Laconia staple Charlie St. Clair plans for motorcycle week

LACONIA — State Rep. Charlie St. Clair can remember growing up in Laconia and motorcyclists camping out on his parents’ lawn. They weren’t exactly invited, but those were the days when a more free-form atmosphere allowed bikers to camp beside the road or sleep on the lawn of a home wherever they could.

“I remember my mom taking coffee out to the bikers who were camping on our lawn,” said St. Clair. He shrugged and relayed that no one got hurt and such occurrences during the yearly June motorcycle event were the norm.

St. Clair was born in Laconia and spent his early years in the city, graduating from Laconia High School and later attending college. After years spent pursuing other professions, St. Clair came home to Laconia, where he got involved in an event he remembered from his childhood: Laconia’s famous Motorcycle Week. This year’s event runs from June 8-16.

“I grew up here,” he said. “I like motorcycles and if you like bikes, how can you not be involved?”

Historically, St. Clair said Motorcycle Week, until the unfortunate “disturbance” at Weirs Beach in 1965, was a week-long event.

“After 1965, it became a three-day event,” he said. The refocusing of the rally pulled many previous events away from Weirs Beach and attendance lowered until 1991 when local groups and businesses put forward an idea to revive Motorcycle Week and return it to a bigger, more organized and event-filled yearly happening.

St. Clair said the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association was formed by the Lakeside Shark Motorcycle Club, Funspot, Meredith Harley Davidson, and the New England Harley group.

By 1992, the Association had grown into the ambitious organization it is to this day. St. Clair is the executive director and Jennifer Anderson is deputy director for the Association.

St. Clair and Anderson work hard year-round to coordinate Motorcycle Week events, although they do not present any particular happening. Rather, they help schedule events so popular things for the public are not held the same time as other popular events.

But that is just one small part of the overall work of the massive week-long event. St. Clair and his helpers promote the event via many other methods, such as on the radio, online at LaconiaMCweek.com, ads in motorcycle magazines and through other avenues. But nothing markets Motorcycle Week as consistently and with the strength of the annual Rally News magazine, which is a product of the Association.

St. Clair and Anderson coordinate the magazine, selling ads, doing stories and publishing the calendar of events for the Laconia rally. There is also the distribution of the Rally News magazine, with the goal to reach as wide an audience as possible. To do so, St. Clair said he drives the gray van (the vehicle of the Laconia event) across the country on a route he has mapped out and follows each year. He heads to the West and covers along his way such cities as Chicago, Cleveland and of course, Sturgis, South Dakota, where another well-known motorcycle rally is held each year.

“We try to get our magazine out everywhere,” he said.

It is a lot of work to pull together such a huge event as the one in Laconia and St. Clair admits he is always relieved when it winds down, but he is already working on the next year’s Rally, excited to coordinate the event all over again.

“Jennifer and I have already been working on next year’s event for a few months now,” he said, attesting to the immense amount of pre-planning that must be done.

What keeps the Motorcycle Rally always new and endearing for St. Clair? During Motorcycle Week, at the Weirs Beach Boardwalk Rally headquarters, St. Clair enjoys renewing friendships with people he hasn’t seen since last year and also making new friends. He owns and likes to ride a motorcycle (a 2000 Heritage Softail Harley) and to “talk motorcycles” with friends and acquaintances that stop by Rally headquarters.

Not one to hold back on his opinions concerning everything from city government to the best ways to promote and execute the annual rally, St. Clair said Laconia is very lucky to have an event such as Motorcycle Week that has morphed into a worldwide happening. He feels there should be support for something that brings such an influx of money into the area.

St. Clair said, “We have had a lot of good people, such as Laconia’s mayors.” He speaks glowingly of the support and hard work of Laconia’s Mayor Paul Fitzgerald who, in 1992, took the initiative to get local groups involved. He adds mention of Ed Engler as another supportive mayor. Also credited are governors and those at state agencies.

The Rally Patron program deserves credit for its work in creating awareness for the motorcycle week event. “We use donations solely for marketing and we get financial contributions from businesses and individuals. We also have support from the JPP (Joint Promotional Program),” said St. Clair.

Believing passionately in the Laconia area, St. Clair has served in the House of Representatives for a number of years. He sees it as a way to do all he can for the city of Laconia.

Along with his job as executive director of Laconia Motorcycle Week, St. Clair owns and operates the Laconia Antique Center in downtown Laconia. The business is in the former Bloom’s Variety, at one time J.J. Newberry’s. “The store has 85 to 90 individual dealers,” explains St. Clair. It has a variety of antiques, as well as an old-time lunch counter where St. Clair offers customers a sandwich, soda, coffee or ice cream and counter seating as many remember from days-gone-by.

At present, St. Clair has listed the building for sale, sighing as he said, “If I was 10 years younger, I would continue the store, but I want time for some weekends off.” As a history buff, it will be difficult to let go of a business full of antiques that are pieces of the past.

When he looks into the future to predict where Motorcycle Week might be in the future, St. Clair pauses to say, “As long as there are motorcycles out there, there will be a Motorcycle Week in Laconia.”