Myrtle Beach spring motorcycle rally not burned out yet: Organizers reschedule in summer
There will still be two Harley-Davidson bike weeks in the Myrtle Beach area this year, coronavirus-related restrictions permitting.
Although a disconnect between independent organizers of the annual spring and fall motorcycle rallies led to an announcement last week that they would be combined in October, many of the events’ stakeholders have rescheduled the postponed spring rally from May 8-17 to July 13-19.
Myrtle Beach Harley-Davidson dealership owner Phil Schoonover posted last week on social media that the rally was being postponed because of the uncertainty created by the coronavirus outbreak and the two rallies would be combined from Oct. 5-11.
“Everybody was in a state of limbo,” Schoonover said. “If I did wrong, I erred on the side of caution because my gut was telling me we weren’t going to have a spring rally. Right or wrong, I just made a decision. … It seemed like the solution to the dilemma.”
But before he made his announcement, Schoonover didn’t consult with most of the other major players in the rallies, who are primarily the owners of South Strand bars that host bike week vendors and events, and Sonny Copeland, who holds the trademark on “Myrtle Beach Bike Week” and promotes the rallies.
So Copeland, Suck Bang Blow owner Will Couch, Spokes & Bones Saloon owner Doyce Heinzmann, Captain Archie’s of North Myrtle Beach owner Billy Riggs and a few others discussed the rallies and settled on the July dates.
They were chosen in part by looking to avoid holidays and other rallies in the country, and scheduling it far enough out to hopefully find the end of coronavirus restrictions.
“I would rather have a plan and deviate from that than to just sit back and not be proactive and try to do something,” Couch said. “July 13 is pretty much the best option we could have. We’re just trying to save the event so that not just the biker community but we all can realize some tourism and some people coming to town.”
The Myrtle Beach spring rally will be held for the 81st consecutive year in 2020 if it indeed takes place, making it the oldest continuous annual motorcycle rally in the country, and those involved don’t want to lose that distinction because of COVID-19. “We want to try to have the event if it’s safe,” said Couch, who said he employs more than 200 during the spring rally.
Schoonover, who operates four affiliated Harley-Davidson businesses including the Harley Shop at the Beach dealership in North Myrtle Beach and retail stores at Broadway at the Beach and Tanger Outlets on 501, said he hasn’t had enough time to determine if he’ll request special event and vendor permits for the July dates.
But he will be open to the rally if it happens. “We’ll support them. I’ll try to help them if I can,” he said.
Fall retention
By naming the dates of Oct. 5-11 as the fall rally dates, Schoonover was also attempting to move the rally back a week from the dates it has been held since its inception in 2000 – the first weekend in October being the final weekend.
The group of bar owners and Copeland didn’t want to move those dates either, and have successfully retained the dates of Sept. 28-Oct. 4 for the second rally.
Those are the dates Horry County has set aside for week-long special event vendor permits again this year, and the primary host bars are in Horry County, with the exception of Beaver Bar just over the Georgetown County border in Murrells Inlet.
“Those are the dates of the fall rally and we are planning on it,” Couch said. “That’s always been the fall rally dates.”
Schoonover said he tried to change the fall dates at the behest of many of the rally’s traveling vendors, who in many if not most cases are coming from the Bikes Blues & BBQ rally that is held in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in the final week of September, which this year is Sept. 23-26.
That rally has been flourishing in recent years and Schoonover said vendors lose a day or two of the Myrtle Beach rally while traveling.
“I’ve been listening to them,” said Schoonover of the vendors, who pay $900 per permit in Horry County. “They’ve asked us to change the dates in the last five years. It’s because they can’t get here.”
The fall rally in Daytona, Florida known as Biketoberfest is traditionally the third week in October – this year it is Oct. 15-18 – and Schoonover said he fears larger vendors will bypass Myrtle Beach and head straight to Daytona, and there are no competing bike rallies in the month’s second week.
“There won’t be any vendors in town, not to any amount, not the top shelf ones because they’re going to be in Arkansas and they’ll go on to Daytona,” Schoonover said. “Some of them may come but is it going to be the top-shelf ones? I don’t think so. All I can say is we’ll see how it plays out.
“. . . There’s nothing else to get in the way of that [second weekend in October].”
Schoonover said when he helped start the fall rally, he anticipated vendors coming for the rally week, then spending time in Myrtle Beach and playing golf for a week before heading to the Daytona rally.
“They packed up, they went to Daytona and they played golf down there. My intentions were good, it just didn’t work out,” Schoonover said. “Now if we can capture them and bring them from Arkansas to Myrtle Beach, then they go to Daytona, hopefully we’ll have a good [representation].”
Separated allies
The lack of continuity exhibited this year in the bike rally community can be attributed to the lack of a central person or even group to organize the rallies.
The Carolina Harley-Davidson Dealers Association was the glue that held the organization of the rallies together for many years, but it hasn’t been involved in more than a decade. So “it has just kind of stumbled along since 2008,” Schoonover said.
“The Myrtle Beach rally does not have a promoter. We have no one in charge that is representing the rally,” said Sheri Gibson, marketing manager for Myrtle Beach Harley-Davidson and its affiliated businesses. “. . . We have no committee, we have no task force, we operate on a daily basis even during the rally on our own behalf and our individual goals. [A committee] is a great idea, but it’s difficult to get everyone to the table.”
The events of the past week may lead to better future organization of the rallies.
“I think we all need to work together collectively and for some reason that hasn’t happened,” Couch said. “I think these events with what’s going on provide us an opportunity to all sit down and talk and hopefully now we can all get on the same page and move forward so we can plan for these rallies and bring tourism here to the beach.”
The July rally organizers hope coronavirus restrictions are lifted in time to give bikers an opportunity to work a few weeks before coming to the beach, and realize weather conditions won’t be ideal.
“It’s hot in July, but there are rallies is Sturgis (South Dakota), one of the hottest cities period to have a bike rally, Arizona, Galveston, Texas,” Heinzmann said. “Those are all hot, but people deal with it and people enjoy themselves.
“Doubling down on the fall rally could be a bigger gamble than July. We could have a hurricane then we’re not going to have anyone here to come to a fall rally.”
A downturn
The rallies haven’t been as well attended in recent years as they once were. Copeland, who said he has been involved in the rallies for four decades, unscientifically estimates the spring rally peaked at about 350,000 attendees in the early- to mid-2000s and now attracts about half of that total.
The rallies took a hit when the city of Myrtle Beach enacted laws in 2009 to deter them, including helmet, noise and loitering ordinances – the helmet ordinance was ruled invalid by the South Carolina Supreme Court in 2010 because it contradicted state law, which only requires helmets for riders under 21. Broadway at the Beach once hosted vendors prior to the laws, but bikers have largely congregated north or south of the city limits since 2009.
Copeland said a decrease in vendor permits allotted by Horry County also led to a drop in attendance.
Schoonover estimates the spring rally now has 50 percent or fewer vendors compared to 15 years ago, when bikers had participating bars or vendor locations at which to stop about every 10 miles up and down the Strand. He said he peaked with 52 vendors on his dealership property, located south of Myrtle Beach on U.S. 17 Business.
“We just don’t have the customers we once had. Our clientele has gotten older,” Schoonover said. “Motorcycling in general, the patrons have declined, the vendors have declined. Bike sales are down. Even Daytona didn’t have the crowd this spring they had last year.”
But the rallies are still among the biggest tourism events of the year on the Strand. “Bike week has been something that has been special,” Copeland said.
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach spring motorcycle rally not burned out yet: Organizers reschedule in summer."
