Kids and bikers to play. Can they get along?

Motorcycles will rally as new museum opens

RALEIGH -- Saturday's grand opening of the downtown children's museum will include fun new mascots, Chinese ribbon dancers and opportunities to plant a pretend garden.

Across the street, at a gathering of thousands of motorcyclists, a tent sponsored by U.S. Smokeless Tobacco will invite "city slickers, tenderfeet and virgin dippers" to learn how to cheat at cards and to watch a sinuous model dance on a bar.

At least 100,000 people are expected downtown for the third annual Ray Price Capital City Bike Fest and the opening of the so-far unnamed museum in the former space for Exploris, the struggling museum about world cultures that closed this month.

Bikers will start roaring in today for the event, which includes a performance in Moore Square tonight by Great White (the band known for its 2003 Rhode Island performance that left 100 people dead after a fire). It runs through Saturday night.

Several city streets, from Fayetteville Street to Moore Square and City Market, are shut to accommodate the rally.

A thousand children can get pretty loud. Even they will have a tough time competing with the noise from hundreds of motorcycle engines, which can average 100 decibels (think chainsaw or jackhammer).

"We're thinking the more the merrier," said Sally Edwards, president and CEO of the new museum.

The museum picked Saturday primarily because it was the day it could open a new traveling exhibit about children from around the world. The new museum is the product of the consolidation of Playspace, a children's museum geared toward toddlers and preschoolers, and Exploris, which both closed Labor Day weekend.

Edwards said grand opening organizers made sure most of the events were inside the 80,000-square-foot museum because of Bike Fest. But, she said, there are plans to integrate motorcycles into the grand opening, though she wouldn't say how.

Edwards didn't think the clashing events were a problem but recommended that people plan in advance.

"The parts of downtown that are closed are really not important entrances to the museum," she said.

Doug Grissom, assistant director of the Raleigh convention center, who helped produce Bike Fest, said the event has been on the same weekend for the past two years. And while some might think of bikers as hard-core partiers with leather chaps and scruffy beards, the reality is much different, he said. The event is billed as a family-friendly affair and includes a children's entertainment zone run by a couple of Christian groups.

Still, Grissom wishes the Copenhagen Saloon, part of the Western Legends Tour, wasn't directly across the street from the museum. He said that there was no alternative because of the space it required. It is enclosed in a tent and for only people 21 years and older.

"The only conflict is going to be people looking for parking," Grissom said. "There's spaces. You might have to walk two blocks, so detours are going to be frustrating, but, unfortunately, they're the necessary evil."

David Diaz, president and CEO of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, is sure downtown can handle the events. Downtown has about 42,000 spaces. The alliance leads an events task force for city officials and others to help event organizers.

The group met this week to iron out any last-minute conflicts between the museum opening and Bike Fest, said Terri Dollar, program director for Artsplosure, which organizes Artsplosure and First Night every year.

"There's a lot happening downtown this weekend," she said, "but that's what we want."