A day in the life of Motorcycle Week director Charlie St. Clair

WEIRS BEACH — The stories make it all worth it. 

That’s what Charlie St. Clair, executive director of the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association, said while leaning back in his chair aboard the M/S Mount Washington Tuesday night. 

Across from him is longtime Deputy Director Jennifer Anderson. She shows him a picture on her phone.

“You remember that year we were leaving the dock, and this guy with his little kid comes running down the gangplank?" Anderson asked. "We made them stop and go back so he could get on.” St. Clair remembers. “He’s back this year, and that’s his son.” The son is now old enough to have his motorcycle license.

If one spends enough time with St. Clair, he’s a fount of stories of his own. 

There’s the one where someone in a bar offered him $2,000 for his pants — the denim riding pants he’s had since his early 20s that he’s patched over and over again. He turned the offer down.

Or there’s the one about the Midwesterner, who named his child Laconia. Or about how he’s begged the state to put a temporary traffic light at the dicey intersection of Parade and Rollercoaster roads for years without success. And there’s umpteen about groups from a far-off state who started coming together a few years ago and haven’t stopped. 

To get a true snapshot of the city’s most historic event, The Daily Sun spent the day with the executive director and his team.

A Laconia High School graduate, St. Clair became the association’s first executive director in the early 1990s and was joined by Anderson a few years later. In the decades the two have organized it, the event has capitalized on its nostalgic and picturesque setting to become, relative to its peers, a more family-centered — even “upscale,” as one attendee remarked — event.  

After a year of pandemic survival, and following dips in attendance, the arrival of the event’s 100th rally this year brought a renaissance. Attendance climbed, with many riders seeing Laconia for the first time — or the first time in years.

A day during Motorcycle Week for St. Clair starts early, around dawn, but the first event on the schedule is an 8:30 a.m. press conference at the Naswa Resort. Nearly as old as the rally itself, and owned by the association’s board president, the pastel resort on Paugus Bay is a hub for events throughout the rally.

From there, St. Clair is occupied by finishing preparations for the Tower Street Hill Climb later Tuesday morning. He climbs into the nearly three-decade-old, gray Dodge van, tattooed with sponsor decals and a fresh 100-year anniversary logo, that he calls his “home office.”

Despite being known for having a lot to say, St. Clair is soft-spoken. Zigzagging across the city, his voice is barely audible over the roar of the engine.

Tuesday starts with patches of rain and a chill in the air. Along the main thoroughfares of the city, roadside lawn chairs and Adirondacks set out by residents and visitors alike to watch bikes pass by sit empty. 

“It’s the bane of my existence, the weather,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.” 

By the time the protective hay bales he fetched are in place for the race up the Weirs’ iconic Tower Hill, precipitation has eased. St. Clair is pleased, and admittedly surprised, to see a forming crowd of spectators. 

As the hill climb — where bikers try to ascend from its foot to its crest the fastest — unfolds, the pavement begins to dry out and become less slick. Competitors can be more daring, and each round are besting their own earlier times. 

St. Clair spends the bulk of the day on Lakeside Avenue, restocking merchandise to rally headquarters’ tents, checking in with sponsors and fielding dozens of calls from association staff, vendors and visitors. Among calls he makes is to the clerk at the Statehouse. St. Clair, a Democratic representative for the city, won’t be in for Thursday’s session.

“My favorite thing about work is that I can do it,” he said. Stopping while he still can, he continued, is out of the question. 

A lap along the rustic main drag is a gauntlet of handshakes and backslaps from old friends, from folks he sees once a year, every year, or from first-time attendees. He’s also on the lookout: reminding vendors to cover or hide the expletives on their merchandise, and cautioning those pulling into accessible parking spaces that tow trucks are on the prowl.

He pauses only to grab his lunch — a bowl of coffee ice cream. “It’s one of my two addictions. The other,” he said, “is recycling.”

Evening brings a favorite event, the annual rally cruise on the Mount. Nearly 400 passengers form a line to embark down the boardwalk. Though still chilly, the weather allows passengers to enjoy the steamer’s views from its open decks once underway. 

Being captive aboard the cruise is, in a way, a gift, St. Clair said. He indulges in what he describes as, traditionally, his only beer of the week, sitting on the port side beside Mayor Andrew Hosmer and reminiscing about longtime City Councilor Bob Hamel, who died the day before. 

But later, as the boat rounds Rattlesnake Island and heads back toward the Weirs, St. Clair has his empty can on the table across from Anderson (his aforementioned recycling addiction means he’ll save it to properly dispose of later), and the two grow antsy, wondering if there will be enough cake for the record-breaking number of passengers.

Back at the Weirs, St. Clair films the crowd, cheering, waving and fist-bumping as they file back onto the dock. Another time, he said, he’ll watch back through the video to see how many he recognizes. 

“If you thought I was tired earlier,” he remarked, his sentence trailing off, while returning to rally headquarters on the boardwalk. “But it’s nice to see people happy because of your work. Everyone is so happy.”

As Motorcycle Week has approached its centennial milestone, questions have grown more frequent about when St. Clair, the only executive director the association has had since its inception, will retire.

“Not this year,” he said. He’ll stop, he continues, whenever the person taking on the title of successor is ready — whomever they may be. 

“I think sometimes people think it all just appears. That’s what I worry about, for whenever I am done.”