Summer in Milwaukee meansthe roar of the Harley rumbling on the roads. “It reaches the soul of our riders,” Harley-Davidson spokesman Mike Morgan says of the distinctive noise.
But not everyone finds gunning engines soul-touching. “I find it very objectionable because I value peace and quiet. There isn’t any necessity for the noise,” says Wauwatosa resident Tom Kleist.
When Harleys are sold, they emit 80 decibels, a sound equivalent to a lawnmower, notes UW-Milwaukee audiologist Marcia Dewey. But some cycle owners replace the exhaust system with “straight pipes” that don’t mute the noise. These bikes exceed 100 decibels, the sound of a chainsaw, and violate the vehicle noise ordinance in Milwaukee.
Official Harley-Davidson dealers don’t sell straight pipes, but other shops often stock them. We asked Dave Soika at Milwaukee Cycle Salvage if their straight pipes are popular. “You bet,” says Soika, who uses them on his own Harley. Has he ever gotten a ticket for the noise? “I find in Milwaukee, they’re usually worried about other things.”
Anne E. Schwartz, Milwaukee Police Department spokeswoman, claims the cops “enforce all ordinances, and that includes the noise ordinance.”
Yet Alderman Robert Bauman says police don’t have time to deal with loud bikes. “They are almost always on assignment [so] they are not available to do that enforcement.” Bauman suspects the mystique of the Milwaukee icon makes it untouchable, even for police. Does that go for the mayor’s office too? When asked for comment for this story, spokeswoman Eileen Force said, “We’ll take a pass.”
Savvy bikers know how to sneak past cops anyway. “When I see a cop, I am not as loud as when I don’t see a cop,” says one Harley rider. “You just pop it up an extra gear, or let off the throttle, or coast; it’s going to be quiet.”
Ken Hartog of Kenosha, owner of six Harleys, argues the straight-pipe sound protects riders by heightening drivers’ awareness. “The day my wife got her motorcycle license, she had mufflers … and some van pulled over and damned near knocked her off her bike. We went home, tore them off, and put straight pipes on.”
Bauman maintains noise ordinances are not enforced aggressively enough, and quality of life suffers as a result. “If [that’s] diminished through excessive noise, that is one reason not to move here or do
business here.”
For now, one thing is certain – Harleys will rumble on this summer. As Soika says of his custom-designed bike, “It sounds right, like it belongs.”
