As bikers rumbled out of the Arkansas State Fairgrounds on Sunday morning, Keith Bass tightened the neon straps holding his motorcycle to his trailer, double-checking that his Harley-Davidson wouldn't bump up against the folding tables and coolers crowding the trailer bed.
Bass had joined about 50,000 other bikers who rode to Little Rock last week for the 39th annual National Bikers Roundup. This is the first time Arkansas has hosted the roundup, and city officials say it's among the largest events to ever go to the city -- providing a $5 million to $10 million boost to central Arkansas' economy.
The roundup began as black bikers' answer to the Sturgis, S.D., motorcycle rally, which happens around the same time and attracts mostly white bikers, Bass said. The event centers on motorcycle clubs, and that motivates people to join a club or start their own, he said.
"For a lot of people, what happens is they come out as a civilian. And they see what's happening -- the camaraderie the brothers have," he said. "It kinda sparks a lot of bikers and unites a lot of bikers."
The roundup moves to a different city each year, but once a decade it returns to Kansas City, Mo., site of the first roundup. Last year, the bikers gathered in Darlington, S.C. Tulsa hosted the roundup in 2014.
Willie Davis, 40, of Smackover said the area clubs worked especially hard to draw bikers to the Little Rock roundup because "it might not come back [to Arkansas] in my lifetime."
"This is history for us," he said. "I was glad to be a part of it, so I can tell my children."
The Little Rock roundup took about 30 months to plan, and it attracted people from as far away as Japan, said DJ Jones, national vice president of the 2 Wheel Cruisers motorcycle club and chairman of the Little Rock Arkansas Roundup committee.
Jones said the group toured six states to promote the roundup, "just like [Hillary Clinton's] campaigning and Donald Trump's."
The result, several attendees said, was a fun week with little trouble.
"The people at the stores and stuff -- man, we've never been treated so kindly," said Ed Rodgers, 50, of Memphis. "This has probably been the best one I've ever been to."
As people packed into the fairgrounds, Rodgers said, law enforcement officers did a great job of keeping order among such a large group of people.
"The Police Department, the sheriff's department ... state troopers, everybody needs to be commended. They did a great job," he said.
Isaac Spencer, 62, spent the morning making sure everything was packed away in his 2002 Honda Goldwing before his caravan of 15 motorcycles pulled out for the trip home to Houston, more than 400 miles away.
Spencer's been riding since he was 18, and his first roundup was in 1988. The only thing that's changed, he said, is that the bikers used to sleep in pup tents, and now people take RVs and multi-room tents.
"Waiting up for next year now," Spencer said. "This is what I take vacations for."
Metro on 08/08/2016