalls her own brushes with French motorcycling men: “They say things like, ‘Why are you riding on a Sunday? Shouldn’t you be doing the laundry?’ That kind of thing.” She shakes her head, incredulous. “But things are changing. Many more French women are riding motorcycles now. Men are usually supportive once they realise you’re serious.”

And they are serious. In France, women make up 50 per cent of new riders, and this autumn will see the country’s first-ever female-only motorbike event, Femmes et Moto. Froissart says these new recruits come from two distinct age groups: the 18-to-20-year-old thrill-seekers, and an older faction – women in their forties and fifties who, as she puts it, “have done everything society expects them to and now want to do something for themselves”. Marie agrees, crediting the #MeToo movement for a shift in French society: “These women won’t accept the old crap any more.”

Alison Grün runs FreeW, a motorcycle touring company that trains and employs local women guides in countries including Nepal and Iran.

It’s not only France that’s seeing this trend. In the UK, online automotive sales company AutoTrader reported that 48 per cent of all female users looking for bikes on its website last year were brand-new riders, most of them in their twenties and thirties. And it’s been the same story in the US for some time – the Motorcycle Industry Council, a trade organisation for America’s bike manufacturers and distributors, reported a rise of 52 per cent in female riders between 2003 and 2008. There was even a US survey conducted by Harley Davidson, which discovered – surprise, surprise – that women who ride motorcycles are happier than those who don’t.

This rings true at the Petrolettes Festival; the atmosphere is unfailingly good-natured, and generations of riders mingle to share tips and technical know-how to a satisfyingly nerdy level. Ineke and Margriet, two friends who have travelled from the Netherlands, share a love of bike building. Ineke is primarily a dirt rider and has lived and breathed motorcycles ever since she got hold of a moped chopper at the age of 16. Now, aged 62, she’s a respected bike builder, founder of the Dutch all-female off-road group EnduroCats, and a lineswoman for the Netherlands section of the Trans Euro Trail, a 51,000km off-road route across 34 countries. In other words, she’s Euro-motorcycling royalty.

Under Ineke’s tutelage, Margriet, 32, has recently completed her first build, converting a Yamaha XJ900 from what she describes as “an old gentleman’s bike” into a pared-down scrambler, and has been bitten by the bug. They work at Ineke’s garage, or “woman-cave”, as she describes it with a grin. “There’s no sofa or TV or beer fridge,” Ineke says. “I go in and get to work.”

Ineke & Margriet, friends from the Netherlands who share a love of bike building

Ride with Purpose

On Saturday night, Kotnik takes the stage to interview three guests on a project close to her heart – Ride with Purpose, organised by the Petrolettes Circle, the group’s non-profit association, which supports and promotes women in motorsport. For the Petrolettes founder, using motorcycling to improve the lives of women globally is an essential part of its remit. As Kotnik tells the audience with her usual vigour, riding a motorbike is the epitome of liberation and should be available to women the world over. Her guests are Alison Grün, a spirited Frenchwoman who runs FreeW, a motorcycle tour company that trains and employs local women guides in countries including Nepal and Iran; Judith Pieper-Köhler, who works with Two Wheels for Life, a charity providing motorbikes to deliver healthcare to rural communities in Africa; and Behnaz Shafiei, the Iranian racer who’s training hundreds of women and girls in Iran, despite it being illegal for women to ride motorcycles in public.

Appreciative of a lull in the action, the audience gather to hear Shafiei relate the first time she saw a woman riding a motorcycle, during a visit to an Iranian village when she was 15. “I knew immediately this was my future,” she says, via a translator. But, growing up in post-revolutionary Iran, this was no easy quest. Shafiei was forced to disguise herself as a man and only ride at night, often fending off the heavy hand of the Gašt-e Eršād – Iran’s ‘morality police’, who monitor women’s public behaviour and appearance. Her passion has taken her around the world, training at racetracks in the US, touring Europe and appearing on TV across the globe, spreading her message to her hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. But her achievements have come at a personal cost. Although her mother has always supported her motorcycling ambitions, Shafiei tells of how she was ostracised by the rest of her family.

As night falls, the rain subsides and there’s an eruption of energy as Swiss power-pop duo Ikan Hyu take to the stage, followed by the seductive sounds of Austrian/British post-punk four-piece Friedberg. The dancefloor is a mud bath, but the Petrolettes aren’t bothered by a bit of dirt, and when the music is over, the crowd remains, transfixed by the final spectacle of the night, freak-show performers Princess Tweedle Needle and her tattooed, pierced, contorting cohorts, Evilyn Frantic and Zora Van der Blast.

Many Petrolettes are still reliving the performance the next morning as they gather for a breakfast of vegan schnitzel and muesli amid the mud and post-party detritus. Talk turns to Shafiei’s story and a heightened appreciation for being able to ride and dress freely. But Shafiei is not alone in struggling for acceptance of her two-wheeled desires; other women of varying ages and nationalities share their own stories of hiding their motorcycling activities from their families. Pfläging, co-founder of Berlin trailblazers The Curves, nods knowingly: “We have several members who only told their parents they’d learned to ride once they got their licence – to avoid arguments.”

As soggy tents are packed away, oil levels are topped up, and engines are revved for the long ride home, Kotnik is already looking to the future. “The ‘Electrolettes’,” she says with a grin. “Seriously, times are changing – I’ve already registered the name.”

Judging by the immense effort and goodwill of all involved, Kotnik’s vision of a female-built, grassroots organisation is thriving, but it’s also clear that her call for unity, empowerment and sisterhood remains as necessary as ever. The empty racetrack glistens in the last of the rain as the Petrolettes don their helmets and roar away, spreading Kotnik’s mission across Europe and beyond – into the real world, where a woman riding a motorcycle remains a subversive act.

DANKE

This work was done with the support of Red Bulletin UK, a repeat client on my roster when I began working in motorsports in 2016. I pitched their editors the story in early April 2022, handled pre and post-production, and coordinated all travel including finding a group of women to ride with out of Berlin. In the end, I fulfilled the assignment brief, however they chose not to use any of these photos with the final published article due to 'readership audience.'

This endeavor was equal parts personal and professional experience and a testament to the power of community, a vital element in all of my work. The story belongs to everyone that I connected with, shared a conversation, meal, couch (and a tent!) with, those I learned from, and ultimately inspired me to keep going. Very special thanks to Irene Kotnik, Cäthe Pfläging, Casper Van der Ven, Dilyana Mangarova, Craftwerk Berlin -- your generosity, support, knowledge, time, and patience through this experience was astounding -- DANKE. To Kai and Royal Enfield Europe for entrusting me with the Interceptor 650 for this assignment, what became the ride of a lifetime - 550 miles touring Germany's beautiful countryside, between Berlin and the Czech border, hundreds of curves, and the legendary Autobahn. To Heidi Zumbrun, the best adventure partner and fast friend I could ask for on my first trip to Europe.