Sturgis Main Street
— a small Western street that knows what August will bring.
Not only on a wall.
Sturgis Main Street, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A handful of blocks of brick storefronts, neon signs, and bar fronts along Main Street in Sturgis, South Dakota. Population around 7,000 most of the year. The street is quiet in May and quiet again by Labor Day, and for one week in August it carries the loudest gathering of motorcycles on the continent. The Knuckle Saloon, the Loud American, the old Meade County Courthouse one block over.
The place, in three passes.
Sturgis sits in Meade County on the northern edge of the Black Hills, about 30 miles northwest of Rapid City along Interstate 90. The town was founded in 1878 as a settlement near Fort Meade and is named for Major Samuel D. Sturgis. Main Street runs east-west through the small downtown grid, lined with two-storey brick storefronts that have housed bars, hardware stores, and saloons since the late 1800s. Year-round population is roughly 7,000.
The street's calendar is shaped by one event. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, held the first full week of August since 1938, brings between 400,000 and 700,000 riders to a town of 7,000. Main Street is closed to cars, lined end-to-end with parked motorcycles, and the bars along it run open-air stages day and night. The rest of the year Main Street is a working small-town street with the bike memory in the signage, the murals, and the empty corral barriers stacked in lots.
Outside rally week, Main Street is walkable in an afternoon. The Sturgis Motorcycle Museum and Hall of Fame at 999 Main Street keeps machines from the 1900s through the present. The Knuckle Saloon, the Loud American Roadhouse, and the One-Eyed Jack's bar fronts are open year-round. The old Meade County Courthouse, built in 1908, stands one block south. Bear Butte rises six miles to the northeast, a landmark visible from the end of the street.
