{"id":362,"date":"2007-10-06T11:25:49","date_gmt":"2007-10-06T17:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2007\/10\/06\/rumble-the-roads\/"},"modified":"2011-03-04T11:01:47","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T17:01:47","slug":"rumble-the-roads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/10\/rumble-the-roads\/","title":{"rendered":"Rumble the Roads"},"content":{"rendered":"

This could have been a wicked Brick<\/strong>, ripping up Fayetteville’s eighth annual (but it feels like the 240th) Bikes Blues & BBQ<\/a> that’s going on this weekend. A couple of years ago I had some criticisms about it<\/a>, and until Thursday night I had nothing new to add so I wasn’t going to. I have mixed feelings about this event: It is a pseudo-event but it’s largely harmless.<\/p>\n

Yet I had forgotten the drone. Mayor Coody now has his stronger noise ordinance, but well-tuned, quiet cycles vibrate off the four-lane state highway spur a block from my house Shady Hill when there are sufficient numbers. I had forgotten the nights of BBBBQ. Even at 3 a.m. there’s enough motorbike traffic to force me to shut the windows and turn on the air-conditioning if I want enough quiet to sleep, and I don’t need full silence for that.<\/p>\n

So I awoke late Friday morning wondering about the tourist-trapping events Fayetteville’s competitive neighbors should adopt that aren’t done to death elsewhere: How about a tomato-hurling festival for Rogers, borrowed from Bunol, Valencia, Spain<\/a>. Bentonville could run the bulls<\/a> around its downtown square. Lowell, now that it has an all-points security videocamera<\/a>, could hold a non-kiddie Carnival<\/a> and help the town coffer by selling the film.<\/p>\n

After two mugs of Irish breakfast tea, I came round, though. Without tourism, Eureka Springs, where I spent a year managing a bed-and-breakfast in its suburb of Beaver, would have ceased decades ago. The B&B was full during the Jazz and Folk festivals. At the folk fest, My Beloved and I volunteered for lobby duty at The Auditorium and ended up helping sell CDs of Ray Wylie Hubbard at the table run by his wife and their young son. So we got to visit a little with the wry songwriter. Good times.<\/p>\n

Eureka also has Volkswagen Beetle and space-alien<\/a> weekends and maybe a dozen others. They draw enough to keep that community afloat — crowds at the best of these must draw in the high hundreds — though I’d still maintain tourism is an unstable industry, kept afloat artificially.<\/p>\n

Then again, as represented by this weekend’s street vibrations, this biker boondoggle draws a real<\/em> crowd. In the midst of it, the bikers caused jams even heading north out<\/em> of Fayetteville — a 20-minute drive to Lowell late Friday afternoon took me 65 minutes. I don’t buy the promoters’ 300,000 estimate for this year. If a cycle is about 8 feet long, that times 300,000 equals 454.5 miles<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Where are the bikers going to park?<\/p>\n

They can’t. They’re going to drive around all night, keeping me awake. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This could have been a wicked Brick, ripping up Fayetteville’s eighth annual (but it feels like the 240th) Bikes Blues & BBQ that’s going on this weekend. A couple of years ago I had some criticisms about it, and until Thursday night I had nothing new to add so I wasn’t going to. I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-home-street","tag-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":141,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/muffle-that-rumble\/","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":0},"title":"Muffle that rumble","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 20, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, May 20, 2005. Condensed from Fayetteville's Northwest Arkansas Times this morning (or read whole article): \"Mayor Dan Coody wants attendees of Bikes, Blues and BBQ to ride quietly, a sentiment shared by the festival\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s board of directors. 'We encourage everyone to be quiet,' said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5614,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2017\/04\/games-no-guns\/","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":1},"title":"Play Games at Work So No Guns","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"1\/2*: reDeclaration of Athletic Facility *Here's Part 2 DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY -- My workplace\u00a0is eligible. Now that people with concealed weapon permits soon will be welcome to\u00a0roam armed throughout campus, barred only at qualifying athletic events, it's time to out\u00a0my office. Suite 248 also houses\u00a0the little known but very real r'Asadink\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education, Coarsely"","block_context":{"text":"Education, Coarsely","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/education-coarsely\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Entrance to 248, the athletics facility for the university's tiddlywinks team.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/248-750x1000-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":663,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/09\/hurricane-mahler\/","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":2},"title":"Hurricane Mahler","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This very short essay was deleted by my hosting service, but its drafts aren't to be found. It was the second of two about Sarah Palin with an allusion to Hurricane Gustav and just about three quick paragraphs. If a reader pulled off a copy, please send a copy to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":801,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/01\/on-the-wall\/","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":3},"title":"On the Wall","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Should I get back into more frequent or even regular Brick postings, it will be in part because of waking today to an image of the artistic caveman. It may have been the last scene of an otherwise forgotten dream, or just an isolated visual, conjured just before sitting up.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1402,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/06\/opening-volley\/","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":4},"title":"Opening Volley","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"LOS ANGELES -- I'm about 20 years too early to have hearing aids, but there it is. I've had one in my right ear since mid-2005, and six months ago had to begin wearing them in both. Each new auditory circumstance, rather than getting, \"Wow, birds chirping!\" often starts with,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Few Bullets More"","block_context":{"text":"Few Bullets More","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/ventura-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":244,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/11\/you-dont-say\/","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":5},"title":"You Don’t Say","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Two people on Thursday asked me the same question, not just topic but exact words. If I had a more public job -- not a computer-glazed copy editor -- or had more friends with whom I had more frequent contact, getting the same question twice in one day might be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}