Motorcycles and live bands — it’s a familiar duet in Springfield. Especially on Thursday evenings in the summer, when free outdoor concerts are held downtown at Stearns Square, a block off Main Street. For over a decade, bikers from far and wide came here in droves to show off their bikes. Historically they’ve congregated on Worthington Street, which runs right along Stearns Square.

“I think everybody appreciated and loved having bikers coming to these events because it was such a novelty to see thousands of motorcycles…all vintage, beautiful bikes,” says Evan Plotkin, a Springfield resident and business owner.

But as more and more bikers were drawn to Stearns Square, Plotkin says the nature of the CityBlock events began to change.

“The crowd would mainly hover around the bikes and there would be, actually, less people listening to the music or getting into the music,” he says.

So to shift that focus, Plotkin and others involved in Springfield’s ‘Business Improvement District’ asked the city to close Worthington Street to traffic on concert days. As a result, the biking community lost its place to meet.

Bruce Collins rides his red Harley the 40 miles from Turners Falls, Massachusetts, each Thursday. He’s one of the few who still comes.

“They’re actually kind of boycotting it,” Collins says, “And there’s really very, very few bikes that show up.”

Another hold-out is Keith Unwin from nearby Ludlow. He has been parking his Honda Goldwing Aspencade on Worthington for years.

“It’s a sad thing that happened,” Unwin says. “Because everybody come down here just to look at the bikes. You come down here to spend time with all  your friends that come down here with their bikes, you walk around and talk to this and that. And all the bikers spend money down here, and they’re not making any money down here now. ”

That’s true for Sally Geisel. She sells cookies and other baked goods from a booth near the stage. She says her sales have been much slower this summer.

“It seems as though the bikers were good for businesses around here, and for us vendors, ” Geisel says.  “And we miss them.”

So do the non-biking concert-goers. In fact, I couldn’t find one who was happy there were fewer bikes this year. Parents — and their kids, adult couples, devoted music lovers — they all told me they were disappointed. Springfield native Collin Green says he’s attended the concerts  for a decade. The bikers made Thursdays at Stearns Square “cool” to him.

“We need them back,” Collins says. “Because they’re going to go someplace else. We need the attraction here.  I mean right now, it’s dead down here. When it gets to be 6:00, it’s still going to be dead down here.”

But Evan Plotkin — from the Business Improvement District — says the businesses around Stearns Square have not seen a real difference in their sales. He sees the change as a positive one for the city. The final concert of the summer–which took place at Court Square — Plotkin describes as an unqualified success. And he’s hopeful that by bringing the emphasis back to the music, people will begin to think of Springfield differently.

“That we’re not some stepchild of some other city, but we’re really it,” Plotkin says. “You know, we should be the cultural capitol of the region. And this is how we’re getting there.”

Getting there, perhaps. But not by bike.