Myrtle Beach launches bike rally Web site
The city of Myrtle Beach and the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce are collaborating on Web-and-print information to make visitors aware of the city’s new rules about bike rallies.
Myrtlebeachbikerinfo.com launched last week, and brochures are due out this week for distribution primarily through local hotels.
“We have new laws, and we’d rather not surprise visitors,” city spokesman Mark Kruea said. “We’d rather they have some idea of what to expect when they come here.”
What people should expect: stricter noise and muffler rules, a local helmet law, no parties in parking lots, a juvenile curfew and more.
The Web site bears a message from Mayor John Rhodes, a list of the 15 ordinances and amendments the city approved last fall to target the two May motorcycle rallies it says have grown too large and too difficult to control, and a section of questions and answers.
The top of the site says “effective 2009, Myrtle Beach, SC will no longer host motorcycle rallies.” Even though the city never officially hosted the rallies, “Myrtle Beach doesn’t want to be the center of the motorcycle universe in May anymore,” Kruea said.
The Harley-Davidson and Atlantic Beach Bikefest have drawn nearly half a million visitors over about three weeks, and prompt locals to complain loudly each year. But in 2008, after a Coastal Carolina University student was shot to death in a dispute over a parking space during Bikefest, even though the shooting didn’t involve bikers, the city said it would take steps to end the rallies.
The chamber designed the Web site and has paid for the brochures, and Kruea said they city might reimburse the chamber but that has not been decided yet Chamber President and CEO Brad Dean said the site and and brochures are not an ad campaign and will not be advertised or mailed out generally, but will be given to people who request information.
