Sturgis rally numbers? Down. Retail sales? Down. Consumers? Fatigued.
Sturgis bike rally numbers are down significantly this year. I was there last Tuesday, took a walk around downtown, and was surprised at the roominess of the sidewalks. At every rally I’ve attended for the past 30 years or so, I often had to stop, go, walk around people, even step off the curb in order to make progress.
Not this year. When I was there the other day you could walk a straight line from point A to point B.
I also noted that one of the popular bar/eateries at lunch hour had quite a few empty tables, a sight I’d never seen before. Usually the joint is jumping, the wait staff is scurrying around with trays full of orders and people are waiting for tables to open up. The bar in the center of the room is usually packed, but this time there were plenty of empty seats.
It might be a stretch to extrapolate from this isolated event and call it a reflection of the general fatigue that seems to have hit American consumers, but I think it’s more than a coincidence that the soft attendance numbers at the bike rally come on the heels of a disappointing retail sales report for July. According to the U.S. Commerce Dept., spending in this country was down 0.6%, the biggest drop in nine months.
Add that to July’s report on unexpected job losses and a drop in consumer sentiment during the month and you’ve got three metrics that reflect a collective sag in consumer enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, 0vererhanging all of this are the highest gas prices in years.
Consumers, bikers included, are fatigued.
The economic consequences are self-evident, but it’s the political implications of all this that are no doubt at the top of the minds of our country’s leaders. Many of them must be wondering if Trump’s campaign promises of ‘winning’ are ever going to materialize for an electorate that seems tired of waiting.
From a political perspective, I noticed that pro-Trump gear, once a common sight among the bikers, wasn’t much on display last week. Are his once-devoted followers getting tired of him? Hard to say, but all considered, it might be one small sign that things in MAGA-land are not going as well as hoped.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
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