Officials are expecting as many as one million people at this week’s Sturgis Bike Rally. This is a great time to be a merchant in the Black Hills, since everyone who attends the rally needs to eat, sleep, and get something to take home for the kids. But the towns in far West River are not the only ones to benefit from the bikers.
It takes a lot of courage to cover a Charlie Daniels’ Band song when you don’t have a fiddle player. But the Sonny Austin Band is giving it a shot. The group consists of a keyboard player, guitars and percussion, and the crowd at Yankton’s first ever Rock & Rumble event is enjoying the music coming from the stage at the Landing, a bar and restaurant just across from Riverfront Park and the Missouri River. Stephanie Moser with the Yankton Convention and Visitors Bureau helped organize the event. She says they figured on 50 bikers in this first go-round—but they got 400.
Moser says, “It’s exciting. You know, with a first-year event, you worry about getting too big—we’ve got a lot of ideas on how we want to build on it for next year, definitely.”
Rock & Rumble started with a bike parade across the bridge between South Dakota and Nebraska, with 250 entries. Moser says the rumble through her city is the sound of money.
She says, “If you go off the noise—you hear a lot of noise, you hear a lot of traffic through the day, it starts early in the morning; I’m hearing it in my office at the Chamber and Visitors Bureau. You know, those folks are stopping, they’re eating, they may be in our stores, purchasing items—you know, I think we will see those economic dollars coming into Yankton.”
In 20-10, the state saw an economic impact of 800 million dollars from the rally. This year, for the 75th anniversary of the rally, those revenues could reach one billion dollars. The weeks ahead of and behind the rally are peak times for towns along the more popular routes to the Black Hills—at South Dakota’s unofficial welcome mat on Interstate 29, North Sioux City, Warren Shirley fills up his pickup, and the Harley-Davidson Motorcyle in the truck bed. Shirley is from Shreveport, Louisiana, and a rally veteran who’s taking the scenic route to Sturgis.
Shirley says, “Well, actually, I’m taking my sister to a little place called Gettysburg—I’m gonna leave her there in the pickup truck and then go down on 212. I’ve gone just about every way there is to go, because I go every year.”
It’s up to people like Misty Jungworth to keep supplies on hand for Warren Shirley and the other bikers. She manages the Goode to Go convenience store and restaurant off Interstate 29.
Jungworth says, “I’ve just gotta keep a lot of things on hand, ‘cause we have the ethanol gas, you know, so we gotta keep the octane on hand so they can put it in their bikes while they’re fueling up.”
This time of year is so important to Goode to Go, workers spend an entire month offering specials to the people coming to, and going from, the Bike Rally.
She points out, “Well, we always have a breakfast discount special—for $3.50 you get breakfast. We have a lot of Sturgis hats, t-shirts, souvenirs, stuff like that. So yeah, they always come in and wipe me out. It started Monday, with people coming in, campers and bikes—it’s our best time of the year right now.”
People in Wagner, about two hours from North Sioux City on Highways 46 and 50, are also working to draw those who are headed the remaining 350 miles to Sturgis. A grocery store offers brats, chips and a drink for four dollars.
Just up the street from the store, techno music, sidewalk specials, and Ruth Bouza wait to greet bikers at her custom bike and biker gear shop. She’s has blonde hair, and blue eyes, dressed comfortably on the warm day. And, really, Bouza is like any other Switzerland native who moved to South Dakota, married a local man, and opened a custom bike shop and limousine service.
Bouza reflects, “We’ve only been open two years, but it’s picking up from last year—so I’m hoping in the future, it’ll keep picking up and people will know we’re here.”
Realtors and business leaders talk about location as a key to success—and in these first two years in business, Bouza, herself among the crowds in Sturgis this week, is wishing for a better spot.
“We’re a little off the beaten path," Bouza says, "because we’re on North Main Street; all the other businesses are on South Main Street. But we’ve got some items down at the 4-way, and hopefully people will come up here and check us out.”
Ruth Bouza in Wagner, Misty Jungworth in North Sioux City, and Stephanie Moser in Yankton will all repeat the key to success at rally time—that’s taking care of their visitors. Driving that point home is Brian Klock, a motorcycle dealer in Mitchell. He gets plenty of people passing through on Interstate 29, and hosts an annual pre-rally party. Klock has just gone the extra mile for regular customers, a husband and wife from La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Klock says, “She had a little crack in her windshield and she says, ‘I don’t know what that is—I told her, ‘It doesn’t matter what it is, we’ll get you a new one. That’s our commitment to customer service; there’s no sense in messing around.
"I mean, if I give her a new windshield for whatever that costs me, she’s going to tell 20 more people when she gets to the rally about this situation—and how do I go wrong with that?”
In a way, the Yanktons and Wagners across the state, and the towns that dot highways between the State Lines and Sturgis have an advantage at rally time. Those businesses supplying fuel and food and a hat or two, get another chance to cater to rally-goers as the bikers head home.