Biketoberfest part II, where did it happen?
Back several years ago, Bruce Rossmeyer, owner of the local Daytona Harley-Davidson dealership decided to leave his present location on Beach Street in Daytona Beach and build a motorcycle mega-complex to be called Destination Daytona. This complex would not only be home to the world’s largest Harley motorcycle showroom, it would also anchor dozens of shops, restaurants, hotel and a condominium.
Construction of Destination Daytona fell behind and the opening day kept being moved forward in hopes of opening the doors during Bike Week or Biketoberfest. Here I am standing in front of the new dealership while still under construction.
The plans were clear as we toured the inside of the construction site near the escalator that goes up to the second floor showroom. Since this picture was taken, literally thousands of visitors have rode this escalator.
Today, Destination Daytona draws thousands of motorcycle enthusiast through the doors during the major events. The complex is still growing with new extensions and businesses being added on all the while.
Of course these photographs were taken just after the opening of Destination Daytona. Taking the time to get a picture like above during a motorcycle event would be nearly impossible.
J & P Cycles recently opened a brand new store at Destination Daytona in Ormond Beach and held a grand opening during Biketoberfest. The new J & P cycles store buzzed with visitors checking out the displays inside and out.
Arlen Ness Motorcycles moved their location from Beach Street to inside the Destination Daytona complex as well. Arlen Ness has made several guest appearances like when he cruised in during Bike Week last year. Corbin just opened the doors of their new store only a few minutes from this area. Add to all this the popular Ormond Beach biker hang outs like The Iron Horse, Broken Spoke, Battlegrounds and Boot Hill Saloon! The north side of the Daytona, Volusia County area has taken over what used to be concentrated to the Main Street and Beach Street park. Biketoberfest and Bike Week has expanded, but the new north area seems to have rapidly gained in popularity.
Now I believe that Main Street downtown Daytona Beach will always attract a certain amount of visitors and traffic. After all, it is still the place to see and be seen until the north side comes up with some sort of a strip that bikers can cruise and visitors can shop and grab some food and drink. But to me and many of the Main Street vendors, the crowd is thinning every year.
As I have mentioned a few times before though, I always stop by the Krystal Hamburger to grab a sack of burgers. We caught this limousine pulling through to get some food before heading back out on International Speedway Drive. I was glad to see that it was only the driver getting some hamburgers, or we may have been held up for hours!
One of the other main attractions during Biketoberfest and Bike Week will always be the world famous women’s coleslaw wrestling at the Cabbage Patch Bar in Samsula, Florida. The weather played a little bit of a factor again this year with partly cloudy skies and threats of thunder storms, but the clouds cleared and the coleslaw wrestling went on as scheduled.
This golf cart had a live streaming web cam mounted on it. There were 3 live web cameras set up at the cabbage patch during Biketoberfest so that the entire event could be watched at home on your computer. I talked with the man that was running this operation and found out some very interesting statistics on what it takes to handle a set up like this.
Some 385 feet of CAT 5 cable had to be run out from this RV that was parked in the lot next door camping area. The RV was used to power the unit as well as provide an office for the computers that served the live video feed.
Here you can see the trailer behind the RV that holds the cable when rolled in and the satellite dish for communications to the main live video server to the internet. If you missed the opportunity to view these feeds, I hope that they will be available next year so that you can check them out. You can see that a lot of work goes into setting up the live Biketoberfest web cams. All this was made possible by SVCLIVE web casting productions. This may all sound a little geek to you, but now you can see what it takes to bring live video from a motorcycle event to your home computer or laptop.
I will close this year’s thoughts about Biketoberfest with a few pictures that we took of interesting body decorations, Ink and Tattoo. Cindi snapped this picture of a motorcycle passenger who spent plenty of time with a tattoo artist decorating her body.
I saw this girl and her boyfriend walking around at the cabbage patch bar and asked her to pose for a shot of her very colorful ink work.
I think she had a tattoo.
I have heard many say that they prefer Biketoberfest over Bike Week because of the lessor amount of people. This year the even pretty much held true for that. The only real problem is the heavy traffic and small amount of parking available on the the north side, but I am sure they are working on a solution for that. Still, your best bet is to arrive early and plan ahead where you want to go. My apologies to all those who looked for us to be out on the loop this year, as we did not shoot out there. Sunday was our only open day and the weather said it was time to head home.
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