Skip to main contentLeather sales are through the roof and elderly downtown denizens are getting agitated, which can mean one of two things: It's either Senior Discount Day at Spartacus, or the Harleys are rolling into town.
We can only verify the latter.
On Saturday, Harley-Davidson will kick off its colossal 100th-anniversary party in Portland and three other U.S. cities. After a two-day celebration on the South Park Blocks, some participants in the Rose City Thunder event will ride all the way to the Harley plant in Milwaukee, Wis., for a gigantic bash on Aug. 28.
The prospect of 15,000 Harley devotees bringing 2,000 cycles into the South Park Blocks has some in seizures of glee and has others frothing with rage. City officials and downtown business owners are giggling themselves to sleep over the projected $1.5 million that hog huggers will spend this weekend. But a feisty contingent of Park Blocks residents--particularly Irwin and Lili Mandel--are madder at the invasion than a bag full of wet cats.
At a recent City Council meeting, Lili Mandel--quoting from no less an authority than AARP Magazine--painted a dystopic picture of the event.
"The roads are clogged for miles, and the place is full of topless women, wild bikes and wild people," she read. "It's Mardi Gras for bikers."
"What was the date of that event?" interrupted City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who seemed more enthralled than outraged. An avid champion of the hog, Leonard plans on attending the event alongside Mayor Vera Katz. "When Mrs. Mandel was talking about that convention, I was thinking, 'Oh man, stop, I'm getting hot,'" Leonard later told WW. "It's about time we had something like that."
The biggest dilemma Leonard and his colleagues have had to confront is the noise issue. The city's Noise Review Board has mandated that the celebration stay around 70 decibels--about the same volume as busy street traffic--with occasional peaks to 75 decibels.
Good luck with that one.
Federal laws allow all new motorcycles to hit 80 decibels (like being in the same room as a vacuum cleaner in action). But according to The New York Times, nearly half of the 5 million bikes on the road have modified exhaust systems that can bring the volume up to 120 or 140 decibels. For those keeping score at home, that's roughly the sonic equivalent of a military jet taking off. And Harley riders especially love to drive thunder-spewing hogs.
Global Events--the company organizing the rally--will have six "courtesy patrol" officers on hand at all times to stop excessive rumbling betwixt bikers' thighs, but with choppers ripping through and trying to outdo each other all weekend, they have a hopeless task ahead.
"Of course it'll be loud, but it's a Harley convention," says Leonard, who recently sold his scarlet-red 2002 Firefighter's Special Edition hog. "If someone's revving their engine, though, I will personally go over and ask them to stop."
The Mandels also warned that the traffic logistics of the event will "create bedlam," "produce road rage," and have the heart of the city "tied into a knot with clogged arteries." They may have a point. Similar recent Harley gatherings in other cities have been hosted at sprawling motor speedways, well outside downtown cores.
And what of the debauchery, the naked breasts swaying in the breeze, the rivers of booze and constant volleys of gunfire?
Sadly, the organizers say, it just doesn't happen at Harley-sponsored events.
"There's a very big difference between Harley riders and other motorcycle riders," explains Aaron Cole of Global Events. "The demographic is males over 40 who earn about $70,000 a year, and that's the clientele Harley works to keep satisfied."
Instead of wreaking havoc, hog riders can even go get their God on at 9 and 11 am at the First Christian Church on Southwest Broadway, where Dr. Rex Loy will deliver a sermon titled "Did Gabriel Ride a Harley?"
Of course, none of these promises of halcyon Harleys will satisfy the Mandels--who won't so much as look at Leonard in City Hall anymore--but Leonard, an eastsider, has a solution that might benefit all.
"They could stay at my place and I could stay at theirs," he suggests. "They'd just have to feed my dog."
WWeek 2015