Stand on a block in Harlem and wait for a loud buzz—building to a roar, interrupted by pops. Eventually one will rip past, its rider howling—a dirt bike speeding and diving through city traffic. The bike wheelies further down the street and slides out the tail. The rider’s wearing athletic shoulder pads, a mesh chest guard, and underneath his helmet, flying behind like a flag of independence, a black do-rag tail.

Harlem has become home to a booming dirt bike scene—from renegades on illegal bikes to stunt jockeys who practice tricks in abandoned lots. The bikes come in more colors than an iPod: classic red, hunter green, combinations like blue and yellow, checkered variations, and straight jet-black. Some bikes aren’t registered, and the police try to impound them and ticket the drivers. Residents either applaud their efforts or say despite city ordinances and police enforcement—they’re here to stay.

McKilo Williams, 33, known better by his alias “Ki-Lo The Dread,” helped start the dirt bike trend in Harlem a decade ago, when he starred as lead rider in hip-hop artist DMX’s video for the classic rap song “The Ruff Ryders Anthem.” As DMX raps, hundreds of dirt bikers, ATV and motorcycle riders swarm him—some in block-long wheelies, others burning-out their back tires into smoke clouds. Together, they became a bike team—the “Ruff Ryders”—and their influence in the hip-hop scene remains strong; dirt bikers still idolize them for their speed and their beat-up, ride-anywhere style.

Williams stands over 6 feet tall, has a lean but muscular frame and wears long shaggy dreadlocks. He has turned dirt biking through Harlem’s streets into a profession. “I met another guy, Wink1100, while I was riding down the street practicing tricks. He eventually asked me to be in the hip-hop videos,” he said, hanging out on 134th Street with his family, who looked on pridefully. “But I take care of my family with this,” he added. “I went to Miami, South Carolina—all on tour with the Ruff Ryders.”

Russell Houston, 28, standing on the corner of 135th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, said he sees urban dirt biking only gaining popularity. “My friends, basically everybody, is getting a bike. I decided I should try and get one myself and start a bike club.”

So Houston has been saving up to buy a bike. “I gotta do my research,” he said. “If you want a used bike it will probably be like eight hundred dollars. A new bike is closer to fifteen hundred, two thousand.”

Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 135th Street is a hub for riders and their fans. “When you see a crowd out here, they’ll be out,” said Darnell Jackson, sitting on a ledge on the 135th Street block corner, beside the public housing apartments towering behind him. From here, riders sometimes cruise up and down Frederick Douglass, and other times move cross town, over to First Avenue and back.

And the bikes are fast.

“They can get up to 75, 80, 90,” said Blue Rico, a casual rider in baggy jeans who was reluctant to supply his name for fear of the police. “We’ll ride Frederick Douglass, Lenox—all over.”

They travel in teams—entire packs flying down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, bike after bike up pointed skyward in a wheelie. “40 of us—maybe. 50 on a good day—all riding,” said Elliot Brown, who rides a brown KLR 650. Some bikes have busted license plates dangling from the rear; others riders go without registration or helmets at all. Often, nubby tires are worn almost past the rubber from too many miles spent on asphalt street instead of on the soft dirt tracks they’re designed for. Stickers plaster the bikes like murals devoted to everything popular in dirt biking, fashion, music, and any other decals that can stylize them.

A dirt biker’s arch nemesis is a police cruiser. Cops try and pull over dirt bikers and issue tickets. Bikers, though, have ways of flouting their intentions.

Police in the 32nd Precinct, however, say that they can try to pull over dirt bikers, but they cannot chase, in spite of their illegal bikes. “We can’t catch them because they’ll take the sidewalk,” said Officer Keith Lee, visibly angered, “We can’t pursue.” Another officer, standing beside him but declining to be named, added, “They all disappear. If we continue to chase it’s even more of a hazard to pedestrians.”

At the 32nd Precinct, disagreement reigned over such basic facts as whether pedestrians had been hit. Some officers said several pedestrians have been hit by dirt bikes in the last few months—none as a result of police pursuit—while other officers hadn’t heard of any pedestrian injuries. Currently, the department has no strategies for curbing the rise in illegal dirt biking or for catching fleeing riders, said officers at the 32nd Precinct. A Police Department Press Spokesman would not respond to phone calls and emails.

When handing out tickets, police look for bikers who don’t meet the legal requirements for owning any motorcycle: getting periodic exhaust inspections from the Department of Motor Vehicles, and registering the bike, considered a motorcycle. The rider must also have a motorcycle license, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The police, Williams added, are unfriendly to dirt bikers, to say the least. And bikers’ reluctance to stop, given the police’s rules against pursuit, is understandable. “They stop us and they give us lots of tickets and they try to take your bike,” he said. Unmodified dirt bikes fresh from the factory have legal mufflers and exhaust equipment, but some riders swap out parts to make a bigger sound, rendering the bikes illegal and a target for police impounding. “I even have cop friends that ride them, and they’ll still try to stop us, looking for anything that can give us a ticket,” said Williams.

Videos of dirt bikers running from the police have found their way onto YouTube. One clip, shot by a random passer-by, shows a rider on a blue and white dirt bike soaring off a sidewalk—its coil-suspension system bouncing on the street—speeding through a crosswalk, and racing down the street as a police cruiser u-turns and flips on its lights, starting a probably futile pursuit.

At Cycle Therapy—Harlem’s largest motorcycle shop—salesman Tomar Sho said sales of dirt bikes have skyrocketed—“easily doubling”—in recent years, and that he sees as many legal as illegal bikes. But, he added, once he sells a bike, he can’t control how a customer will use it—that’s up to the police.

Eyal Deep, another Cycle Therapy salesman, noted that mini-dirt bikes—small enough for someone up to four feet tall—have become a particularly hot seller, with kids from the same apartment building or block sometimes pooling money to purchase one.

But Sho added that while dirt bike sales have risen, they still only account for 1 percent of motorcycle sales and cause their share of headaches. Riders rarely bring dirt bikes in for maintenance, preferring a beat-up style—a major revenue loss. A few months ago, Deep said he heard some dirt bikes coming down the street. He assumed they were coming over to buy parts. Instead, the pack of riders, mostly in their early 20s, hopped the steps leading to the shop, blazed through the door and began hiding their bikes from pursuing police officers among the showroom bikes and gear.

Residents have mixed opinions. Bea Harris, who has lived in Harlem since 1954, wants see dirt bikes evicted from Harlem. “They’re loud and they’re in the wrong place,” she said, walking along Frederick Douglass Boulevard not long after some bikes passed, “The riders don’t use them the way they should. They’re not careful. They’re just reckless.”

But Malik Cupid, another lifelong resident, considered the urban cat-and-mouse games between police and bikers a permanent piece of Harlem culture. “They’re kind of fun to watch,” he said, looking around the neighborhood. “It’s not going anywhere. So just give it up,” he laughed.

The dirt bike riders are popular, Eyal Deep said, because of the entertainment they provide for people hanging outside, bored on hot summer afternoons. “Weekends–-oh my God—the bikes just doing stunts. Stunts, stunts, stunts.”

A promotional video for the Harlem Legendz motorcycle club, features narration from a rider named “Buster,” who explains that illegal bikes have become popular as an emblem of street life. “All the rappers, all the movie stars—they emulate the streets. They emulate us. They emulate Harlem.”