Oh the serenity....a golden orb sets slowly over our tents and the horizon. We are in a warm fuzzy glow and we gaze eastwards towards.........
The Full Throttle Saloon! Think Quentin Tarantino and the bar in Dusk Till Dawn. Think of "the sirens" that lured sailors to their doom. Think hedonistic sensory overload to the point where you can smell the biker equivalent of napalm in the air - Night begins to fall and all hell is breaking loose - time we got down there.
The Full Throttle Saloon is housed on 30 acres of land, which Michael Ballard purchased in 1999. The indoor/outdoor bar includes several large stages, a burn-out pit, a tattoo parlor, zip lines, a wrestling ring, restaurants, dozens of stores, hundreds of cabins for rent and parking for thousands of motorcycles. Open from late March/early April until at least mid-November depending on the weather this place can average 20,000 guests a night during the Sturgis Rally. Since 2009 it has also been the subject of a regular television show that captures the regular and sometimes irregular goings on at the saloon. Once again we caught one of the many shuttle buses running from Lamphere and within 10 minutes we were right outside.
Once inside we headed straight for the bar - as you do - and took the opportunity to try and take in the sheer size of the place. It reminded me of some old ghost town that had suddenly and miraculously come to life - it's saloons and bordellos once again tempting the road weary traveller with the promise of a good time. It's not really one big bar but more a collection of bars, some under cover, some not. None the less it all comes together very well and adds to the atmosphere - as if you are out on the town in some mad wild west frontier hell hole. Our beer of choice was readily available and as I knocked back a cool one I started to take in in some of the attractions. Remember what I said about "sirens" tempting sailors to their doom. Thank god I am not a sailor.
As we walked through the many bars Scot Weiland and his band were into their final set on the main stage. The night before Gretchen Wilson had been headlining and tomorrow night was the fantastic Big and Rich. Everywhere you looked the place was going off. Having said that one of the things that you notice here is that there is a remarkable lack of trouble. Put half naked girls, alcohol, decent rock music and 10 people in a bar back home and you would have a brawl going on within 30 minutes. Here we were amongst thousands and everyone was just having a good time.
It would be easy to get lost here and looking around me it seemed a fair few had. I even came across some Ozzies who seemed to be looking for their girlfriends - I told them I could fix them up with some sheep if they got stuck. They didn't see the funny side of it but the Texans standing beside me did and insisted on buying me a beer - "Hey where y'all from anyway" - I love this bar.
This neon lit leviathan sits there on the side of the State Highway showing the finger to all who drive past but you gotta wonder what this place looks like in the cold light of day - pretty rough I expect - but for now it was biker heaven. There were plenty of bars to get a beer at and the food stalls were everywhere. There is no particular order to the place and you can literally wander about and have no idea where the hell you have just come from. We took time out to look through the many shops and one of several tattoo parlours on site but didn't end up with any new ink. That's probably as close as I will get to having a Sturgis tattoo I guess.
Was all hell breaking loose - well no - not really as far as we were concerned at least. This was never going to be a knock them back, go hard, go long sort of night for us - we knew we had a big day on the bikes the next day so common sense prevailed - thankfully. None the less this had been an experience worth having. It made some of our biker venues back home look insignificant and on balance it was more than well worth the $10 cover charge to get in. The Full Throttle Saloon is not what Sturgis is all about but it is an important part of what makes Sturgis - the music, the bikes, the bikers (both male and female) thrown together briefly in a place like no other. L.T.G.T.R.
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