Sturgis Mayor Maury LaRue, on Main Street during June's Cushman rally (Photo: Ken Bingenheimer)
Balancing the long-term good against the short-term (kinda) bad is what it's all about for the 6,400 folks who call Sturgis, SD, their home all year round. On the one hand, for two weeks each year, during the annual Sturgis Bike Rally, which is now in progress, your population expands by a multiple of 1,000, with all the incredible demands that places on your infrastructure. On the other hand, it brings in revenue that totally dwarfs anything most towns of comparable size will ever see. And that revenue pays for amenities and services that also dwarf what comparable towns can deliver.
"You have to realize there are a lot of visitors but they'll be gone in 10 days," says Sturgis Mayor Maury LaRue. "It's not a forever deal. Then it's back to 50 weeks of normal."
Anyone who has been to Sturgis Bike Week knows that the impacts include dense, slow-moving traffic, huge crowds of people, and a never-ending roar of big motorcycles. While some in the community might welcome it all because of the benefits, it is inevitable that some do not deal well with it. Some escape the madness and reap a tidy profit by renting their homes to rally goers and going elsewhere on vacation.
For some others, however, that's not a possibility. Says Dedi LaRue, Maury's wife, "It can be hard for older people, but the community addresses their needs." Businesses arrange to make deliveries, and friends and neighbors pitch in to help out in other ways, she says.
"We residents know the back streets to go to the grocery store, we buy a little more, and shop earlier in the day," adds Dedi. "We go super early to the supermarket."
"It (the rally) complicates a routine, you have to adapt," Maury acknowledges.
As for the noise, it really isn't non-stop, says Maury. "The house is closed up with the AC running and we don't hear it. The city has put in enough stop signs so they can't crank it out much (although the true reason is to allow cross traffic), and the bikers are mostly downtown, not in the rest of town. Three to four blocks off Main there are enough trees to create a buffer so we don't hear the bikes. We have four railroad crossings in town and when the trains blow their whistles it makes more noise than the bikes."
And many of the residents do enjoy the rally. Kim Teigen and her husband John run Scoop Town Creamery, an ice cream shop at the corner of Junction Avenue and Main Street.
"Our house is five blocks up Junction, and we love it," says Kim. "We love seeing the bikes, the colors, the styles, and the people on them. We used to rent our house out but not now, with the ice cream shop to run. We made $5,000 a year renting it to a film crew for two years. We bugged out and went to Minnesota and went to the lake."
Kim added, however, that "By Friday we're ready for everyone to go home."
The payoff for tolerating all this disruption is substantial.
"We repave 30 blocks of city streets each year," says Maury. "We have things most cities our size can't afford, such as parks and soccer complexes. It's because of the rally."
In addition, the prominence brought to Sturgis by the rally has enabled it to become a magnet for other, smaller gatherings that provide additional benefit to the merchants who are there year round. Earlier this summer the Cushman Club of America held its annual rally in Sturgis, with the theme, "Come play where the big boys play." In September the Sturgis Mustang Club will again be hosting a rally. According to Maury, in 2009 this rally drew as many participants as the national Mustang rally. Sturgis also hosts a bluegrass festival and a variety of other events.
All this activity brings health and vitality to the year-round businesses, and their numbers are growing. It also brings unique problems to the town when so many of the shops are only open two weeks out of the year. This topic is addressed in the companion article, "Living with the Sturgis rally: The merchants' perspective."
Related articles:
Destination Sturgis: Joining the motorized river
Living with the Sturgis rally: The residents' perspective
Living with the Sturgis rally: The merchants' perspective
Sturgis rally 2010: Pee Wee Herman leads Legends Ride out of Deadwood
Sturgis rally 2010: Baddest Bagger in Sturgis competition at Full Throttle Saloon (with photos)
Sturgis rally 2010: Cruising Spearfish Canyon
Sturgis rally 2010: She rides her own (with photos)
Hoka Hey award ceremony held at Broken Spoke at Sturgis rally
Sturgis rally 2010: SD Guv rides and wins Noisy Dozen award
Sturgis rally 2010: Custom motorcycles at the rally (with photos)
Sturgis rally 2010: Trikes at the rally (with photos)
Sturgis rally 2010: Riding the Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road (with photos)
Comments
Myrtle Beach officials could learn a bit from Sturgis: Bikers spend money, why not have them spend the bucks in your town!
Actually, the whole state of South Dakota benefits from all the sales tax, we were told.
Many years ago, Ruidoso, NM started hosting a motorcycle rally but in their 3rd year (or so) there was a big ruckus at a bar and some patch holders almost beat a local cowboy to a pulp. The story circulated that they had to put him in jail for his own safety.
Later we learned the WHOLE story how the cowboy was drinking (a little too much) and got frisky with some of the Old Ladies so the patch holders showed him the door. He got in his pickup and mowed down all the bikes out front – that’s when the bikers came out & kicked his hind quarters.
City Council voted to not allow the rally any more. After a couple more years the merchants organized and showed City Council they were earning almost a year’s living that one week and they missed the cash cow. The rally returned and the Golden Aspen Rally is still going strong.
When you have that kind of commerce, you learn to addapt.
Sturgis Welcomes Registered Sex Offender Pee Wee Herman
A Not-So-Satirical Commentary on the 70th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally
"I never give'em Hell. I just tell the Truth and they think it's Hell."--Harry S. Truman
SATURDAY (14 August 2010) marked the end of 15 days and 5,790 miles in the saddle for DP, Hidalgo and me. We rode the first 1,515 miles from Miami Beach FL to Wichita Falls TX in 35 hours 35 minutes, qualifying for what should be certified as my 51st Iron Butt ride. The next 1,540 miles took us west across stretches of Route 66 in Texas and New Mexico, then north through the awe-inspiring peaks and valleys of the Colorado Rockies, and finally northeast across Wyoming to Sundance (where the Kid got his name), our home base for the 70th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. After spending four enjoyable days cruising 455 leisurely miles through the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming, we rode back to SoBe by a shorter 2,280 mile route that took us through the less-inspiring but somehow more inviting ridges and gaps of the Smokies.
For the first time since 2005, I made it all the way to Sturgis and back without being arrested under a false pretense, getting ticketed for defying an unjust mandate, or having to rush a heat-stricken rider 30 miles to an emergency room. In fact, our greatest misfortune this year was a lack of cell phone service: ATT may cover "97% of Americans", but they sure as Hell don't cover 97% of America. 97% of the time my ATT phone was a worthless pocket weight, so I am 97% sure I'll be replacing ATT with Verizon. Anyway... I'll share more details about "the Ride" in future installments, but first a disdain for political correctness coupled with deplorable anger management compells me to convey the following commentary regarding "the Rally":
The commercial exploitation and pussification of the American Biker was as open and obvious at this year's "Black Hills Trailer Classic" as is the ongoing perversion of patriotism, needless sacrifice of our sons and daughters, and greedy sacking of our treasury, pensions and savings by the Republocratic puppets on the payroll of "Washington, Inc." and their Kleptocratic masters pulling all strings left and right from Manhattan. "No Colors or Weapons Allowed Inside" signs pervaded business establishments along Main and Lazelle in Sturgis proper, making clear their intent to strip us of our culture as they take away our cash. I ignored them as I always do, but this year the Case 286 sheathed on my belt actually got me summarily uninvited from two "biker-friendly" bars that will receive no free press here.
Meanwhile, just down the road at the Buffalo Chip--owned and operated by Belle Fourche attorney Rod "Woody" Woodruff--throngs of both motorcyclists (those who rode) and trailerists (those who towed) wearing shiny new Hot Leathers vests adorned with just-purchased pins and freshly-sewn patches that say something but mean nothing (ok, been there) mindlessly welcomed registered sex offender and alleged child pornographer Paul Reubens a.k.a. "Pee Wee Herman" to the stage. As biker-bucks barrister Woodruff put it, "Bob Dylan is here because people like him, and Pee Wee is here for the same reason: They are both American icons."
BULLS**T.
Declaring a public peter pumper like Pee Wee Herman to be an "American icon" comparable to one of the greatest folk/protest singer/songwriters of our time is an absurdity, an outrage and an insult to our biker culture. But I can understand why Woodruff would take that position. The Buffalo Chip is, after all, aptly named. As is often the case with fabrications found in the bikers' rights arena, the Chip exists ostensibly to serve and benefit bikers but effectively to line the pockets of a lawyer. So naturally we can expect that shyster--like any shyster--to say whatever he deems necessary to keep the cash coming his way. What I cannot fathom, however, is why thousands of "bikers" were tripping over themselves to buy Pee Wee Herman t-shirts and dolls, and hundreds even signed up to ride with the sick POS. Even worse, for a children's charity like Kids and Chrome to stage a meet-and-greet with an accused kiddie porn collector as a fundraiser simply defies comprehension.
Given Rod Woodruff's inexcusably perverse but undoubtedly profitable promotion of Pee Wee Herman this year, some are expecting the Chip's 2011 headliners to include Drop Dead Fred or Boy George, but my money's on Beverly Hills toilet troubadour George Michael. No matter, though. Barring their resurrection of Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan, I'll continue spending my hard-earned biker bucks at the Gold Pan in Custer, the Ponderosa in Hulett, the Dime Horseshoe in Sundance, the National 9 Lariat in Gillette, and the many beckoning Black Hills hideaways where our biker culture is honored and not exploited, our Constitutional right to bear arms is respected and not restricted, and "Welcome Bikers" is a sincere greeting rather than a rubber worm.
You will find the linked version of this article posted here:
http://distanceriding.ldrlongdistancerider.com
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