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Posted on 06/16/2002 8:22:05 PM PDT by 2Trievers
LACONIA — Welcome inside the Camel Roadhouse at Bike Week, a huge beer tent set up on the grounds of the Weirs Beach Lobster Pound, where beautiful women wearing close to nothing will pour you a beer while you listen to live rock and roll. Today, both U.S. Sen. Bob Smith and gubernatorial hopeful Craig Benson will come to the Roadhouse, if they can get in, to greet potential voters. Oh and, if they come, they better expect to keep their weapons outside and be checked over by a huge bouncer looking for drunks. This tent and several others would not be here at the Weirs during Bike Week were it up to Attorney General Philip T. McLaughlin and Commissioner of Safety Richard Flynn. The state’s two top law enforcement executives wrote the State Liquor Commission May 30, recommending it deny extensions to existing liquor licenses to allow a total of 8,000 to imbibe at one time in the middle of the third largest biker gathering in the United States. “Problems that flow from such consumption — violence, disturbances, traffic accidents — has the potential to lead to conditions which cannot be controlled so as to reasonably ensure public safety,” McLaughlin wrote. But a compromise, crafted at the last minute after the Liquor Commission denied the licenses, allowed for pared down versions of tents here, at the Broken Spoke Saloon and at JT’s Bar-B-Q and the Roadhog Saloon. Tents are half the size they were to be in terms of the number of patrons that can be served at a given time. Whether or not there is a correlation between violence, disturbances, traffic accidents and the like, because of the tents, depends on who you talk to. The line to get in to the 1,000-person tent was 100 feet long yesterday at 1 p.m. And that was before the band began to play. “We’ll be at capacity all day,” predicted Harvey Churnin, whose 8-year-old German Shepard “Rufus” dozed at his feet as the roar of motorcycle engines passed outside. Problems, he said, have been non-existent. But Police Chief Bill Baker said the problems he sees are not inside the tent, but outside after the patrons leave and head out amidst the thousands of others or onto their motorcycles to roar around the region. There have been dozens of accidents and alcohol-related problems, which have increased as the week has gone on and the number of visitors has grown. There are no statistics yet to show that the inebriated got that way in the tents. Outside the tent, yesterday 21 empty kegs of Coors beer were lined up for Capitol Distributors crews to pick up and haul away. That was from Thursday night. Each cup of beer poured from those kegs costs the patron $3.50. Although the tent was expected to hold far more, under the application request for 2,000, a large area was cordoned off by chain link. Eighteen port-a-potties were lined up in that area, and each day, the facilities are drained twice to three times just to keep up. Laconia City Councilor Rick Judkins, a member of the Laconia Rally and Race Association and the city’s fire chief from 1989-94, sees no correlation between the existence of the beer tent and the problems outlined by McLaughlin. “The tents actually provide a level of security,” and offer the public an avenue of entertainment that is important to the overall event, Judkins said. When the weather turns bad, the tent becomes a focal point for activity. And because so many people are already here, if the weather stays wet this weekend, the tents will become important. Some worry this means there will be more drinking during the rain than would otherwise occur. Churnin said he has not had a problem with people getting intoxicated inside the tent, but Thursday night, while he and “Rufus” guarded the door, they turned away four or five men who were obviously intoxicated. “I tell them go get a cup of coffee and come back and we’ll talk,” he said. “That is after they have been standing in line to get in for a half hour.” The tent is almost always at capacity. It opens about 10 and stays open till about 1 a.m. The staff of 25 inside keeps an eye on the numbers and when about 25 people leave they let another 25 people in. The women who serve beer are stationed on elevated little stages in front of 100-gallon Rubbermaid buckets. They fish cans of Coors out of the buckets and pop open the tops. The typical work outfit includes a halter top or bikini top, a g-string exposing both tanned buttocks and leather chaps. Men stand in line, gawking. There are few women patrons. Some ask to have their photos taken with the women. The women smile and oblige. The men are polite. The women go across the country to a series of biker events and make huge amounts of money in tips, they said. Here, they stay at a million-dollar trophy home on Governor’s Island for the week, and work “very long hours.” There are also full-service bars inside the tent and a separate area where food is served. The Lobster Pound has an existing liquor license on the line and if there are any problems in the tent, the permanent license is at stake. And this is just one event at the beginning of a very busy summer season. Laconia’s new fire chief, Kenneth Ericson, who has spent much of the week with his staff responding to accidents and two small fires at a condo and hotel in Weirs Beach, said he would rather see people under the tents than in some of the century-old structures in the Weirs, passed out drunk in a burning building. He wrote the Liquor Commission, along with a majority of the city council, to support retention of the tents at the event. Ericson said he has been watching the tents and feels comfortable that they are being well run and that a good compromised was reached. “I think it is working out,” he said.
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