The jacking up of fees for less is definitely NOT cost effective (especially with the current economy) or good incentive for vendors to participate in keeping the rally alive, even if they want to.

Thanks for the eye-opening info. Wish things were different.

We are really sorry about Myrtle Beach, It took 68 years to get this rally to where it is. We are a vendor and this has been a hard hit. It was bad enough when the city of Myrtle Beach prohibited the event but now Horry County is jumping on the band wagon. They are not stopping it, but they want to charge us $1500 for a permit that we paid $800 for last year and they will only allow us to vend for 5 days when we were able to vend for 10 days last year. (They are charging us almost twice as much for half the time.) They are also requiring vendors to spread out more. It is not cost effective for us to keep this in our rally schedule and, to me, it is the end of a tradition.

This link may be a little better:
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/122/story/752152.html

Perhaps not dead but close enough for us!

I did go onto the 2009 Bike Week blog (http://tinyurl.com/bty4z5) looking for info regarding permits for vendors. Essentially, they’re having a hearing about it on February 3, but currently nothing has been finalized in conjunction with events taking place in Horry County.

Perhaps it seems like a futile effort to attempt to forge ahead with the rally, especially when so many in the biker community have a bad taste when it’s obvious that the City of Myrtle Beach went to such lengths to kill it. But you can’t blame them for trying.

Check it out:
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/blogs/blog.htm?bid=55&headerTitle=Biker%20Biz%20-%20Citizen%20Blog