Russian Biker Rally

Russian Biker Rally

Dave Francis

St. Petersburg, Russia

There was a biker rally in St. Petersburg. No, not that St. Petersburg. The other one. The one with 4 million people. The one that is on a line of latitude with Alaska. The one that used to be Leningrad. Or was it Petrograd? Oh yeah, that’s right. It was both. They change the name of the cities over here every so often, just to keep us in the west confused.

Well, today in St. Petersburg they had a biker rally, so I went to see what it was all about. When I got there, things were already in full swing. Lots of bikes of all types.

The location, Ulitsa Rossi, is known as the most beautiful street in the city, and Lomonosov Square is just behind the ballet academy, the oldest and most famous in Russia. On the other side is Alexandrinsky Theater, a drama theater where later that night there would be a performance of Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw.(In Russian, if you can imagine.) Just across the street is the National Library, where a plaque proudly announces that Lenin studied there. Not exactly a typical spot for a biker rally.

There were lots of the strange looking Soviet era Russian bikes, the Jawas and Urals. There were Yamahas and Suzukis along with bigger Hondas, sleek BMW’s and bullet like Ducatis. There were a lot of trikes and sidecars in attendance. And of course, a lot of big, shiny, Harleys. You don’t see a lot of Harleys here normally. Hell, you don’t see a lot of motorcycles here normally. The weather in this town is not exactly….. Well, let me just say, when it comes to weather, “This aint Texas.” This past winter was considered a mild winter, and it still got down as cold as –30 a couple of times. There was snow on the ground last month. Russians are tough S.O.B.’s, but not a lot of ‘em want to go cruising down icy highways in –30 degree weather. Not even Russian vodka keeps you that warm.

Mainly because of the short riding season, bikes are rare here, but today, there were bikes and bikers all over. I was surrounded in a sea of people in black leather. (By the way, why do these PETA guys never come around biker rallies and throw paint on people for wearing animal hides? Someone should suggest it to them. I would like to be there when it happens. The image I get is of the bulldog in the cartoon saying, “Awww…. You shouldn’t oughta done that.” Just before the snapping of bones begins.)

One of them hailed me as I walked by.

“Hey Amerikanets” he yelled, waving toward me.

You don’t hear a lot of English on the streets here, so I turned to see who it was. (I am fairly distinctive as an American, with my cowboy hat and American flag bandana as a hatband.) A group waved me over, and offered me their hands in the warm, friendly greeting that is so common among men here in Russia.

I went over, and met Sergei, a huge, bearded, cigar chewing guy, was the first person I talked to.

“How’s it going?” I said.

Sergei spoke English about as badly as I spoke Russian, so we had a difficult time understanding one another.

“Good. Good. So, you come here to look at the bikes?”

“Yeah, I am surprised at all the American bikes here. I was expecting to see nothing but Russian bikes. Lots of Harleys here. I didn’t know you had a Harley dealership in Russia.”

Sergei laughed. “Now, you can get good American motorcycles.” He said, patting the tank of a black HD Sportster affectionately. “Before no, but now there is a way.”

Sergei and his friends are in a club called the Grifons, St. Petersburg chapter. They were hanging out, showing off their bikes, freshly polished and ready for the season. We were talking about a lot of things, including the Russian bikes, which none of them have any use for. Too slow, too unreliable, and too small.

There were a couple of other clubs in attendance, but the Grifons ruled the day. All in all, brotherhood and friendliness seemed to be in order among these guys, and it was a good thing too. The total security force allocated for the event looked like a dozen cops, standing on the edge of the crowd in a group, nervously watching.

In between other clubs stopping by to pay their respects, people admiring the different bikes, tattoos, and soaking up the atmosphere and guffaws directed at some of the moped riders cruising nervously, I found myself helping to kill a couple of bottles of Cankt Petersbourg vodka, (A local favorite.) we got around to talking about the subject I was mainly interested in. The bikes.

“Harley’s are what everyone wants here. Nobody wants Russian or Czech bikes anymore,” said Sergei. “The only problem is spare parts. We still can’t get spare parts easily.”

Igor, a young guy, smallish, riding with a dog on the gas tank told me that the biggest complain they have is getting parts for their bikes. “It is easier sometimes to get a whole bike than to get parts.”

Sergei agreed, “By the time you wait to get a new part for a repair, it is easier to just get a new bike”.

Bikes, you see, come cheap to some people here.

Igor explained that he got his bike for about 2000 US dollars, but that the guy he works for is ‘connected.’

When I asked if he could get me one for about the same price, laughter broke out among the group.

“You don’t understand,” said Ivan, a bear-like giant, as he patted me on the shoulder. “You should work for him to get a bike for a price like that. For you, it would be much higher. Maybe 10,000 US dollars.”

“Where do the bikes come from?” I asked, still interested.

More laughter.

“Where do they come from? From America! From Europe! From Canada! From Australia! From all over the world!” said Igor. “We get them from other countries ‘on the left.’

On the left means, well, you know what it means. These bikes don’t come with factory warranties. They are as hot as a Mexican highway at siesta time in a drought.

“How do you license them?”

“Znayesh, muzhik,…nu….Rossiya-matushka!…” said a smiling Sergei.

The translation is, “You know man… Mother Russia!”

Now, St. Petersburg has been called the ‘Venice of the North’ for a long time. Recently, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nickname has had more to do with the criminal underground, (sometimes more above-ground than underground.) than the canals that run through the heart of the city. When things happen like the deputy mayor gets his head blown off from a rooftop sniper as he gets in his car, and officials making 80 dollar per month salaries drive new Mercedes, (The big ones!) people begin to say bad things about a town. The Russian mafia has become a serious force in organized crime, and St. Petersburg is the home turf and breeding ground for them.

“We get licenses, titles, anything we need?” continued Sergei. “It’s no problem.”

He went on to explain to me that the bikes come in from all over in shipping containers. They bypass customs, or are cleared by officials who are on the take, allowing his bosses, and other mafia groups to bring anything they want into the country.

In this manner, Mercedes, BMWs, Lexus’s, even Rolls Royce automobiles have been coming in since the early 90’s, and for the last few years, motorcycles have been on the boats too.

The system for cars has become pretty sophisticated. Potential buyers can actually pick their make, year, and model of car. You can even order which color you want, but that sometimes causes delays.

“The cars for all the bosses for all of Russia come through St. Petersburg,” Said Igor proudly, as he stroked the ears of his dog. “We get a lot of cars from New York and from Texas.”

“I got this jacket from one of the bikes!” said Dmitri, turning around to show me a brown Route 66 jacket. “It was in one of the saddlebags when I got the bike.”

“How long would it take me to get one?” I asked Ivan.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Let me check into it. Where can I reach you?”

I gave Ivan my number, and he agreed to call me when he could tell me something more definite.

As the day passed, and the other riders came and went, we decided to go have a cookout. We rode about 10 miles outside the city to a dacha owned by one of the guys, and everyone began unpacking the food and liquor.

They set up a small, hibachi style grill and began cooking shashlyk, which is shish kabob in the USA. Chunks of beef, lamb, and pork interspersed with onions, mushrooms, and peppers. There was beer, mainly the local favorite, Baltika. The beer here comes in different grades, the higher number of grade, the darker the beer. We were drinking different grades, all disgustingly warm, in the Russian fashion. At least the vodka was plentiful. Shot after shot of good, home made Russian vodka from a wide mouthed jar. Besides the homemade stuff, there were several different brands of vodka, and a couple of bottles flavored vodka. Pepper vodka, lemon vodka, and there was also a case of Russian cognac.

Ivan explained that he liquor was donated by a ‘customer’ of his bosses, who felt it was a good policy to give a little extra to stay on good terms. The boss didn’t get any of the liquor.

One thing I noticed was that there was no drug use in sight. No pot, cocaine, nothing that wasn’t in a bottle.

As the vodka loosened everyone up, we began talking about America, the highways, the bikes, the cops, helmet laws, and of course, American girls. They all wanted to know about American girls.

The Russian understanding of America is as wrong as ours of Russia, and they were fascinated to find out some of the things they see in the movies aren’t true.

Sergei had been gone, and upon returning, he told me he had bad news. His boss said they wouldn’t be able to sell me a bike. Not for a while at least.

“Why?”

“The boss said the demand is too high within the organization right now. The summer is coming, and a lot of guys want bikes. He says maybe in a month or two, but not now,” explained Sergei.

As we drank and talked, Ivan told me that in reality, getting a bike would probably not happen. His boss didn’t trust me, didn’t know me, and it isn’t exactly a buyers market here on Harleys. He apologized, but said there was nothing he could do.

They began to talk a bit about the ‘work’ they do for ‘the boss.

Business people pay him money. He gets money from store owners, kiosk owners, and different business people in the city. He makes sure that nothing bad happens. They don’t have any problems with the government, or with ‘accidents.’

Sergei told me that he has a few people who work with him, motioning to the other guys in the room, and they are responsible for any sort of collections that are truant. They are essentially the muscle for a small mafia group here in the city.

“Most people pay, but sometimes they don’t. Everybody’s got to pay roof, or nobody will pay,” explained Sergei. (Roof is the term they use for what we in the US call protection money.)

“Besides that, we keep the chyornye away from them. They are thankful for that,” said Igor, who told me before that he was an engineer, but couldn’t find a job here in Russia, and hadn’t been able to get a visa to go to America.

Chyornye are what they call the people from the Caucuses. (Chechens, Georgians, Dagestanis, etc.) The literal translation of the word “chyornye” is black. The people aren’t black, but that is the term, and it is considered an insult. Typically these people have had strong ties in organized crime, even during the communist periods. The infighting between Russian mafia groups has become incredibly violent and bloody in the last ten years. The new groups that have sprung up have come mainly from ex-KGB officers, and ex-government officials. They are very good at organizing, they have stolen high-tech equipment, and they are as ruthless as anyone can imagine them to be.

As I looked around the room I saw a couple of guys intently playing chess, but for the most part, the chance to talk to an American seemed to dominate the crowd. I was on a stool, there were two sofas, and a bear-skin rug on the floor. The stereo was blasting music best described as ‘criminal ballads.’ It is best compared to American country music. The one playing sounded like Johnny Cash, and he was singing about ‘I just got out of prison, and my woman ran off. Now I only have my girlfriend, her sister to console me.’ That seemed pretty typical of the themes.

The sun was still up, as the time for white nights was drawing close. Darkness doesn’t come until around 11 pm, and daylight arrives at about 4. Soon, there will be a few weeks of uninterrupted daylight.

Drinking, laughing, and trying to understand one another through a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke was the order of the day, but after a while, the mood began to turn, almost imperceptibly. All of a sudden I noticed that the music was getting louder, the crowd was getting drunker, and the questions were becoming a more and more nationalistic.

“Why did America go to Yugoslavia?”

“Why does America want to help the Chechens?”

“Doesn’t America know those Muslims are the same ones that attacked New York?” and other questions were being asked in an atmosphere that was getting thicker by the moment.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a patriot, but defending Bill Clinton’s foreign policy decisions in the Balkans to a crowd of drunk Griphons in the middle of the woods in northern Russia seemed like a really bad idea, so I decided to cut out.

I got up to leave, to hoots and boos about how Americans can’t drink vodka, but at this point, I didn’t care. Hell, to a degree they were right. A thousand years of conditioning has made these people immune to the first bottle.

Sergei made a promise to call me, and we would get together in a couple of days. Maybe we would head to Moscow.

The next day, late in the day, the phone rang.

“Dave?” asked a gravelly voice.

“Yeah.”

“This is Nikolai, a friend of Sergei’s,” said a gravelly voice. “Sergei asked me to call. He wants to know if you can come to see him. He had to go out of town today on business, but will come back tomorrow, and wanted to take you to see some things.”

“Sure. Have him call me. What does he have in mind?”

“I think he wants to take you to the Gulf. He is getting a couple of new bikes in tomorrow.”

“Good deal. Have him call me,” I said.

I hung up the phone, and now here I am, wondering what is up. I guess tomorrow I will find out.

Dave