By Carolyne Zinko
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — It was only a few miles from Pete’s 881 Club in San Rafael to the gates of San Quentin, but a world away for a motorcade of sorts that rumbled its way from a convivial watering hole to a drab visitors center on a Sunday mission to give holiday toys to inmates’ children.
In the seventh annual Bike Sleigh Across the Bay, some 350 motorcyclists clad in black leather, helmets and a few Santa hats wound their way through Kentfield and Ross, causing a few jaws to drop along the way as the grizzled-looking bikers waved teddy bears at onlookers and at cars that stopped at intersections to let the motorcade pass.
“All the kids have it difficult when their dads are away,” said the event’s founder, Bret Hatt, owner of Hatt’s Motorcycles in San Anselmo, who has been convicted of drug-related offenses and whose 26-year-old son is doing time at San Quentin now. “I’ve grown up in this world where most all of my friends have done time - my friends, myself, my son. I know that has a lot to do with my son being locked up. I think it’s really cool to give the kids the best Christmas we can.”
Luckily for him, hundreds of other motorcyclists felt similarly. Consultants and truck drivers and receptionists and plumbers gathered at Pete’s, a bar in a warehouse district off Highway 101, for coffee, doughnuts and conversation at 10 a.m., before heading out to ride.
They may have looked intimidating in their black leather chaps, sunglasses and bandanas, but they were softies on the inside, said Larry Souza, a handyman from San Francisco who brought no fewer than six teddy bears to stuff in his saddle bags.
Teddy bears were popular, for obvious reasons.
“It’s somebody to love you back when you squeeze them,” said Victoria McGill, a cashier from Novato, making her sixth Bike Sleigh toy drive. “They’re there to console you.”
Some brought old-fashioned gifts like sidewalk chalk and crayons with paper, while others, such as Calvin Gottelli, a plumber from San Rafael, brought footballs and walkie-talkies. Gottelli, who said he served time in San Quentin for drug offenses, wanted to return the favor bestowed on his family, noting: “I had stepkids when I was in prison. It helped when people brought toys.”
At 11 a.m. the engines revved - most of them Harley-Davidsons, with a few antiques thrown in for good measure, like Bob Buckter’s attention-getting 1947 Indian Chief with original paint, which he rides no more than 500 miles a year.
Sir Francis Drake Boulevard made a bucolic route for the rally, with golden leaves fluttering down from trees under a gray fall sky. The stillness was rattled by the roar of loud exhaust pipes, much as an afternoon’s calm can be broken by the screech of the Blue Angels flying overhead during Fleet Week.
When they reached San Quentin Village’s Main Street, the bikers revved their engines so the sound would travel across the waterfront and into the prison as a signal they had arrived to drop off the toys.
One by one, they parked their hogs and walked to the Centerforce visitors center, which serves the inmates’ families.
Along with some day care, the center provides suitable clothing for visitors such as slacks and certain types of undergarments for women; visitors are forbidden from wearing blue jeans, to avoid confusion with inmates, who wear denim.
Tara Regan, children and family program manager at the center, said that Hatt’s toy run is the most significant by volume.
A half dozen children were on hand to watch as several hundred gifts were piled in the living room of the building, a beige hillside house with views of San Quentin.
“Oh! Look at that!” one young boy said, pointing to a white stuffed polar bear that was larger than he was.
“That’s mine!” said a girl, pointing to stuffed monkey.
Tom Schultz, a truck driver from Novato who, of course, brought a toy truck, watched the bikers huffing and puffing up the stairs and then surveyed the growing mountain of gifts. He proclaimed it a job well done and then asked, with a certain sense of irony: “Do you think anybody else cares?”
“All the kids have it difficult when their dads are away. ... It’s really cool to give the kids the best Christmas we can.”
Copyright 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle