Thousands of motorcyclists roll into Laconia this week for the 81st anniversary of Bike Week.
Festival-goers from around the country parade their custom bikes through the crowded streets of Weirs Beach.
Music, beer, and leather add to fun.
But in any three hundred thousand person crowd, there are bound to be a few bad apples.
At the local county jail enough apples make Bike Week busiest week of the year.
NHPR's Kerry Grens has more.
It's a part of Bike Week most people don't want to see: the inside of the Belknap County Jail.
Lieutenant Rags Grenier stands in a warehouse-like intake area.
It was built fifteen years ago to receive the intoxicated and disorderly Bike Weekers who arrive by the vanful.
Grenier: At the time, Laconia police department had a large old bread van called the Mariah. And they've since gotten rid of it, but we had to make it big enough to handle the Mariah when it came in here and it would just be loaded with inmates.
Although the numbers have dropped in recent years, the jail books hundreds during the annual motorcycle rally.
In one week, officers bring in ten to twenty percent of the people the jail books all year.
Most of those detained stay only a short time and aren't charged.
The jail pretty much just gives the most drunk and rowdy a safe place to sober up.
And Leutenant Grenier says they're pretty rowdy.
Grenier: With 300,000 people in the area, and you're one of under 300 that come in, you had to be doing something to single yourself out from the crowd. And generally, you deserve to be here.
For county jail Superintendent Joe Panarello, Bike Week is both bothersome and educational.
Panarello: You get to see whole cross sections of different kinds of people that come in the door. Some are happy drunks who tell stories and entertain the staff. Some are so inebriated we can't get anything out of them. And then some are just nasty and we have to fight with them. Some are hurt and some have never been in jail before. Some have stories, some don't. It's a real learning experience, I to say.
But this learning experience is expensive.
Panarello: I'm anticipating that this is going to cost me anywhere up to 25 thousand dollars, which to the county does not get reimbursed from anybody. It's an expense to the tax payers and hopefully the taxpayers make it up and all the revenue that's gained through the couple hundred thousand people that come through here and spend their money.
One of the expenses goes to moving all of the jail's 60 current inmates to another jail in the state to make room for Bike Week's incoming.
Superintendent Panarello asked to keep the receiving jail confidential.
Panarello: If in fact we are moving some people with bad criminal records and I wouldn't want them to have friends on the outside that could try to get them out. So that would be my concern.
But in the decades of making way for Bike Week, there's never been an incident.
And the assistant superintendent at the receiving jail is even a little excited.
Bird: It's kind of like going to a parade in some respects, it's a spectacle. You treat people with respect, they'll treat you with respect and sometimes it's kind of fun to interact with that many people at one time. It kinda gets your juices going. Some of us are in the business for those reasons.
It seems like it could be a little exciting for prisoners as well.
Most of them at Belknap sit idly, watching tv.
One might think a change of pace could break the monotony.
But inmate Ernie Clark is not looking forward to the disruption.
Clark: As far as I know we're not going to be able to make any phone calls, won't be able to get any visits, small stuff, commissary, no mail, no phone calls, stuff like that.
Clark says he'd rather stay at Belknap, even though he knows from past experience how crowded the jail gets during bike week.
One year he was brought in twice in one day.
The receiving jail hasn't determined yet which privileges the inmates will lose in the move, though work release and visitation will likely be sacrificed.
In previous years, inmates were split among several jails in New Hampshire since no one jail had the room to take them all.
The financial director for this year's receiving jail says this is the first time his jail has had any room to help out.
Bower: In the past we've actually been overcrowded. And we're in a situation now where that's changed due to the opening of a new facility. And now we feel we're going to kinda pay them back for all the years we were unable to help them.
On the day of the move, Belknap guards plan to load inmates on a bus with a travel pack of clothes and toiletries.
They'll arrive in neat single files to be processed swiftly and escorted to their assigned cells.
Officers expect no surprises, and seem like theyll tolerate no mischief.
In contrast, back at Belknap, Superintendent Panarello and his staff will be at the epicenter of a raucous, revolving door for out of control party goers.
Laconia Motorcycle Week runs full throttle until June 19th.
SOQ
