Rosalia regroups after biker rally

Rosalia can relax. The rural town of 650 people in north Whitman County has survived a three-day motorcycle rally that attracted heavy metal music and thousands of beer-drinking bikers for the second year in a row.

The organizer of the 100 Years of Motorcycles Rally and Concert Series, Josh Bryan, couldn’t be reached Monday evening for total ticket sales, but he said earlier in the day that “all I know is it was bigger, and there was a larger crowd than last year.”

Last year’s one-day rally drew 12,000 people.

“I was pleased with the crowd. It was everything that I was hoping it would be,” Bryan said Monday afternoon as he helped clean up. “I feel really good about it, and it’s going to be nice getting a couple of weeks of sleep.”

No major incidents occurred over the three-day weekend. There were four fights Friday night, Rosalia Police Department Marshal Robert Fitzgerald said, and there were several reports of people replicating tickets and passes and illegally selling them Saturday. Those scammers were never caught, he said.

“We were so fortunate,” he said. “Nobody got hurt,” except for drunken people who fell down and hurt themselves.

Before this year’s rally, some residents were concerned because the mayor said anyone who wanted to visit town on non-rally business would have to buy a $20 day pass or $40 three-day pass to get through roadblocks.

Mayor Ken Jacobs said many people came to town on non-rally business, and volunteers at checkpoints let them through.

Businesses said they were pleased with the economic boost, said Roberta Messinger, president of the Rosalia Chamber of Commerce.

“I think most of the businesses in town did very well, and that’s what it’s all about,” she said. “This is a big event for some of these businesses. They get the money to run basically all year on.”

Saturday saw considerably larger crowds than Friday or Sunday, and business owners told Jacobs they were pleased, he said.

“A few vendors probably didn’t get enough business to make it pay for them, but that happens,” he said.

Vendors paid from $500 for a 10-foot-by-10-foot space to $4,500 for a 40-foot-by-40-foot space.

The city of Rosalia will receive $7,500 for the event and 10 percent of the fees vendors paid Bryan. Jacobs said he doesn’t know how much money that will total, but that last year’s sales tax receipts from the event were about $2,000, and he expects that to double this year.

Jacobs said the biggest problem was too few garbage cans and sacks, leaving lots of garbage on the main drag Monday morning. That’s a problem that organizers will fix next year, Bryan said.

Fitzgerald said organizers filled two trash bins and the back of a dump truck and were still facing a lot of garbage, mostly from supplies brought in by vendors.

Shirley Glodt, owner of White Box Pies in Spokane Valley, said she was happy with the event and will participate again next year, but she worried about city residents without permits selling food to the public.

That’s a problem that Jacobs said he’ll address next year. He doesn’t want to stifle the private enterprise of the town’s citizens, but he wants to help ensure food is safe, he said.

Whitman County Director of Environmental Health John Skyles, who oversees food safety and permits, said he was told by organizers that there could be unlicensed stands there, but Skyles didn’t see any when he was there Friday morning or get reports of specific offenders later, he said. There were 30 licensed food vendors at the rally, he said.

“As far as the city’s perspective, everything really went well,” Jacobs said. “As long as I’m happy from the city side of it, well, Rosalia is where (the rally is) gonna be at.”