Today brings to a close a week of rides, festivities and events that are marketed as Arizona Bike Week by FX Promotions Inc. all centered around the valley and with their main focus being at WestWorld in the form of an Expo called Cyclefest.
Now as far as Bike Week on the whole, we as a valley don't really need it as year round we have great weather, great rides and even great events, so the real focus is the Cyclefest and what it does exactly for us as riders.
Above is a photo taken at 2:30 pm on Friday in the midway of the Cyclefest event...notice anything? I mean beside that fact that there are no people!?!
Forget the thing about people for a second and let's focus on just two items. One is the absence of motorcycles and the other is the primary sponsor of Cyclefest......yes, Jagermeister.
The first is actually the most surprising to me, the fact that an event called Cyclefest would not have a way for people to display and show off their motorcycles?!? I mean heck, I am pretty sure they could even make a little more if they sold passes to include riding your bike in the area. Now before I get some excited comments from the promoters of this event I am sure that WestWorld has limitations, but I do remember just a few months ago the place being full of cars moving around, yes?
Hold on, I actually know the real problem.
OK OK forget that as well, because once we focus on the real issue everything begins to become clear.
The real issue is a large bus sitting there on the right of the photo. It belongs to the primary sponsor of Cyclefest. Yes, Jagermeister is the key sponsor of Arizona's Bike Week and the Cyclefest specifically, good choice right? I mean since alcohol is the #1 killer of riders I guess they should pay for the show....(Um, yeah I didn't think so either.) of course since they need to sell alcohol at the event, you can't exactly have people riding their vehicles around, can you? Thus, no bikes in the Cyclefest.
I would think that if the show was centered on motorcycles and riding in Arizona the sponsors would be be either motorcycle related or heck even hydration centered, not something that leads to the deaths of motorcyclists directly.
So, let's back up and consider what this event is really about. Specifically for motorcyclist there were demo rides and I even got reports that sport bikes were available. That's a good thing. As far as vendors there were a lot of t-shirt, chaps and head accessories, but beyond non-DOT half helmets I didn't see a single helmet vendor. Also there were a good amount of other companies represented, even some in the sportbike realm, not a lot but look folks the vendor availability wasn't low.
So, what's wrong with this show?
Nothing, if you understand what the show really is all about.
Arizona Bike Week and Cyclefest is a 5-day concert series with a motorcycle cruiser theme!
Yup that's it folks, it isn't Daytona Bike Week, it isn't Sturgis, heck it isn't even a real rally. It is simply a decently put together Country Thunder for the cruiser crowd.
If you're a vendor and you were standing around wondering where all the riders or people were, they didn't show until later for the concert, so figure out a way to integrate into that or do something off-site during the days of ABW to drive traffic to your location specifically.
So, the next time you get upset about what ABW does or doesn't have just understand that $20 gets you into one concert and $38 gets you into 5 days of concerts and it should all make sense. Everything else that happens at WestWorld and is advertised around the Arizona Bike Week moniker is just additional marketing and money for the promoters.
Make sense now?
I'm not going to worry about it, or even try to change it...I'm just gonna ride!
