The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is famously about Freedom™, but all we get is more government regulation:
Riders will be cruising into Sturgis a little slower than normal, as the city adds additional stop signs to the main roads ahead of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
“So we’ve just found over the years of doing it that the four-way stop seems to work the best. And it kind of allows for each side to take a turn and go. And that seems to move the traffic the best.” Sturgis Public Works Director Rick Bush said.
Temporary traffic lights and reduced speed limits will also help slow everything down.
“We’ve got eight of those throughout the Black Hills. Most of those are around the Sturgis area. Speed limits are going to change at several locations along I-90 in between Rapid City and Sturgis. North of Sturgis on Highway 79 and then east of Sturgis on Highway 30.” SD DOT Region Operations Engineer Tom Horan said [Samantha Armstrong and Tyler Louder, “Extra Stop Signs Coming to Sturgis,” KELO-TV, 2026.07.30].
Come on! We don’t need government telling us how to drive! Surely all those thousands of easy riders could regulate themselves in a perfectly functioning anarcho-libertarian commune if we just pulled out all the stop signs and traffic laws and extra cops…
Bush says without the added stops, traffic would be more difficult to navigate.
“It enables them a safe way to get across junction, whether they’re going to work, whether they’re going to the grocery store. Otherwise, if we didn’t put those up, they literally would not be able to get out and get into the traffic,” Bush said [Armstrong and Louder, 2026.07.30].
Oh. Gee. I guess Sturgis is actually proof of the regulatory point: the larger the society, the more government and regulation we need to maintain basic social functions. The more people and vehicles you bring in, the more complicated the society, the more freedom each person has to surrender, via stop signs, speed limits, and other sensible government restrictions, to maintain some practical level of liberty for everyone.
Suicide by violent means is epidemic especially in red states like South Dakota and Wyoming so Republicans just go pffft when twelve bikers die during the Sturgis Rally. Yes, South Dakota’s Trump-drunk Republican governor sells the state as one of the freest in the nation and even continual sobriety checkpoints have done little to discourage inebriated drivers from operating motor vehicles in Mrs. Noem’s state.
But, hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota so residents will endure another Rally where this year nearly a half a million attendees spent an average of a thousand dollars each so the sitting governor can crow about his leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills. Hotels, motels and campgrounds in the Hills jack up their rates and fill to capacity so a murder of fat white Republican crows can swill alcohol, stuff their faces, buy Trump t-shirts and children for sex then kill themselves and each other with reckless abandon.
During the Rally riders loop through Aladdin to Hulett and Devils Tower then back through Sundance, Wyoming where, not coincidentally, Rapid City Regional now Monument Health has a “Sturgis Market” branch.
Highways are often crowded to overfull and drunken bikers can be seen weaving over every roadway in the Black Hills. Deer and mountain goats are unpredictable and now join bighorn sheep, released by the South Dakota’s GOP wildlife ‘management’ arm, as opportunities for bikers to die.
As Wyoming’s economy retools from oil, coal and a history of workplace deaths the state has become a more desirable tourist destination especially during the Rally where dying is just part of the fun. Republicans in Wyoming chalk up biker deaths as necessary for the common weal just as South Dakota GOPers do.
The good news? Sure, bikers are just tools of the state but hospitals, bars and mortuaries cut a fat hog during the annual orgy and so did the law enforcement industry last year who seized over $71,000 through civil asset forfeiture and selective enforcement.
Is little MIiss cheat on cross dressing hubby with a married philanderer featured at Sturgis this year? Or maybe just her innocent horsie.
You know it goes way back. I went to two music festivals with the Red Willow Band with my wife and our little tyke. I stepped out of our tent and a drunken motorcycle guy went by a Sturgis boy because it was the same weekend.
The ruin it for anything else that week.
grudznick fondly remembers the times we had at the St. Onge Bar, Lar.
Que bueno! Sturgis has already killed twelve Republicans!