Black Bike Week

Black Bike Week
A custom Suzuki Hayabusa at Black Bike Week
Genre	Motorcycle rally
Date(s)	The weekend of Memorial Day weekend
Frequency	Annual
Location(s)	Greater Grand Strand, South Carolina
Years active	36
Inaugurated	1980
Participants	350,000

Black Bike Week, also called Atlantic Beach Bikefest and Black Bikers Week, is an annual motorcycle rally in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area, held on Memorial Day weekend. It is also sometimes called Black Fill-in-the-Blank Week, because it has evolved to attract many non-motorcycling visitors who come for music, socializing and enjoying the beach. Events include motorcycle racing, concerts, parties, and street festivals. Called a "one-of-a-kind event" and "an exhibitionist's paradise" by Jeffrey Gettleman, Black Bike Week is "all about riding, styling and profiling," in the words of Mayor Irene Armstrong of Atlantic Beach, South Carolina.

It is the largest African American motorcycle rally in the US. Attendance has been variously reported as 350,000, 375,000, and as high as 400,000. It is considered the third or fourth largest motorcycle rally in the United States. Around 10–15 percent of motorcyclists in the US are women, while at major African American motorcycle rallies, such as Black Bike Week or the National Bikers Roundup, women make up close to half of participants.

From 1940 until 2008, Myrtle Beach had also hosted a predominantly white motorcycle rally, called Harley-Davidson Week, also called the spring Carolina Harley-Davidson Dealer's Association (CHDDA) Rally. The two rallies have run back-to-back in the past, and some have charged city government and local businesses with racial discrimination because of different treatment towards the black rally, citing different traffic rules and levels of policing. In 2002 Black Bike week had 375,000 attendees, versus 200,000 for Harley-Davidson Week of the same year.

The city of Myrtle Beach has used new ordinances to push the 2009 and 2010 motorcycle events, both black and white, out of the city, where they have been welcomed by other municipalities and businesses, and bikers still came in spite of the official efforts to discourage them. After the 2010 motorcycle events the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the Myrtle Beach city ordinance requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets, and 4 other ordinances.