CODY, Wyo. — Gail Nace can't help but smile, talking about Hells Angels and the business they'll bring her downtown bar when they ride into town next week for a major gathering.
Barbara Hoy is excited, too. Experience tells the arts-and-crafts dealer that bikers, who often stop in this tourist town on trips to nearby Yellowstone National Park, are free with their money and don't mind the prices.
But Hells Angels, with their outlaw image, aren't just any bikers, and not everyone is rolling out the welcome mat.
At least one business plans to close while the bikers are in town Wednesday through Sunday, and some business owners are nervous or taking special precautions. There are concerns, too, that either Hells Angels or the beefed-up law enforcement contingent planned for the group's World Run will scare off other tourists during the height of Cody's bread-and-butter travel season.
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"We'll be glad when they're gone," City Administrator Laurie Kadrich said.
For months, city officials have been preparing for the rally, which she said they were tipped to by businesses reporting room reservations under such listings as "HAMC" — Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.
The rally has been the subject of countywide public meetings. It's led to primers on interacting with members of the biker group on the streets or in shops — "Be smart. Use common sense" — and it's become a full-time preoccupation of Police Chief Perry Rockvam.
Rockvam said he has researched the experiences of communities that have hosted Hells Angels — from Steamboat Springs, Colo., where a shooting involving group members occurred in 1996, to Laconia, N.H., where a rally a couple years ago was reported relatively uneventful. He has gotten help from state and federal agencies to strengthen a 17-person department already stretched thin this time of year by the tourist trade. Foreign police liaisons also are expected; the Hells Angels say they have chapters in at least 26 countries.
"A different kind" of biker
Rockvam's biggest worries are crowds and the possibility for conflict. Not only will Hells Angels be here — with as many as 1,500 people, by one law enforcement estimate — but Cody's popular nightly rodeo also will be going on, and the Park County Fair will be in a nearby town. Rockvam expects the mystique surrounding Hells Angels will draw a fair number of gawkers to places the bikers are hanging out, like Nace's bar.
The police response follows closely with that in other communities; the reaction to it up and down Main Street is similar to what's occurred elsewhere.
But Hoy, for one, believes the police may be stirring things up and that if anything hurts the "family trade," it might be them.
Others believe the planned police presence is warranted, and for some, it does little to ease their minds about having Hells Angels in town.
While bikers ride through Cody regularly, "this is a different kind of motorcycle gang," said Lee Haines, a spokesman for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center who's also working with the law enforcement team. "This is an outlaw motorcycle gang. That's their reputation."