Why They Ride

It starts softly. A faraway hum, a whisper in the night. As it approaches, you can feel it in your bones. Conversations stop. Drivers hold their steering wheels tighter. Pedestrians crossing the street hurry back to the sidewalk.

The motorcycles are coming.

The High Street stoplight turns red and the bikers assemble. Some ride dirt bikes – green, blue, yellow. Others ride Harleys with modified exhausts, which are somehow even louder.

Green light.

In a moment, they’re gone, leaving a sonic trail of revving engines and gun-like backfire.

“When the light turns green in New Haven, don’t accelerate,” Dan Landen, sales manager at motorcycle dealership New Haven PowerSports, warns drivers. ​“Wait a second and make sure nothing happens. You don’t know what they’ll do.” 

Despite how loud these bikers are, they manage to stay mostly anonymous. It’s illegal to ride dirt bikes in New Haven. Drivers get caught only when they stop, so they fly through the streets, building up quite the reputation. ​“They have a blatant disregard and respect for the rules and authority,” says Bob Jacobson, owner of College Street Cycles, a bicycle shop. Or, as Landen puts it bluntly, ​“those guys are animals.”

Some dirt bikers claim their negative reputation is unfair. For them, dirt biking is their release, similar to playing video games or basketball. ​“People think that we’re just trying to cause trouble and that we’re just assholes,” says Vince Fucci, a 19-year-old dirt biker from Old Saybrook. ​“But most of the time, if you get to meet us, we’re nice people.”

As much as New Haven residents complain and police worry, little can be done to stop these joyriders. In December 2019, Connecticut enacted a policy that New Haven already followed: police may not engage in a vehicle chase unless pursuing a violent criminal.

"I Just Love To Ride"

On crisp fall Sundays, many 19-year-old boys are at home watching football. Vince Fucci’s day is different. Around 2 p.m., Fucci throws his Honda CRF 250 dirt bike in his friend’s trailer. Fucci would drive himself, but, he says, if ​“something goes wrong,” he doesn’t want to be stuck with a car and a bike. His bike is bright red with copper and black accents.

Fucci loves to wheelie – ride with the front wheel in the air – so the rear wheel’s tread is worn down more than the front’s. This isn’t Fucci’s first bike: ​“When I was about four years old,” he recalls, ​“My father put me on a dirt bike … I’ve been riding ever since.” 

Once the trailer is set, Fucci’s friend drives him 35 minutes from Old Saybrook to New Haven. After taking I‑95’s Exit 51, they drive underneath Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, the best meeting spot for dirt bikers in New Haven. There are some empty lots under the bridge, and ​“You don’t have to worry about any police pulling up,” says Fucci. The spot is near Hole in the Wall club, home of the Eastcoastin’ Crew, whose 5,000-person September 2021 ride caused a major headache for New Haven.

Fucci says goodbye to his friend and waits under the bridge for 15 minutes as bikers assemble. Some come in groups, but many come alone. Some are from local towns and others are from New Haven. Some are 14 years old and others are 45. They don’t coordinate beforehand. ​“I’ve never really introduced myself to people. I like to stay quiet and make sure I’m not getting in trouble,” Fucci explains. ​“I just love to ride.” 

Once the pack is satisfied with its attendance, they head out. They’ll go through downtown, then head to North, West, and East Haven without any apparent pattern.

If you’re ever around Fucci when he rides through New Haven, you’ll hear him long before you see him.

“My bike is loud,” Fucci says. And he makes it louder. He revs his bike ​“when I’m next to someone, or, really just when I want to.”

Athletes wax poetic about the energy of a packed arena. New Haven is Fucci’s Yankee Stadium. 

“There’s something about riding in New Haven and all the people on the sidewalks cheering you on. It gets your adrenaline going and puts a smile on your face.”

He rode in New Haven for the first time last year and says it was ​“probably one of the best times I’ve ever had riding.”

Fucci now rides through New Haven about once a month, which is less than he did last year; he runs a painting company and business is good. 

Last year, Fucci brought his childhood friend Damien Coleman to New Haven. They learned to ride together as kids.

Coleman also described his New Haven ride as one of his favorites: ​“It was the first time I’ve ever had somebody run out of their house onto the porch and give me a thumbs up and tell me to do a wheelie or something,” recalls Coleman. ​“I didn’t see a single person that didn’t enjoy it … Tons of little kids were pointing and putting their hands up. Their parents were smiling.”

Although he had a great time, Coleman does not ride in New Haven anymore. He says ​“too many articles came out” complaining about dirt bikers, adding ​“I just don’t want to get in trouble. I’m so young and I’d rather not have anything against me.” He says that he knows ​“too many people that have gotten arrested and had their bikes taken.” 

Coleman considers himself lucky because he lives in a wooded area of Killingworth. He likes to ride on trails or quiet paved roads. His favorite road is a strip near Chester that he calls ​“wheelie road.” It’s wide enough to share with friends but generally free of cars. ​“If someone falls there, we can control it,” he says. ​“On regular back roads, there’s tons of cars stopping and if someone falls, there’s a pileup of cars.” On wheelie road, ​“we can just help them get up and call someone if we need to.”

Coleman and Fucci often load their trucks on trailers to ride on an empty road in North Haven. Valley Service Road extends over a mile past The Only Game in Town, a go-kart and mini-golf center, without connecting to anything. The end of the road has skid marks from past burnouts and donuts. Haley Franco, general manager at The Only Game in Town, says that the dirt bikers don’t bother her. ​“They’re pretty respectful of the property. They’re not riding in our parking lot. That would be an issue because there are kids running around.” 

A Role Model

Coleman’s professional role model is MrBizness, a dirt bike filmmaker from Chester, Pennsylvania, just south of Philadelphia. Coleman calls MrBizness ​“the biggest person in the film industry for bikes.” According to MrBizness, the director of Charm City Kings, a 2020 film about Baltimore dirt bikers starring rapper Meek Mill, said he ​“watched and studied my work… to get shots close to how I capture them.”

MrBizness has strung rainbow LED lights on the wall of his study. It looks like the backdrop of a TikTok influencer or a college dorm, but MrBizness is 33. He considers himself a bridge between communities – he can talk like a teenager or an adult, with bikers or city councilors. 

MrBizness first rode a dirt bike in 2010. His friend Rick Nyce took him down to Beale Street in Philadelphia to ride after they shot a music video together. ​“I’ve never seen so many hood dudes together in one place having such a good time,” MrBizness recalls.

Over the last 11 years, MrBizness has built a successful brand for himself. Around 125,000 people follow his Instagram and YouTube accounts. ​“I found a way for bikers to make money from this so they can do what they love for the rest of their lives,” he says. But MrBizness is concerned that money and fame are corrupting young bikers. ​“People don’t ride for the love no more. They ride for the cameras,” MrBizness said in an unreleased documentary about an Atlanta group ride that he sent me. 

Reining In The ‘Worms’

Delicate social structures govern dirt biking packs. Urban biking is dangerous. Older members teach new riders, dubbed ​“worms,” how to conduct themselves responsibly. But as younger riders gain online followers, they’re emboldened to disrespect and disregard the group’s traditions. ​“Now you got clashes out there in the pack. I’m watching two different generations,” MrBizness worries. ​“The basic morals are not getting taught fully… We are looked at [by] social media and society as one. When one person does something wrong, it affects everybody.” 

Over the last ten years, MrBizness has seen the demographics of dirt biking change. Urban street biking comes from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, what MrBizness calls the ​“bike life core cities.” These cities have the largest African American population in the Northeast. Most of the people MrBizness rides with are, like him, Black. 

White people who want to dirt bike generally ride motocross, racing their bikes on off-road circuits. Motocross was introduced to the X Games, an extreme sports competition, in 1999. It took ten years for an African American racer to make the podium. In the 2021 X Games, the five motocross events had 36 finalist positions. None of them were Black.

MrBizness says that when he first started riding about ten years ago, white motocross riders would look down on Black urban riders. Now, thanks to social media, some more white riders are joining them on the streets. MrBizness clarified that white, suburban riders like Fucci and Coleman are not appropriating Black culture: ​“They love to do this. When they come to the tracks, you can hear their stories and how they grew up. When they link up, it’s beautiful. They bridge the gap.” 

While dirt biking, skin color disappears: ​“You can’t really tell what their skin color is because people will be wearing masks and helmets and gloves,” says Fucci. Riders cover up to avoid cameras, which Fucci says are ​“all over the place,” and to protect themselves if they fall. 

Police enforcement of dirt biking is closely tied to race and wealth. ​“The cops never had a problem when the bikes were in the hood areas,” said MrBizness. ​“But as soon as the bikes went down to areas like Center City [in Philadelphia] with high-tax-paying people, they go all out.” In New Haven, noise regulations are enforced in all parts of town. 

$2,000 Fines; Multimillion-Dollar Settlements

On the evening of May 30, 2019, Madison resident Darren Totten was driving his gray Hyundai Elantra through downtown New Haven. While on High Street, he stopped at the Chapel Street intersection and waited for the light to turn green.

Maybe he looked across the street at the oxidized analog clock on the wall of the Yale Art Gallery’s stone bridge. Or maybe he had his eyes trained straight ahead, where pedestrians cut across High Street between Old Campus and three residential colleges. 

Green light.

With four cars waiting behind him, Totten proceeded forward. As he traveled through the intersection, a dirt bike with two riders slammed into his passenger door. Security camera footage shows the two riders flying over Totten’s car. Across the street, a man walking a small dog glanced over his shoulder at the time of impact. After a momentary double-take, he flung himself around and appeared to call the police.

Minutes later, then-Sgt. Brendan Borer arrived on the scene. One bike – white-shelled with a black base and red accents on the handlebars and wheels – leaned front-down on the passenger side of the car. A bright red sneaker sat in a pile of shattered glass and sand from the airbags. The passenger door was dented. And the two riders, who both survived, suffered severe injuries on the other side of the car.

Two years after the High-Chapel crash, I met with Borer, now a lieutenant and district manager for Downtown and Wooster Square. He says that the quickest fix for New Haven’s dirt biker problem would be for people not to ride in urban areas. 

“No matter how safe you feel on your bike, it’s not just you. Other drivers on the road might not see you,” says Lt. Borer. ​“You come to a city to ride your dirt bike and have fun, but the reality is that you can end up dead… If I had an 18-year-old-son that wanted to ride a dirt bike, that would be my big argument.”

Given urban street biking’s popularity, it’s not likely to disappear anytime soon. New Haven has instituted policies aiming to curb dirt biking in the city. It is legal to own a dirt bike or an all-terrain vehicle (commonly called a quad), but it can only be operated on property owned by the driver. In New Haven, it’s explicitly illegal to use an off-road vehicle on city streets. In December 2020, the Board of Alders raised the fines for riding illegally to match the state maximum. ​“You can get a $1,000 infraction for the first offense, and then $1,500 to $2,000,” says Lt. Borer. In the first ten months of 2021, the department issued 13 first offense fines. 

But police can rarely enforce these heavy fines due to Connecticut’s no-chase regulation. Since dirt bikes in New Haven do not have license plates, officers must give dirt bike citations face-to-face. In a traditional traffic stop, an officer would turn on his or her lights and sirens, drive behind the offending vehicle, and the driver would pull over. But dirt bikers in New Haven do not stop for police because of the restriction forbidding police chases unless pursuing a violent criminal. Many ride away fast and recklessly. Fucci denies riding away, saying that bikers ​“definitely respect” police officers and ​“try to follow all the laws.” 

The chase restriction does not mean that officers cannot engage with dirt bikers, quad riders, or loud motorcyclists at all. ​“Just because an officer tries to stop someone… and that person takes off going 100 miles an hour, doesn’t mean that’s a pursuit,” explains Lt. Borer. ​“An officer can shut his lights off, stop doing whatever he’s trying to do, and that’s not a pursuit.” If a biker runs a red light or drives recklessly after seeing police lights, ​“that’s not a pursuit, that’s just that person’s decision to take off.”

No-chase policies are standard practice for most progressive police departments. Pursuits are dangerous for the officers, the suspect, and other vehicles. They are also expensive, explains Ward 7 Alder and Yale senior Eli Sabin. ​“If somebody gets hurt, they see millions of dollars in settlements.” 

Four dirt bikers who crashed after encountering police have sued the city in the last decade. Two cases are pending, one has been decided for the government, and the last case was sent back to New Haven in 2020 by the Connecticut Supreme Court with instructions to hold the government liable. 

Keith Manson lost his case in New Haven’s district court, and the Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed that decision last year. In 2013, a police officer who was driving head-on into opposing traffic hit Manson, ​“causing a violent collision,” according to the prosecution’s complaint. Manson’s attorney, Alphonse Balzano, argues the deck is stacked in the government’s favor: ​“There’s a whole legal premise that if the act of the office is ministerial [where the law clearly describes whether an action is or isn’t legal] then they’re on the hook. But if the act is discretionary [where the law leaves an action up to the officer’s judgment], the city is not on the hook. It seems like they’re defining everything an officer does as discretionary, which would give them governmental immunity.”

New Haven has not paid a settlement in a dirt biker injury case recently, so it’s hard to say what the financial windfall would be. In the initial complaint, each biker sued the city for at least $15,000. According to Harrison Pesce, the attorney of Leron Stone, who crashed into a turning vehicle on Grand Avenue while evading a police officer, plaintiffs just have to specify whether they’re suing for more or less than $15,000, but he’s hoping for ​“well above $15,000.”

Without pursuits, the city has turned to more creative means of enforcement. On Sundays, plainclothes officers in unmarked cars monitor packs of bikers and attempt to catch them at gas stations, where it’s illegal to fill a dirt bike in New Haven, or while off their bike. Lt. Borer suggested that if the department had more money, they could follow Hartford’s lead and use helicopters or drones to ​“follow them around until they stop.” 

Although dirt bikers may be New Haven’s flashiest disruptive riders, other vehicles also contribute to the city’s noise pollution problems. Lt. Borer says that drivers drag race through Long Wharf, blast music from DJ speakers on their roofs, and modify their mufflers to sound like gunshots. Since October 2021, the NHPD has dispatched bicycle officers with decibel readers to busy downtown intersections. The officers knock on windows of offending cars to give citations and can issue arrest warrants if drivers do not comply.

East Rock/Downtown Alder Eli Sabin fields constant noise complaints from his constituents. ​“That’s one of the biggest things I hear about from folks.” If given the opportunity, he would ask dirt bikers not to come to New Haven. ​“Turn right around and go home. Have some compassion for other people.” 

Sabin is especially frustrated by riders who live in the suburbs and come to New Haven just to bike. ​“Because of the way that the state of Connecticut is structured, the cities and the suburbs are always in competition… for resources,” he explains. ​“If you’re gonna [ride], you should be in your community where the people you know… are dealing with the consequences.” New Haven has enough on its plate, he adds. ​“We’re one of the lowest income communities in the state, and we’re already struggling with so many issues… we don’t need another thing to deal with.” 

A “Lifestyle”

On their public Instagram accounts, some dirt bikers share their disdain for police crackdowns on riding. One biker sports a vest with two bikes doing wheelies in front of a police car. Another’s bio reads ​“BIKELIFE isn’t a crime Issa lifestyle.”

Dirt bikes are inherently loud, which bothers downtown residents. Bikers may think people are fine with them riding in cities, comments Bob Jacobson of College Street Cycles, ​“but 95 percent of the population isn’t saying anything but doesn’t want you to ride here.” 

Riders understand the risks of unsafe traffic behavior, but some are frustrated by the policing of noise. I asked Fucci what he’d say to someone who complains about bikers’ noise. He joked, ​“I’d probably tell them to fuck off,” then clarifying ​“I’d tell them to meet us, live a day in our shoes.” To him, riding represents an escape, one that’s safer than other hobbies. ​“Would you rather have me riding a bike or doing drugs on the sidewalk?” Fucci asked. 

Elihu Rubin, a Yale Urban Studies professor, notes that noise is the whole point of urban dirt biking. ​“This is an exaggerated right to occupy urban space, to be mobile,” Rubin says. ​“I don’t disapprove. They’re participating in the public realm.”

The most commonly proposed solution to urban dirt biking is to create an offroading park. Would bikers follow Coleman’s lead and not ride through city streets? MrBizness is skeptical. Poor kids who lacked off-road access created their own sport, and it’s now fundamentally different from what is done at parks or on trails. 

Though dirt bikers feel misunderstood by the public, they don’t want to hide in a park. MrBizness started making videos after seeing negative media coverage which he felt unfairly slandered the community. Fucci emphasizes that bikers just want to have fun and aren’t ​“trying to cause trouble.” Coleman stresses that bikers ​“work hard and long hours for their bikes.” Bikers are hopeful that with some work, the public could appreciate their craft.

But for now, most New Haven residents just hear the noise, and for the foreseeable future, it is here to stay.