As Four Corners Motorcycle Rally wound down on Sunday, Durango’s stores, streets and restaurants were a site of surreal juxtapositions.
In Starbucks, an enormous, heavily tattooed man with an elaborately braided gray goatee stood in line, where the woman behind him got a good look at the three large words stitched into his black leather vest, the first profane, followed by “the world.”
He ordered a grande iced soy latte, replete with a shot of hazelnut syrup and whipped cream, and a piece of low-fat coffee cake.
In Southwest Booktrader, one biker woman wearing a black baseball cap, leather finger gloves, a tassled leather vest and heavy black biker books approached the counter with two books.
Southwest Booktrader’s owner, George Hassan, eventually sold her a hardcover copy of Mary Poppins.
Jeff Murray, owner of the Durango Harley-Davidson dealership, declined to go into details about his finances, but said, “We wish every weekend was this good.”
The rally proved safe as well with La Plata County Sheriff’s Office reporting no fatal accidents as of Sunday afternoon.
Murray said overall, this year’s Four Corners Motorcycle Rally had been “much more cohesive,” noting Mel Silva and Johnny Valdez had succeeded in restoring the Ignacio rally at the Sky Ute Fairgrounds to its former glory. He said Durango events, such as Sunday morning’s Main Avenue parade of more than 130 motorcycles and classic cars, had been extremely well-attended.
Indeed, local political dignitaries threw their weight behind the parade, with former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and his wife, Linda, leading the vehicles.
Murray said he’d been particularly tickled by Saturday night’s biker follies, saying they were, “slightly rude and hysterical, just good silly fun.”
On Sunday, hundreds of bikers swarmed the parking lot of Durango Harley-Davidson dealership, where the elegant, ecstatic music of an expert jazz band competed with the low warble of revving bikes. There, bikers could ogle demonstrations of the Screaming Eagle Ultra Classic – which arrived this week for public scrutiny straight out of Harley’s custom shop, get “relaxing body massages” for $1 a minute, purchase cigars, prescription biker glasses and barbecue, and avail themselves of the Coors Light trailer which was doing swift trade at 2 p.m.
Should rally-goers arrive at the dealership and discover they needed a tattoo, body art was immediately available from Mr. G’s Tattoos, which had parked a massive trailer by the mouth of the parking lot.
Outside the trailer, Mr. G’s Joan Jerry, an experienced hand at the Four Corners Motorcycle Rally, advised potential customers on the finer points of design and disabused gullible rally-goers of other salons’ per-hour pricing of ink.
Jerry said, “I’ve never once had a biker steal from me or be obnoxious to me. They’re your best friend, and they come from all walks of life, like retired CEOs.”
She said despite their hard exteriors, bikers worked “as a family, especially for vets and crippled children – they do so many charitable works that no one knows about. This is what people with blinders don’t see.”
Murray agreed that biker sociology was contradicted its gritty public image. “This is a laboratory, believe me.” He said on Saturday night, a man whose tattoos indicated he was a “1-percenter,” which is biker shorthand for their hardened criminal element, broke down at the dealership. Murray dropped him off at the Marriot Suites.
“The lesson in this culture is you cannot judge a book by its cover,” Murray said. He said motorcycles allow adults to feel like “bad guys on weekends,” but really, they’re a socioeconomic equalizer.
His point was borne out in Ignacio on Saturday, where even biker culture’s florid misogyny in one case proved a bawdy exercise in pantomime.
Near the beer tent at the Sky Ute Fairgrounds, an older white man wore a “Hooters and Harleys” T-shirt and a biker jacket accessorized by a stitched patch saying “I love Boobies.”
The man, who declined to give his name because he works out-of-state as a federal law-enforcement officer, said his clothing was akin to a costume; in fact he was an ardent Hillary Clinton 2016 supporter.
“Feminism is absolutely one of the most important issues facing the country,” the man said.
He excused himself and got another beer.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
