Thunder by the Bay Music Motors Festival
February 19–21, 2027 · 3000 Ringling Blvd., Sarasota, · Sarasota, Florida
About this event
It started on a bar napkin. Lucy Nicandri, who runs Suncoast Charities for Children and had ridden to enough rallies herself to know what one should look like, sketched it out around 1998 because she thought Sarasota ought to have an event like this. It has raised money from the first day rather than turning charitable later — her own words are that it has always been for charity, and that she is very passionate about the cause behind it. Across its first twenty-eight years it brought in more than three and a third million dollars, and a recent single edition netted three hundred and ten thousand. The money stays close to home: it is split between ten named organisations working with children, teenagers and adults with special needs, every one of them in Sarasota or Manatee county. The festival runs over three days at the Sarasota fairgrounds — live music on a main stage, custom bike and car shows, a biker rodeo, charity rides and a dice run out into the two counties, vendors, and camping on site. General admission has started around fifteen dollars, with stage-side and VIP tiers above it. It draws a good many people who do not ride at all.
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