STURGIS, S.D. – Step into the Buffalo Chip campground. But adjust your sensibilities.

If you’re a woman, you’ll be greeted warmly. If you’re young and especially pretty, expect to be welcomed enthusiastically-if not with much chivalry.

There will be many questions about why you insist on keeping your top on – why you won’t take it off for a few pennies’ worth of beads. Apparently many women find this argument convincing.

Should you be another man added to the testosterone-fired suburb to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, you’ll be tolerated in what would elsewhere be considered the most boorish behavior. There is no T-shirt too obscene, no tent-side solicitation too crude.

Be mindful, though, that the next guy might also have drunk himself beyond inhibition and that shoving your way for a better position at the nightly big-name concert could land you a punch in the head and a toss over a fence.

Should you have brought your own beer, you’ll save a great deal on refreshments and have won some fast friends. (Miller Lite goes for $4 in the can here.)

If you’re a stranger, however, you won’t be for long. A casual biker bonhomie dominates.

“I came up here alone,” said Jeff Carlile, a 42-year-old computer programmer from Overland Park, Kan.

He sat with a group of men and women sharing a barbecue dinner and easy laughter Wednesday. Their campsite sits tent-to-tent among thousands of other campsites in a mostly treeless expanse with its own water tower, swimming pond, series of bars and retch-inducing toilets.

At the east end is an outdoor concert stage, where campers crowded together for Kid Rock’s self-referential brand of heavy-metal rock and rap.

“It’s not a bunch of yuppie, stuck-up people like you see at some of the other campgrounds,” Carlile said. “People are laid back and just looking for some fun. … I’ve seen many, many, many breasts.”

The motorcycle Mardi Gras of Sturgis is sort of like spring break for the middle-aged. And in large commercial campgrounds like “the Chip,” bikers have the freedom to roam with beer in hand – something that will get you an arrest and fine in Sturgis. Likewise with the whole breast-baring thing.

And while a Sturgis campground is not what generally passes for family entertainment, some people make it a family affair.

Twenty-four-year-old Kelli Szurek came from Minneapolis with an aunt, two uncles and her grandparents. While campers typically seek the most private spots, each year they park their trailers on one of the busiest sites. This year their site was adorned with floodlights and signs soliciting nudity in a way daily newspaper editors would never print.

“It’s all about the show,” she said.

At dusk the conversation is filled with talk of the night before – what so-and-so’s girlfriend did with whom in front of how many people. Counts of beers downed. Then plans are made for the nighttime concert and how the revelry will cycle through once more.

“You come to the rally because you’re a biker,” said Scott Summers of Houston. “You stay at the Chip or Glencoe (the other huge campground) because you want to party.”

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