Culture Expedition Vol. 3: The Shows Are Named After People — The 13 Little Kingdoms of Sturgis

Last time I wrote about custom builds a manufacturer had officially blessed — a brand lending its own name and turning rebellion straight into a product. There's a beauty to that too, I think. But this time I want to write about the exact opposite: a place that needs nobody's blessing. Or rather, a place where there's no one to grant approval to begin with. From August 7 to 16, 2026, the 86th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally will be held in Sturgis, South Dakota. What started in 1938 as a small gathering organized by Pappy Hoel, who ran the local Indian dealership, is now the biggest motorcycle festival on Earth.

Looking over the schedule for the custom show series at one of the venues, the Buffalo Chip, I noticed something: next to every show's name is a person's name. August 7's High Octane Bike Show belongs to Charlie Humphreys. The 8th's David Mann Chopper Fest belongs to Chopper's Magazine's Cary Brobeck. That same day's School's Out Chopper Show belongs to Kevin Hanaman. The 9th's FXR Show & Dyna Mixer belongs to Joe Mielke of Sturgis Custom Cycles. The 10th's Global Getdown belongs to Kevin Dunworth of Dunworth Machines. The 11th's Sportster Showdown belongs to Pat Patterson of RedThread Customs, and that same day's Biker Belles women's bike show belongs to Kate of Renegade Babes. The 13th's Rats Hole belongs to Ted Smith. Thirteen shows in all, and every single one has a face attached to it as its organizer.

What strikes me is how finely the genres are sliced. A show for FXRs only. A show for Sportsters only. A show for Evos only. On the 9th at Camp Zero, there's even the Martian Machine Contraption Show, a gathering of ‘strange machines’ run by the Martian Machine crew; the 10th's Evo Entanglement is run by Kenny McLain of Kenny's House of Horsepower, and the 12th's Pretty Fast is run by Alex Fox of SlyFox Performance. Notice something: there's almost no such thing as a ‘general motorcycle show’ here. Flip that around, and it means this town has gathered enough density and depth in single categories to fill a whole day's worth of spectacle around just one type of bike. Looking at the custom world from outside, you want to describe it as one big picture — but step inside and the picture is broken into pieces this fine. To me, that very fracturing is what the richness of this scene looks like.

Come to think of it, this is a fairly unusual structure. Normally, an event inside a bigger event carries the promoter's company name. Here, though, the shop name and the individual's name are the sign itself. The chopper guy has his chopper kingdom, the FXR guy has his FXR kingdom — thirteen narrow, dense little kingdoms lined up side by side, and each king decides ‘this year's best’ by his own standard. Even the trophies work this way. Ted Smith of Rats Hole designs his own trophies, and the Custom Series King Award, presented on August 14, is handmade by none other than Joe Mielke, who runs the FXR Show. A maker crafts, by hand, the object that honors another maker. I really love how closed that loop is.

During the same stretch, from August 8 to 14, the venue's Progressive Gardens hosts an exhibition called Motorcycles as Art — custom bikes displayed alongside paintings and photographs that respond to them, long curated by photographer Michael Lichter. Admission is free. From here, this is just my read, but: at the center of a festival drawing half a million people, there's a free exhibition hall, and right next to it thirteen individuals are running shows under their own names. I think that arrangement explains the whole town. Talk about the rally tends to fixate on the sheer size of the crowd, but I suspect what really generates that scene's energy is this granularity instead. In place of the approval a brand hands down, there's a handmade trophy passed to you by the maker next door. It's not a question of which is superior — it's that custom culture as a culture needs both circuits to exist. If you ever get the chance to go, look for those thirteen named little shacks before you head for the big stage.