Published: Saturday, September 4, 2010
Riding to live and living to ride, all the way to Sturgis
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Newlyweds share a wedding kiss during the six-day event.
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Northwest bikers check out a map showing where visitors came from.
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The streets of Sturgis, S.D., fill during the annual rally in mid-August, which draws about 200,000 bikers. This year's rally was the 70th one.
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“We are the people your mother warned you about,” reads a sign on a biker’s worn leather jacket in the streets of Sturgis, a sleepy South Dakota town of 6,000 inhabitants.
At first glance Sturgis seems just like many other small towns in America, but when 200,000 bikers, some of them from the Pacific Northwest, hit Sturgis on amazing custom bikes for the annual rally, things start hopping.
Seattle is a favorite destination for European bikers who fly into Sea-Tac and rent a bike for the trip across the Rockies to the Black Hills.
Historically Sturgis is considered one of the most important motorcycle gatherings in the world. The rally, the 70th, was Aug. 9-15 this year. From beat-up sticker-laden Harley choppers from the ’70s to sleek out-of-this-world modern custom bikes, it’s a sight to behold.
Hardcore clubs, like the notorious Hells Angels, Bandidos and Sons of Silence, stalk the streets under a large sign on the side of a building that reads, “Temporary Insanity.”
Soldiers for Jesus and other clubs also rumble down Sturgis’ Main Street, which is scattered with T-shirt shops, tattoo parlors, bars and casinos.
For many bikers, Sturgis is an annual event. Largely white and working class, they are tough and blustery on the outside, but sometimes surprisingly soft and emotionally vulnerable when you get to know them. Many are Vietnam, Gulf and Iraq war veterans looking for the camaraderie they once knew on the battlefronts.
And even those who didn’t fight are intensely patriotic, with stickers on their jackets reading, “Vietnam. I wasn’t there, but I still care.”
At night bikers head to the overflowing camps and the legendary Buffalo Chip to watch extreme stunts in burnout pits, participate in all-night concerts where they rev their bike engines instead of applauding and hang out at the many bars catering specifically to letting loose one week of the year in the spirit of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
“Bikers do a lot less damage than businessmen with briefcases,” said Joan Pillen, who does rally weddings. Some are quickie marriages and others have been carefully planned for months. What they all have in common is that the bikers eventually ride off into the purple sunset on their scratch-free, polished-down motorbikes.
“In my time if you didn’t have a chopper you didn’t fit in,” said Jim, a Missouri biker who’s been to 35 Sturgis rallies. “Today folks just trailer them bikes in and that ain’t fair. In the old days, everybody rode in.”
Some bikers still ride thousands of miles to get to Sturgis, through beating sun, surprise hailstorms and sleeting rain. One 72-year-old biker claimed to have rode 1,500 miles in 24 hours. But there are more and more people who trailer their bikes behind RVs complete with TVs and freezers.
One of the challenges is getting today’s younger generation into the sport. The average biking age approaches 60, and there are a lot of old men with beards who called their wives “my old lady” when she was 16. Today the name is far more fitting.
Sturgis has a Wild West feel to it. The Jackpine Gypsies dirt-track racers founded the event back in 1938, and it has grown immeasurably. The state of South Dakota made more than $10 million in rally tax revenues in 2009.
Today’s biking values probably remain the same as they did when the early bikers were racing the 1910 flat track Flying Merkel with its 2-speed gearbox. In those days, most of the bikes didn’t have any brakes, and there were rough roads, washouts and lots of spills.
Despite today’s Easy Rider image, high on the biker’s list of values are friendship and a sense of belonging. Ride to live and live to ride is the quintessential motto.
And of course there’s a sense of irony. For every Jesus Saves, you see the counterpart: “It’s too late for me. Save yourself.”
Marti, who goes by one name only, is a photographer and writer who lives in Paris, France, and has written for The Washington Post, New York Times and Le Monde-Guardian Weekly. She was in Sturgis for the rally.
Read more about her at www.martiphoto.com.
At first glance Sturgis seems just like many other small towns in America, but when 200,000 bikers, some of them from the Pacific Northwest, hit Sturgis on amazing custom bikes for the annual rally, things start hopping.
Seattle is a favorite destination for European bikers who fly into Sea-Tac and rent a bike for the trip across the Rockies to the Black Hills.
Historically Sturgis is considered one of the most important motorcycle gatherings in the world. The rally, the 70th, was Aug. 9-15 this year. From beat-up sticker-laden Harley choppers from the ’70s to sleek out-of-this-world modern custom bikes, it’s a sight to behold.
Hardcore clubs, like the notorious Hells Angels, Bandidos and Sons of Silence, stalk the streets under a large sign on the side of a building that reads, “Temporary Insanity.”
Soldiers for Jesus and other clubs also rumble down Sturgis’ Main Street, which is scattered with T-shirt shops, tattoo parlors, bars and casinos.
For many bikers, Sturgis is an annual event. Largely white and working class, they are tough and blustery on the outside, but sometimes surprisingly soft and emotionally vulnerable when you get to know them. Many are Vietnam, Gulf and Iraq war veterans looking for the camaraderie they once knew on the battlefronts.
And even those who didn’t fight are intensely patriotic, with stickers on their jackets reading, “Vietnam. I wasn’t there, but I still care.”
At night bikers head to the overflowing camps and the legendary Buffalo Chip to watch extreme stunts in burnout pits, participate in all-night concerts where they rev their bike engines instead of applauding and hang out at the many bars catering specifically to letting loose one week of the year in the spirit of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
“Bikers do a lot less damage than businessmen with briefcases,” said Joan Pillen, who does rally weddings. Some are quickie marriages and others have been carefully planned for months. What they all have in common is that the bikers eventually ride off into the purple sunset on their scratch-free, polished-down motorbikes.
“In my time if you didn’t have a chopper you didn’t fit in,” said Jim, a Missouri biker who’s been to 35 Sturgis rallies. “Today folks just trailer them bikes in and that ain’t fair. In the old days, everybody rode in.”
Some bikers still ride thousands of miles to get to Sturgis, through beating sun, surprise hailstorms and sleeting rain. One 72-year-old biker claimed to have rode 1,500 miles in 24 hours. But there are more and more people who trailer their bikes behind RVs complete with TVs and freezers.
One of the challenges is getting today’s younger generation into the sport. The average biking age approaches 60, and there are a lot of old men with beards who called their wives “my old lady” when she was 16. Today the name is far more fitting.
Sturgis has a Wild West feel to it. The Jackpine Gypsies dirt-track racers founded the event back in 1938, and it has grown immeasurably. The state of South Dakota made more than $10 million in rally tax revenues in 2009.
Today’s biking values probably remain the same as they did when the early bikers were racing the 1910 flat track Flying Merkel with its 2-speed gearbox. In those days, most of the bikes didn’t have any brakes, and there were rough roads, washouts and lots of spills.
Despite today’s Easy Rider image, high on the biker’s list of values are friendship and a sense of belonging. Ride to live and live to ride is the quintessential motto.
And of course there’s a sense of irony. For every Jesus Saves, you see the counterpart: “It’s too late for me. Save yourself.”
Marti, who goes by one name only, is a photographer and writer who lives in Paris, France, and has written for The Washington Post, New York Times and Le Monde-Guardian Weekly. She was in Sturgis for the rally.
Read more about her at www.martiphoto.com.
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