Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 2008: Shattering the Hooligan Stigma of the Biker Culture

Miles outside Sturgis, South Dakota, the ground begins to hum. A pack of motorcycles roars by. Another pack roars by. The drivers lean back in their seats, hanging off high handle bars. Behind them a woman’s loose arm skin ripples in the wind and her back fat puffs through the laces of her leather corset. They wear club emblems on their backs. Some are old, worn and dirty. Some are new and clean. It’s easy to tell which riders are hobbyists and which ones were born into this. The latter has a gaze that hits you like a steel bat to the skull. There’s a hard, fast story written all over him in faded green tattoos.

SLH: Tell me about the first time you rode a bike.

Animal: I was probably seven…I run straight inna ditch, hooked all out inna road, picked it back up, got it started, rode it some more. I got a mowtercycle I’ve ridden for almost twenty years. She’s my girl. Since I have owned dat mowtercycle, I have put twenty-five rear tires on it. A rear tire will go between seven and ten-thousand moiles.

By the time you reach city limits, the traffic has turned almost exclusively to bikes. The ground is shaking. Your nerves have seized up. The traffic lights are blinking and 4-way stop signs have been placed in every intersection to slow the movement of the roaring flow. On Lazelle Street, it’s bikes only. The thunder is near deafening.

Vendor booths insulate the street for blocks: Brass Knuckles! Dirty Panties! Hot Leathers! Broken Spoke; Biggest Biker bar in the world! I brought my mama all the way from the east coast to cook for this rally! Good Italian Food! You’ll love it! The air is thick with exhaust and the mingling odors of every artery clogging edible substance imaginable, including eight-inch square blocks of potato chips. Twenty-foot high inflatable bottles of Jack Daniels and Budweiser occupy the roofs of buildings. The whole scene is made of denim, leather, American whiskey, American beer and American flags. It’s a strictly American swirl despite visitors from all over the world.

City Representative: We’re closing in on around 700 vendor licenses. Our sales tax is up 80%. People are having a good time and spending money, so that’s a good thing for the City of Sturgis.

Lazelle St. is where the vacation bikers hang out. They’re here to buy things. You don’t see many old school bikers here. They’re here to ride.

Animal: Mowtercycles are not an accessory. They’re a love, a desire, a need. Dose people downtown… we call ‘em RUBs- Rich Urban Bozos. $30,000 and thirty moiles does not make you a boiker. A friend a mine bought me dese Harley Davidson boots five years ago. I don’t own nothin’ else dat says Harley Davidson on it. Da last thing in the world dat I have any care about is keepin’ up with da Jones’. The Jones’ can lick my left testicle. Not the right one, the left one. I’m old school real like my boike is old school real. Dere may be a few people younger dan me dat understand dat, But not most. I’m the end a dat generation.

The whole street is covered with row upon row of parked bikes, glinting in the sun like a shoulder-high chrome garden. Rolling through the aisles are burley men with beards and lots of back hair, wispy bleach-blonde California boys, huge walrus-shaped beach ball types and those who are utterly indescribable. People clog the sidewalks. Old people, little kids, girls with thick thighs thundering out from under chaps, girls in nothing but tattoos and red fishnet body suits, girls posing in scanty dress to earn donations for their college fund… Most of the women have a certain look like deflated and sagging caricatures of what was hot in 1989; high-wasted whitewashed jeans, tall hair, big boobs, beer guts. After you’ve looked long enough, they become beautiful like an acquired taste.

Law enforcement: Things are going good for us at the sheriff’s office; Numbers are about the same as last year, we’ve done 88 traffic stops; we’ve issued 83 warnings, 29 citations. As far as the jail goes, we’ve had 74 individuals go through the jail.

Animal: In order ta join a club you got a period of what we call prospect. You have a sponsor. Playin’ prospect would be …I call you at 11:30 at night and you live 40 miles away…or 80 miles, or 100…I want 2 cheeseburgers from your corner McDonalds, and ‘ey better be hot when they git here. It’s February. There’s no car involved- ever- if you’re a prospect. Your sponsor calls you, it’s mowtercycle ownly. How do you take 2 cheeseburgers 40 miles, hot, on a mowtercycle? Ya stick ‘em between the cylinders. Ya gotta be sharp enough ta know dat.

The nerves begin to relax within moments of mingling into the crowd. These are not hoodlum delinquents. They’re just people. Doctors, lawyers, carpenters, mechanics, fast food workers, students… Here they are all the same. There are the Boozefighters- a club established in 1946 that inspired a film called The wild Ones. Then there are the Soldiers for Jesus- clean and bright in yellow and black. They were probably established last Sunday while their children were in Bible study class.

Animal: There are gentlemen dat belong to a mowtercycle club dat I respect highly. I have worked on a lotta deir boikes. If one a dose people fall, gets struck and killed, you go to deir service. Did you love and care for dat man? It’s 26 *#%& degrees out and it’s 800 moiles away… you pile the *&#% up and you roll.

Sturgis is usually a small, dusty town of around 60,000 people. But this week it will swell to many times that size. It will be stifling hot. It will take forty-five minutes to drive one mile. Traffic will be chaos both on foot and on wheels. It’s a volatile scene, always on the brink of disaster.

Animal: I’m the kind of individual dat will roide my mowtercycle to work in the $*%#&# snow. I’m not afraid a none a dat. My worst wrecks have been with cagers, which is an old-school boiker term for people roidin’ in a car, not payin’ attention. Probably my fastest crash was 167 miles an hour.

Law enforcement: For last night’s shift we have four injury accidents, one vehicle seized, there was a total of 32 DWI arrests, 27 misdemeanor drug arrests, nine felony drug arrests, and 350 warnings were issued, and 520 citations issued.

None of this will faze the old school bikers. Nothing does. The people you meet here defy the hooligan stigma that follows them around. They are rebels and wild ones only because a person must break rules and twist conventions in order to live free and fully here in the era of fear and rampant restriction. Many rules are being made in this country. Many deceptions are being woven. But an old school biker is honest- he has no agenda and hides nothing. And he lives by no guidelines other than highway stripes. He is moved only by a driving desire to live hard.

Animal: I’m an everlasting warrior, dere ain’t no doubt. Adapt and overcome. You gotta make changes. Everything’s forward. Dere ain’t no backin’ up. If you foind somethin’ dat interests you, and you don’t go for it…you will always second guess yourself. An old black man told me several different things when I was twenty-something years old livin’ in San Diego: One a da things he told me was dat loife is a beautiful thing if you know how to live it. I’m almost to where I’ve learned how to live it. My eyes are open. My attitude is good. And apparently the big man has got a purpose for me, ‘cause dere have been numerous opportunities in my loife for my ticket to get punched. Dyin’ ain’t hard, dyin’s da easy way out. The biggest regret will be not taking advantage of an opportunity should it arise.

When the last vacationer takes off his leather costume and packs up his bike in a trailer and drives home to Monday, the last old school biker will be following behind. But he will be riding his bike and he will never take off his patch. He will roar out of town leaving all judgments, stereotypes, and rules shattered in his ear-blasting wake. The pieces will rattle off into gutters alongside the road and Sturgis will crumble to dust again and go to sleep until next year.