The old gent at the counter had an issue he wanted to take up with the store manager.

Seemed the soap dispenser in the bathroom was empty. But wait, there's more! It was empty when he had visited the day before, too. Scandalous!

"Is that how you take care of your customers?" he asked, his eyes scanning the serpentine line behind him for choral support. "Well, is it?"

That he was in his 60s, possibly Midwestern, and obviously not hurting for the green (based on the heap of pricey merchandise he'd assembled on the counter) was not terribly surprising.

That he was wearing leather pants, a studded belt buckle roughly the size of a pizza and a T-shirt that read "If you can read this, the bitch fell off!" — well, that was just disturbing.

But disturbing seemed to be the theme of the weekend as my buddy Gary and I absconded to Milwaukee for Harley Davidson's 105th anniversary bash and, in particular, the Bruce Springsteen concert on the final evening.

The 50-plus lady who flashed her Maidenforms (somewhere in the vicinity of her navel) to raucous applause during the Black Crowes concert? Disturbing.

The 50-plus dude with silver neck hair who drew even louder applause for flashing his own man-mamas seconds later? Very disturbing.

But nothing was as chilling as our cold confrontation with the hidden face of Harley Davidson itself.

Forget Captain America and Billy. Forget the 1-Percenters. The V-twin fringe long ago left the showroom for custom chopper garages, leaving in its wake a well-heeled sub-populace of financial analysts, lawyers, retired military officers, chiropractors and office managers.

I'd thought the spectacle of 30,000 hogs roaring around downtown Milwaukee would stir my soul. But the Orwellian uniformity of Road King after Road King — white America's new RV — was dispiriting.

Sunday Rider Nation had arrived, blasting Doobie Bros. chestnuts out of Bose-equipped consoles and dragging boat-sized trailers from HD-emblazoned chrome hitches. Whoo! Getcha motor runnin'!

To be sure, it wasn't the heavy metal thunder of 1540cc engines that carried the day, but the jingle of corporate coffers overflowing with Social Security lucre. Harley may have invoked the spirit of Sturgis in advertising the celebration, but its true demographic knew better. It was a shopping expedition.

The Springsteen gig seemed to sum things up, with the red-state crowd booing the Boss for condemning the domestic assault on civil liberties and Springsteen stoutly refusing to acknowledge the crowd's jingoistic "U-S-A" chants.

Many no doubt expected Springsteen to give in and play the oft-misinterpreted "Born in the USA" for his final encore. Instead, he launched into a cover of Steppenwolf's biker anthem "Born to be Wild."

He giggled the whole way through.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.