Sam Gurwitt Photo
It felt like the whole world was vibrating Saturday on Stiles Street, as the deafening roar of multiple Harley Davidsons ricocheted off the I‑95 overpass for hours while well over 1,000 people looked on — until police shut it down.
Spectators stood in a circle in a cloud of acrid, rubbery gray smoke kicked up from wheels screaming against the pavement. In the center, bikers careened around in tight circles and lifted their front wheels high into the air.
By 8 p.m., no one had gotten hurt or taken into police custody.
By then Forbes Avenue and surrounding streets in the Annex were shut off after a small army of police moved in to clear the thousands of bikers and motorcycle enthusiasts out of the area.
No injuries were spotted — that is, except for a few shredded back tires and the asphalt of Stiles and Alabama Streets that those tires tattooed with spirals and squiggles.
The whole city was growling with Harleys Saturday as bikers from throughout the region, and beyond, descended on New Haven for the annual “summer ender” trick riding show put on by East Coastin’, a New Haven-based Harley trick-riding group.
East Coastin’ has garnered a significant following in the motorcycle world as its mostly 20-something members experiment with how to make 600-pound pieces of metal dance.
This year was a tough one, said Gabe Canestri, Jr., the New Haven native and Harley trick-riding celebrity who organized Saturday’s event.
Because of the pandemic, city offices were closed, and he couldn’t get the permits to make the event happen. Canestri has had run ins with the police in the past, but in 2017, he and police brokered a deal that allowed the show to get the sanction of the city, and a few designated streets where bikers could perform their stunts without the police arresting them for reckless driving.
This year, the event was supposed to happen in July, he said. He had to push it back because he couldn’t work out the details in time. He eventually set the date for Saturday, and “made work with what we had.”
The city still told the organizers they couldn’t hold the event, said Police Chief Otoniel Reyes.
“We tried to get the event canceled,” Reyes said. “We told them they couldn’t have it. But we fully expected them to show up. So we prepared,” as police have prepared for other unsanctioned mass events in recent months, with an eye toward limiting public harm.
“New Haven police have been nothing but amazing,” said Paul D’Agostino, who helped organize the event. He said organizers had been talking to police for weeks to plan.
The show began at 2 p.m., and police were there directing traffic as bikers poured into the gated area under the highway behind Hole in the Wall motorcycle club. Hundreds of bikes were parked on the gravel displaying license plates from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and even Tennessee.
At the entrance, “masks required” signs were displayed on either side of the gate. Almost no one was wearing a mask.
For about an hour and a half, bikers milled about in the driveway behind Hole in the Wall. A few vendors sold shirts and other merchandise, while others sold beer, and in one corner, a few men flipped hot dogs on a grill.
Bikers who couldn’t get in showed up at other spots around town, such as Sports Haven on Long Wharf, where cops found another thousand of more people gathered, Reyes said. He said his officers spent the entire day chasing after bikers in different spots around town, on top of the other crime-prevention work they were doing related to recent violence int town. The cops issued “several dozen infractions and citations,” the chief said, and issued misdemeanor summonses. They also seized vehicles. (The police did not yet have an official tally.) They made no custodial arrests.
“There were thousands and thousand of people who come into the city. We managed it with our own department” without calling in other jurisdictions for help, and were able to avoid any “major incidents,” Reyes said.
This was the summer-ending East Coastin’ event’s fourth year as an official show. Before 2017, it began as an unofficial show among family members and friends. Canestri’s father, Gabe Sr., runs Hole in the Wall; Canestri grew up among bikers. “My dad used to drop us off at school on a Harley,” he recalled. As he grew older and started doing tricks on a Harley, he and friends and family would gather every year to show what they could do.
In 2017, the event became an official show, drawing people from all over the region with East Coastin’s Instagram page, which now has about 122,000 followers. Canestri is sponsored by a number of motorcycle businesses.
Doing stunts on a Harley is not like riding a dirt bike or another kind of trick bike. Harleys are not made for tricks, explained D’Agostino. They’re extremely heavy, and they’re made for cruising. So it takes a special skill set to use them for stunts.
Billowing Smoke, Screeching Tires
Police had blocked off Forbes Avenue, and had started preventing people from approaching the Hole in the Wall. Hundreds of people waited at police blockades at Forbes and Stiles, and a block further east, at Forbes Avenue and Fulton Street.
Hundreds of bikes were parked on all the side streets, and people displayed the leather jackets of all manner of biking clubs and groups. A handful of Hell’s Angels members were sitting on their bikes in one lot. Three members of New Haven’s Flaming Knights were in another.
At 3:30, a roar came from Hole in the Wall and moved east on Forbes. Bikers wove through the police blockade onto the next block of Forbes.
The show had begun.
The crowd rushed along the sidewalk, a mass of people holding up their phones to catch footage of the bikers.
As the crowd gathered around, bikers let their back tires skid against the pavement as they kept a very slow speed with the front in what’s called a “rolling burnout.” The back tire kicked up a cloud of cloying smoke, engulfing the biker and the crowd until the biker was just a shadow in the gray haze.
The mass of people began to move down Stiles Street. Under the highway, hundreds of people had formed a circle in which riders were doing wheelies and rolling burnouts to the cheers of the crowd.
Further down Stiles, back out in the sunlight, more circles had formed, and riders were also screeching up and down long stretches of the Waterfront Street Connector, Stiles, and Alabama Street.
On Alabama, bikers made way for the tractor trailer tankers that rumbled in and out of the port periodically.
East Coastin’ has only about 10 members, Canestri said. Most of Saturday’s riders are not part of the group. Many rode Harleys, though many others rode Kawasakis or Yamahas.
Every so often, a rider would roar their way through the crowd, the back tire limp and torn, to a place where they could get a new one. Rolling burnouts often lead to shredded tires, said Nick Redy of Queens, N.Y., as he removed his torn back wheel.
D’Agostino and Canestri made sure to differentiate Harley trick riders and other motorcyclists from the mostly teenaged dirt bike riders the city has been cracking down on.
But those dirt bike riders, and the city’s new, harder policies, were still pn people’s minds.
A group of riders who had come partly from Springfield, Mass., and partly from Enfield, Connecticut, stood next to the fence facing the highway overpass.
Angel Rosa, who goes by “Chico,” said reckless riders “fuck shit up” for the rest of the motorcycle and bike community. As in New Haven, police in Springfield are cracking down on dirt bike riders, and that can bleed over into harsher treatment for those who ride motorcycles.
Instead of cracking down, he said, cities should provide safe, legal places for kids to ride dirt bikes.
Another member of the group also pointed out that police often crack down on and criminalize the recreational vehicles that people of color ride, but not on those with predominantly white riders.
Police Close Streets
Bikers continued until about 5:30, when police took action. First, they formed a barricade on Forbes, and did not let anyone past it to go back to the Hole in the Wall.
Then they started clearing the streets.
The sirens began on Stiles, under the highway overpass, adding a new harmony on top of the band of roars and screeches. If the motorcycles were the horn and drum sections, the police were a flute section that had drunk far too much caffeine.
Slowly, police pushed bikers and spectators away from the highway. Bikers began to jam the intersection with Forbes.
Sgt. Dave Guliuzza approached D’Agostino and Canestri (pictured above). “We got to get everybody out of here,” he said.
D’Agostino nodded and began waving for the bikers waiting on Stiles Street to start moving. They poured into the intersection and growled up the street.
Police then started moving up Forbes, along the sidewalk and in the street. People began to walk and roll ahead of them, pushed by a line of blue uniforms and flashing lights.
“If you don’t leave now, you will be placed under arrest,” one officer said through a loudspeaker from a bank of cars that inched up the road.
After about an hour, police had managed to close down the streets. They did not let anyone, even those on foot, back into the blocks where the riding had taken place. Bikers rumbled away, spreading their roaring engines throughout the city.
For D’Agostino, it was a success. “The party went off, no one got hurt, and no one was arrested,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mayor Justin Elicker sent out an automated voice and text message at around 8 p.m. saying the police were dealing with the bikers and urging people participating to leave.
“Today, hundreds of motorcyclists came to New Haven as a part of an unauthorized and unpermitted event that was posted on social media,” the message said. “Police have worked throughout the afternoon and will continue to do so this evening to disperse motorcyclists and make arrests where necessary. If you are attending one of these events, please go home. Our police resources have more important issues to address.”
Bikers Help Bikers
After the streets were cleared, Cameron Michael of Stamford (at right in photo, with Scott Ghavidel) and a group of friends were waiting in a small truck bay on Kendall Street.
“What a fucking blast,” Michael said of the event. It was his first time.
He had bought a used blue 1986 Harley two days before, and then “came here, mad stoked.”
He said he has never done stunt riding on a Harley, but after Saturday, he said he does “1000 percent.”
“It does something to my soul,” he said of doing stunts, and watching others do them. “It, like, calms my soul.”
But before he could do any stunts — or even leave the truck bay where he was waiting — there was some work to do. His clutch cable had snapped.
Luckily, with thousands of bikers around, there were plenty of people to help.
“I met these cool-ass guys from Pennsylvania who gave me some great ideas,” he said, gesturing at the small group who had just rumbled away down the street. They had told him what he needed to get to fix the bike.
Scott Ghavidel, also of Stamford, went to the hardware store to pick up a few pieces. When he came back, he and Brad Brownlee (pictured above) set to work on Michael’s bike.
Brownlee had come from Youngstown, Ohio, for the event. He said it took him about eight and a half hours to get to New Haven.
The pair managed to reattach the cable, and Ghavidel took it for a spin to test it. It worked. But the headlight was suddenly out.
Ghavidel set about trying to figure out what was wrong.
None of it dampened Michael’s spirits. He was supposed to ride to Rhode Island Saturday evening. Even if it meant a trip to the Auto Zone, he was still stoked for the journey.