The Sunday Read: ‘I Fell in Love With Motorcycles. But Could I Ever Love Sturgis?’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Like many other Americans, Jamie Lauren Keiles, the author of this week’s Sunday Read, bought their first motorcycle during the coronavirus pandemic. “I thought I was just purchasing a mode of transportation — a way to get around without riding the train,” they wrote. “But after some time on the street with other riders, I started to suspect I’d signed up for a lot more.” Jamie was aware of biker culture, but had decided that these tropes — choppers, leather jackets — “were all but contentless by now, mere tchotchkes on the wall in the T.G.I. Fridays of American individualism.” However, Jamie was shocked to discover that not only did this strain of biker culture still exist, but that they existed within it. So, curious about what remained vital at its heart, Jamie set out for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, my name is Jamie Lauren Kaelas. I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine.
0:11.0	This story is about my trip to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.
0:16.4	So I bought my motorcycle back in May of 2021 and I was mainly looking for a form of transportation.
0:22.4	In the first weeks after I picked up the motorcycle, I was really surprised at how my friends
0:26.9	received it. I thought I was just like, oh, riding for my house to a party. And then I'd
0:32.3	show up at the party and people would come outside and say, okay, bad boy, like, let me get
0:36.7	a ride on that hog. And I didn't really think that like people really believed in that
0:42.7	type of motorcycle outlaw actually existing. To me, it seemed like something from a cartoon
0:48.3	or something you saw, like maybe in a movie from the 80s, but the fact that not only it existed,
0:53.3	but now suddenly I found myself within it was just shocking. I was a little nervous going
0:58.8	out to Sturgis to be honest because I thought initially that this outlaw archetype didn't
1:04.1	exist, but then as I got taste of it back in New York, I was like, maybe it really does
1:09.1	exist and I'm going to the heart of it and Sturgis is going to be really dangerous. I don't
1:14.3	know, that's like embarrassing to say now because when I got there, it was really just
1:18.2	a place where people could go and have a fantasy of themselves as something a little bit cooler
1:22.4	or a little bit more hardcore than what they might be on the day to day. So I came out of
1:28.1	it with a little bit of a new openness towards being a sexy bad boy on a motorcycle, which
1:31.9	is something I didn't think I was setting out to do when I started this journey. Here's
1:37.5	my article. In order to join one of the private Facebook groups for the 81st annual Sturgis
1:44.6	motorcycle rally, I had to agree to 10 rules. Seven addressed matters of basic netiquet,
1:51.1	respect, courtesy, bullying, privacy, solicitation, both kinds. Two were apolitical in ways that
1:59.9	felt extremely political. No COVID comments and absolutely no politics, you will be deleted.
	...

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