Up Front

UP FRONT

Sturgis soliloquy

David Edwards

"Breaker 1-9 for one of you Eve/ Knievels with a CB on. "

"Go ahead. "

"Son, that is one serious convoy you got there. Where y'all headed on all them sickles?"

"Big rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. "

"Yeah? What's that?"

"A 50-year party; sort of a family reunion. "

"Well, it looks like you're gonna have one helluva picnic. Good talkin' with ya, and y'a/l have a safe ride. "

"That's a 10-4. "

WHEN THE LATE J.C. “PAPPY” HOEL and fellow members of the Jackpine Gypsies Motorcycle Club put on a flat-track race just outside the small farming town of Sturgis in 1938, little did they know their event would grow into the Black Hills Motor Classic Rally, the largest gathering of motorcycles in the U.S., perhaps the largest in the world. This year's rally marked the 50th year (two years were missed because of WWII) that riders, mostly on Harley-Davidsons, have trekked across the continent to meet in South Dakota and revel in the simple joy of being out in the wind on two wheels.

Estimates put the number of rallygoers this year as high as 300,000, up from the usual 60,000 due to all the 50th-anniversary hoopla. I was one of those 300,000, riding around town on a borrowed Harley touring bike, instamatic camera at the ready. I met some great people, gawked at some fantastic bikes, went on scenic, backroad tours to the old gambling town of Deadwood and awe-inspiring Mount Rushmore, and generally had a very good time. I'd recommend that every motorcyclist attend the Sturgis rally at least once.

Reading newspapers or viewing television, however, might have given you a completely different impression. In the days following the rally, any number of news stories were published or aired that were, quite simply, sensationalistic and biased, which, as any first-year journalism student will tell you, are two things that news reports shouldn't be.

I’ve got a couple of examples of such stories on my desk, one from Reuters and one from the Associated Press, two of the world's most respected news-gathering agencies. The language contained within these stories would make even a hack screenwriter of B-grade movies blush with embarrassment.

Under the racy headline “Army of motorcyclists overwhelms a town.” the Reuters story is peppered with inflammatory phrases, referring to the rally as “an annual grease and leather festival that claimed the lives of 1 1 motorcyclists.” It goes on to note that, “The air was thick with exhaust fumes and the combined roar of the motorcycles loud enough to render the low-flying bombers from nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base barely audible,” and that, “The soundof massed Harley-Davidson twin-cylinder engines continued 24 hours a day as bikers raced through Sturgis and careened through the scenic canyons of the surrounding Black Hills.”

The AP article was titled “Biker horde departs the Black Hills leaving behind $34 million. 1 1 dead,” the dollar figure referring to the amount of money visitors pumped into the area during the event. “Long strings of motorcycles roared out of western South Dakota yesterday as the weeklong 50th Black Hills Motor Classic came to a violence-marred end,” the story began, going on to quote a police official as saying, “These people all drink booze, take drugs and carry knives and guns.”

Balderdash and poppycock, and I should be using stronger language.

The fact is that 1 1 people did die during the time period of the rally. Nine lost their lives in isolated traffic accidents. Tragic, certainly, but hardly surprising considering that Sturgis, normally home to 7000 people, had swollen to the population of a good-sized metropolis. One person died of carbon-monoxide poisoning in a tent. Another, a disturbed, knifebrandishing Australian, was killed in a confrontation with police. There were no riots, no mass gang fights, no murders.

Not that there weren't problems. Yes, there were some unsavory characters in attendance. Yes, it was hot and crowded. And I do wish that members of a blatant minority among the rally crowd would get it through their skulls that most of us— and all of the townsfolk—don't want to read their obscene T-shirts, see their girlfriends' breasts or be forced to listen to their bikes' obnoxious open exhaust pipes.

Still, as Mayor Andrew Szilvasi told me after the rally, “Most of them (rally participants) came to have a good time. The majority are no different from you or me or anybody else. This time, there were so many people that it did inconvenience the local people. Still, there were more favorable comments than negative.”

Somehow, Reuters and the AP failed to get a comment from the good mayor. Likewise, their reporters weren't at the Harley Owners Group banquet where H-D Chairman of the Board Vaughn Beals auctioned the Sturgis shirt off his back, egging the bidding up to $ 1000, a sum matched by the rest of the board, by Harley’s management team and by Beals himself, for a total of $4000, the money going to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, part of a 2 million dollar check that was presented to Jerry Lewis on his Labor Day telethon.

I suppose we shouldn't be all that surprised that the mayor's words or HOG's charity fund raising didn’t make the headlines. Too often these days, it seems that good news is no news.