Every Wednesday night, a sleepy New Orleans suburb starts to rumble and buzz. Knots of bikers in rolling mechanical menageries -- from shiny new Japanese sport bikes to rickety looking choppers cobbled together from old Harley parts -- trickle down Hickory Street to the Kamp.

It's bike night. Motorcycle police watch over the parking lot that eventually overflows into the highway, where women wave bikers in to park between orange cones.

By 8 p.m., the Kamp -- little more than a shed built around a long bar and a pool table -- is filled shoulder-to-shoulder. Vendors outside sell everything from barbecued pork ribs to leather vests and patches with catchy slogans, giving the whole thing a sort of carnival air.

Professionals, workers, students and police -- people from all walks of life -- mingle and share a love of their two-wheeled pastime.

One of the pillars of New Orleans' motorcycling community is Anthony Brown. Hundreds of his one-time students can be found hugging turns in southeast Louisiana. The former police detective started teaching safety classes years ago for $5.35 an hour before starting his own company. Despite popular criticisms of motorcycle safety, Brown insisted they are safe when operated properly and said riders love the feeling of freedom that motorcycles provide.

"When you're riding a motorcycle, if you're passing by a bakery, you can smell the fresh bread being baked. On the other hand, if you're behind a garbage truck, you're going to smell that garbage truck," Brown said. "But you're out there in the environment, up close, with the wind blowing in your face on a hot summer day, or the cold wind on a cold winter day."

About the time the Kamp gets exciting, the New Orleans Athletic Club is getting ready to shut its doors for the evening. Located in the heart of the city, the NOAC is where local movers and shakers go to move and shake. A federal attorney runs laps on the cardio machines while construction and sanitation firm chiefs heave dumb bells. And General Manager Mike Walters oversees the whole thing.

Walters is clean cut and close shaved, the perfect antithesis of some of the Kamp's more grizzled regulars. He's also been riding motorcycles for 16 years. He started with a dirt bike, then upgraded to a Suzuki 750. These days, he keeps a Triumph Daytona 650 sport bike.

"I love it," Walters said. "I ride a motorcycle because I enjoy the stress reduction it provides me. When riding out on back roads, it really enables you to see parts of the country you miss in a car. Being on a motorcycle requires you to be much more (aware) of your surroundings, enabling you to notice many things on the road that we usually take for granted."

Things on the road are a big issue for bikers.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motorcycle riders are 26 times as likely to die in a crash than passengers in automobiles. But with mid-sized bikes getting more than 40 miles per gallon, motorcycle sales have increased for the past 15 consecutive years. In 2006, more than 1.1 million motorcycles and scooters were sold in the U.S., according to the Department of Transportation.

Cheaper To Own

Though bikes come with expensive maintenance calls, costing a few hundred dollars every few thousand miles, even sensible sedans are far more expensive to own than motorcycles.

According to Cars.com, the Toyota Corolla, the best-selling car in June 2008, costs $34,204 in the first five years, including gas, maintenance and depreciation.

A Suzuki GS 500 -- a popular entry-level bike -- costs slightly more than $13,000 to operate for the first five years, according to figures from WhyBike.com. A Harley-Davidson Road King, the Cadillac of motorcycles, costs about $17,500 for the same time period, around half the operating cost of a modest automobile.

Whether ridden for fun or money or a little bit of both, motorcycles are imprinted in Americana. Char Schroeder, who ran the Amazing Race in season eight, grew up watching her dad race Indian motorcycles around a dirt track in Gonzales, La. A self-described thrill-seeker, she works as a director of marketing at the Ritz-Carlton hotels of New Orleans. She also rides a 900cc Triumph Thruxton, a British cafe racer. Her husband Mark also rides a Triumph. The two of them took one of Brown's safety classes.

"(My dad) always spoke about that experience with a twinkle in his eye," Schroeder said. "A daredevil by nature, he passed this trait onto me. He was not pleased to learn of my new hobby when I first started riding. I tried to remind him that I was merely following in his footsteps."