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Headline Surfer photo by Henry Frederick / A stream of cars heads east on Main Street in what is supposed to be biker-heavy on Thursday night, the opening of the four-day Biketoberfest motorcycle rally that hasbeen dubbed for years as attracting 100,000 bikers, this year included.
DAYTONA BEACH -- The four-day weekend Biketoberfest was remarkable for three things: There were no biker-related traffic fatalities, a retired professional wrestler from Tampa shot himself to death while visiting here for the motorcycle rally and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan chose the World's Most Famous Beach to hold a rally of their own because they knew a lot of people would be here.
But even more remarkable is the media-hyped 100,000 bikers predicted in advance and the same figure attributed before the final day had even concluded
They knew there would be a hundred thousand before the event even started. Some media outlets put the figure at 125,000 bikers. And even before the close of Sunday, the reference to 100,000 bikers still applied. It's a selling point. How can you fit 100,000 bikers over a four-day period in basically three locales: Main Street in Daytona and Destination Daytona and the Iron Horse, both in greater Ormond Beach.
The other phanton figure is the much larger Bike Week in late February-early March, which has had the attached figure of 500,000 bikers and occasionally a hundred thousand more than that. Now I'm no expert on numbers, but I've been on the biker scene from 1996 through this year's two rallies. The only exceptions were in 2005 and '06, when I was working in Massachusetts as a city editor at a small daily newspapr and flying back and forth as many weekennds as possible to my former home in Port Orange.
During the 1990s, an argument could be made for the higher numbers, but even then, a half milion bikers would be like three Daytona 500s or filling Raymond James Stadium where the Tampa Bay Buccanners play an NFL football stadium 10 times over.
To generate 100,000 bikers, Main Street in Daytona would have to be jam pcked around the clock with a continuous flow. But for the most part, bikers here put the kick stand down and hang out either inside the bigger bars like The Boot Hill Sallon or Froggy's or the outdoor venue at the Main Street Station. They come for the beer, the live music of rock bands and to see the scantily-clad tub beer chics with large fake boobs.
I was on Main Street Thursday night and there were nearly as many four-wheeled vehicles as there were the motorcycles and trikes. On Friday and Saturday, the volume was ratheted up by mid-afternnon Sunday, there were only a few scragglers heading out.
A general google search as shown at left with key words "Biketoberfest," for the event, "2012" for the year and "100,000" for the oft-quoted number of motorcycles shows quite a few media outlets using the same number without backing up the figure.
So, if you throw out Thursday and Sunday, that means most of the so-called 100,000 bikers were here? Regardless, that didn't stop local print mdia from sticking with the 100K figure, well before Sunday ended.
At 6:52 p.m., The Daytona Beach News-Journal posted a story headlined "Biketoberfest wraps up," with a subhead, "Some businesses say crowds were larger."
The newspaper quoted Rosita Myara, the owner of the Cruisin' Cafe, a Main Street bar as saying, "It looks like the numbers are up." Then the News-Journal added: Like many business owners, Myara said she was grateful for the estimated 100,000 bikers in town. "Otherwise, the streets would be empty," she said.
She's absolutely right about last year and the year before that, too. The bikers are noot immune to the bad economy and local merchants in the Daytona aea have for years counted on Biketoberfest to give them a shot in the arm before the special events season kicks into high gear with Speed Weeks, and its signature race, the Daytona 500, followed by the 10-day Bike Week, the thinned-down Spring Break and then the July 4 weekend race at Daytonsa International Speedway under the lights -- the Coke Zero 400.
Some merchants are clamouring for a 10-day Biketoberfest. The potential for growth is there and tourism officials have put off a decision on that for now. Before any expansion takes place, there needs to be an updated assessment with real numbers and not the same old 100,000 bikers for Biketoberfest and 500,000 for Bike Week, unless those figures can be supported by real data.
I love the biker events and the excitement of seeing the bikes return twice a year. I also love the Daytona 500 and the other NASCAR races, which is what drew me here in the first place from the Northeast 16 years ago.
Racing and the beach are by far our greatest draws. The biker events are still strong, but the marketing numbers need to be adjusted to be realistic before selling the public on an expanded Biketoberfest.
We have seen Spring Break dwindle considerably from a decade ago. And gone forever are the Big '80s and MTV parties on the beach.
Daytona still struggles with trying to figure out what it is and how it sells itself to the rest of the world. We've gotthe beach, we've the Daytona 500 and we've got Bike Week, which rebounded quite nicely this year from the last couple of years, but hardly in the range of half a million bikers and certainly not 100,000 for the condensed event.
The 100,000 biker figure sounds very sexy for a Romney-Ryan visit and for sebsational headlines when a former professioal wrestler kills himself in such a gory fashion, but is that big, fat round number real?