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Sturgis.....Bike City USA
The
distinctive throb of a single Harley Davidson ™motorcycle echoed
down Junction Avenue, and the rider looked perplexed. This couldn't
be Sturgis! This couldn't be the town acclaimed internationally for
the world's biggest motorcycle rally. The town shows in magazines as
a sea of black leather biker brethren, where fast fast and loud parties
go on for days. This is the Mecca of motorcyclists? This neatly groomed
town with its stately elms, rows of petunias and little old ladies doing
their window shopping on Main Street?
Right town, wrong week !!! Because 51 weeks out of the year, Sturgis,
population 6,700, is a quiet respectable, conservative foothills town.
Shortly before Bike Week, a transformation begins in Sturgis. Hundreds
of vendors arrive with canopies and merchandise. Church basements become
cafeterias. Backyards change to campgrounds. The same store that sells
Prom dresses becomes an emporium dealing only in black leather. The
hardware store becomes a motorcycle accessory shop. Bank tellers begin
dressing in Harley Davidson ™T-shirts. And the bikers arrive,
two hundred thousand of them, Sturgis becomes Motorcycle City USA for
a fill week. The 2001 edition of Sturgis Rally & Races was August
6th through the 12th. Attendance for the 60 Anniversary in 2000 exceeded
600,000!!
Bikers of all stripes and persuasions from all over the world flock
to Sturgis for the week long party. They include Harleys™by the hundreds, show bikes, choppers, motocross rigs,
glitzy touring cycles, antique bikes, custom rigs and even trashed out
cycles they call "rat bikes"Four rows of cycles line
Main Street for blocks and there's a noisy, non stop promenade of cruisers
through this orgy of chrome and spokes. It's a spectacle, a happening,
and nobody can claim to really be a biker if he hasn't been to Sturgis.
It's a rough looking crowd, but don't be fooled. Among the beards, tatoos
and fringed tanktops are movie stars, businessmen, diplomats from Europe,
housewives, policemen and preachers. For a week, they are all "Born
to be Wild" and there's an unspoken truce of peace among all biker
types, clubs and factions. And then it's done. It's mid-August and it's
hot...a good time to go into Sturgis to window-shop for the Promo dress
which just a few days ago only sprouted black leather garments, or to
get a good buy on a new hay baler.
