Myrtle Beach raises taxes to throttle bike rallies

By: | SCNOW
Published: June 18, 2008

MYRTLE BEACH – Myrtle Beach City Council is moving to do away with the two spring bike rallies and taxpayers will foot the bill.

Currently May has two motorcycle rallies - one that attracts mostly white bikers and one marketed to black bikers.

In place of the bike rallies, city officials want to market it as family vacation month.

In a move that direction, council members voted Tuesday to raise taxes by three mills to raise about $1 million dollars and to dedicate some of the money toward ending the heavily attended rallies.

If one of the beach’s long-time biker bar owners is correct, though, the money and effort may be in vain.

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“I don’t think they’ll ever get rid of the rallies,” Suck Bang and Blow’s owner Jimmy Motley said.

Even if Myrtle Beach were to get rid of the event, it likely wouldn’t leave Horry County, Motley added.

And, Motley said, not everyone is opposed to the bike weeks and some will fight back in support of the bikers and the business they bring.

“I’m going to get a committee and go around to the biker bars and I’m going to raise a million dollars to fight the city of Myrtle Beach,” Motley said.

“We’re going to start a nationwide media campaign to tell others about the tourists who visit Myrtle Beach, the ones falling out of windows and dying. It’s not just bike week. I’m going to let them know how the other tourists behave,” Motley said.

City employees were tasked with submitting strategies on how best to accomplish this.

Whatever strategy is chosen, the change won’t happen overnight, Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes said.

"We've made a commitment to our residents. Therefore we want to do everything we can to try to as they say take back the month of May. Let's try to get back to everything it use to be. It's going take two or three years to do that. It's not going be done over night."

Council members also voted on a plan that would, if enacted, prohibit vendor permits at both the Myrtle Beach Convention Center and Broadway at the Beach – two areas integral to recent rallies.

Supporters of the rallies warned that once the events are gone, Myrtle Beach and could lose bikers who come down for vacations at other times.

And, Motley said, bikers are much freer with their money than the tourists that would come in their place.

“When the city of Myrtle Beach starts losing the revenue they’ll be sorry,” Motley said.

- The Associated Press contributed to this report.