page_title: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
section_title: Motorcycle rallies
hierarchical_section_title: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina / Economy / Tourism / Thong bikini ban / Motorcycle rallies
caption_attribution_description: Black Bike Week Festival 2008
context_page_description: Myrtle Beach is a coastal city on the East Coast of the United States in Horry County, South Carolina. It is in the center of a large and continuous 60-mile stretch of beach known as "The Grand Strand" in northeastern South Carolina.
  Ranked as the second fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, Myrtle Beach is one of the major centers of tourism in South Carolina and the United States because of the city's warm subtropical climate and extensive beaches, attracting an estimated 14 million visitors each year. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 27,109, and in 2019 the estimated population was 34,695. The Myrtle Beach metropolitan area had an estimated population in 2019 of 480,891.
context_section_description: Myrtle Beach Bike Week, also called "Harley Bike Week", is a week-long motorcycle rally first held in 1940, the same year Kings Highway was paved. The event has attracted as many as 200,000 visitors to the city every May. Black Bike Week, founded in 1980, takes place the weekend around Memorial Day Weekend and is the largest African American motorcycle rally in the US and attracts as many as 400,000 visitors. The event was created in response to a history of discrimination against African-American visitors and riders to Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand Area.
  The Myrtle Beach government created 15 new laws aimed at preventing all sanctioned motorcycle events within the city in response to controversy including accusations of racism by African-American riders during their event and complaints of lawlessness and poor behavior during all highly attended events. Several lawsuits by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) against Myrtle Beach businesses were settled with agreements that discrimination cease, compensation be given to some plaintiffs, and employees be given diversity training. The NAACP suit against the City of Myrtle Beach was settled in 2006 without the city paying damages, but with the agreement police would use the same traffic control rules during both the black and the white motorcycle rallies.
  The South Carolina Supreme Court in June 2010 unanimously overturned one of the 15 ordinances, which had required all motorcyclists to wear helmets, on the grounds that the state law, requiring helmets only for riders under age 21, cannot be preempted by a city ordinance. In addition, the Court ruled that the ordinance created undue confusion, and that the city itself had invalidated their own helmet law and some other ordinances in a subsequent amendment. The law had been challenged by a group of motorcyclists and a group of Myrtle Beach businesses called BOOST, Business Owners Organized to Support Tourism, who opposed the city's anti-motorcycle tourism policy.
caption: Riders in traffic at the 2008 Atlantic Beach Bikefest
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