South Carolina Ping
Posted on 05/16/2005 8:28:43 PM PDT by smoothsailing
MONDAY, MAY 16, 2005
2 rallies, 2 sets of rules, 1 lawsuit
Myrtle Beach traffic regulations contested; merchants say age, not race, is the issue
BY SCHUYLER KROPF
MYRTLE BEACH--No one remembers exactly when the first motorcycle cruised into Myrtle Beach. But everyone agrees things got tense when black and white riders began showing up a couple of weeks apart each May.
The white bikers throttled in mostly on chrome-polished Harley-Davidsons. Black riders appeared a week later on brightly painted bikes imported from Japan. Soon the town started treating the groups differently, at least as far as traffic patterns went. Then came the lawsuits.
This family-fun destination that gives way to caravans of bikers each May is grappling with accusations that the town's leaders were engaged in racial profiling when they set up different traffic patterns for the two biker rallies.
During the mostly white Harley rally that gets under way this week, more than 200,000 riders normally are permitted to cruise in two-way traffic for five miles of Ocean Boulevard, the city's main seaside strip of hotels, bars and shops.
The pattern was the same for the mostly black Memorial Day Atlantic Beach Bikefest until 1999. That's when the city decided the event had become too large to handle. Police began corralling Bikefest riders into one-way traffic along the same strip.
An NAACP lawsuit on the issue goes to court in October. In the interim, Myrtle Beach has decided to limit boulevard traffic to just one way during both bike rallies, in compliance with an injunction issued last week by U.S. District Judge Terry Wooten.
The white bikers say setting the street routes is not their fight. City officials, merchants and black bike riders have differing views on how the dispute grew. "Basically, they treat us different," said James Washington, a North Charleston riding enthusiast who has attended the Bikefest rally in the past. Washington, who is not a party to the lawsuit, said he's treated like a crime suspect whenever he visits Myrtle Beach.
"Everybody watches us like we're about to do something," he said, perched atop his $9,000 Suzuki motorcycle. His riding buddy, Corey Antone, of the North Charleston Street Kingz riding club, agrees: "In some of the restaurants, the food is (priced) ridiculously high, triple what it normally is." "Most of the restaurants close," he added. "They don't want to serve you."
The NAACP claims two local eateries that close their doors during Memorial Day weekend -- Damon's Restaurant and Greg Norman's Australian Grille -- do so because of racial prejudice. That discrimination, they assert, corresponds to the one weekend a year when minority tourists outnumber white visitors in Myrtle Beach.
Town officials say race wasn't a factor in the traffic patterns. Bikefest, they point out, falls on Memorial Day weekend, one of the busiest of the year and the traditional start of summer. More controls were needed for safety, said City Manager Tom Leath.
He said the Harley event isn't as much as a street-snarler. The Harley rally "doesn't affect the downtown area as much as it did at the beginning," he said, referring to how today's Harley riders are more prone to ride out of downtown for bars and motorcycle stores around the Grand Strand that host satellite events, such as concerts and bike shows.
Merchants agree the events draw different crowds but say age is the issue, not race. A common view on the street is that Harley riders are a quieter, older crowd, people up in their 50s or older. Meanwhile, the Bikefest crowd averages riders in their 20s and 30s.
Supporting that theory is Sharon Ford, chef at Caroline's Restaurant on Ocean Boulevard, who speaks with biker authority. She is 34, black and a bike rider. Her father, Cleo Williams, was one of the founding members of Bikefest, which started 25 years ago as an Atlantic Beach fish fry.
"It's the age," she said. "The younger bikers come down and get crazy. They do a lot of things they don't do at home." Some of the female riders are "half-naked," she added. Ford grew up in Myrtle Beach and is offended by the accusation that her hometown is run by racists.
Still, there are hints of racial dissonance. "They don't tip well," Tammy Mack, a bartender at Suck Bang Blow, a warehoused-sized biker bar situated several miles outside of Myrtle Beach, said of some black bikers. "They destroy our property."
Myrtle Beach Police spokesman Capt. David Knipes said department records show a disparity in police activity during the two events. During the 10 days of Harley week 2004, the department recorded about 1,500 citations and arrests, he said. During the shorter four-day Memorial Day 2004 weekend, the department recorded about 1,800 citations and arrests.
Suck Bang Blow is among those businesses that will close at the end of the Harley rally and won't operate during the week of Bikefest. But the influx of black bikers isn't the reason, Mack said. During the 10 days of the Harley rally, she expects to work 20 hours a day and said no one has the energy to work through two rallies. "Back to back, it's way too much for everybody," she said.
If the racial dispute has affected Myrtle Beach's image, it hasn't shown, said Brad Dean, president and CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. "Just the appearance of a rift could damage that image," he said. "But attendance seems to be growing year after year."
The Harley rally draws about 200,000 to the Grand Strand, according to recent estimates. Bikefest attracts as many as 350,000 people, city officials have said. The economic impact for both events is in the tens of millions of dollars.
Dean said the chamber doesn't play favorites between the two. Representatives answer visitor phone calls and e-mails about both events. But Dean said the chamber backs the city in the lawsuit. "Bike Week has become Bike Month," he said. "Two different events, two different needs. We support that."
Myrtle Beach Mayor Mark McBride, who is a waiter at Greg Norman's restaurant, thinks the dispute has had a negative impact on the city.
He fought the decision to go to one lane for both biking events but couldn't get any support from City Council to run both with two-way traffic, he said. "You don't penalize the first group because of a lawsuit," McBride said.
Washington said he may go up to Bikefest this year but isn't sure of how long he'll stay. It depends on the reception he gets at hotels, diners and on the street. "That racism stuff needs to stop," he said.
75% more black ridrers in a shorter period of time only elicits 20% more citations. seems the bias is the other way.
Vote with your feet my man! If you don't like the racist one way traffic in Myrtle Beach take your bike rally to Virginia Beach, or Ocean City, or Wilmington, or......
I've been in South Carolina since I was a kid. I've been to Myrtle Beach several times a year for the past maybe 30 years. There's ALWAYS been tons of extra traffic on and around Memorial Day, and they locals have been screwing around with the traffic patterns for a lot longer than black bikers have been gathering there.
That's a lot of crap over nothing, just people trying to get some headlines when they really just picked a crummy time to gather thousansd of bikers in Myrtle Beach.
Hey, you're using logic and math, no fair. There's a PC curve in that formula you forgot about.
I didn't read about any racism in here. Some generalizations about bikers who attend the Bikefest, but if they happen to be black or white, it doesn't change the fact that it sounds like they are disruptive.
If they want to be treated better, they should police themselves and oust members who break laws, or cause disruptions at local businesses. If the poor treatment continues after all of the problem attendees have been ousted, then raise a ruckus.
But if they're allowing indecent, rowdy, and disrespectful attendees to set their image, that's the fault of the group at large.
I can't stand people who yell "racist" first. And I'm not white, if that makes any difference.
Some blacks consider every bump in the road to be because of racism. If it rains on their parade, God is a racist.
One big difference with successful blacks is the absence of that attitude.
I really saw nothing particularly racist about the article,either.
More a matter of handling such a large gathering of people in a fair but responsible manner.
Life must really be a utopia when such trivial BS is whined about! Geez, what a waste of time.
That means the Harley group is recieving citations at less than half the rate the Bikefest group is.
Whether the citation rate is racially biased is a separate question, but on the surface it looks like the younger group is also a much more Hell-raising group.
That plus 170%+ more bikes on the same streets may also require more lanes each way to accomodate them all safely, hence one-way traffic for the bigger group.
I have been a waiter. The majority of Blacks are very rude, demanding, and tip horribly. Same with some white people, but the majority are nice, easy-going, and tip well.
I've seen basically the same complaints about "Black College Reunion" in Daytona Beach and "Biketoberfest".
Notice how the article doesn't really touch on crime.
My son works at a restuarant in Barefoot Landing, the same shops where Greg Norman's is located and they like most businesses in the North Myrtle Beach area lose money on what should be a great weekend. The younger crowd at Bikefest are for the most part rude and have a tendency to trash everything in their wake. Not to mention the food that they neglect to pay for, leaving the server that they did not tip to pay. He always requested this time off.
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