Betty Boop got popped by the cops at Daytona Bike Week.
“Sparky Betty Boop,” aka Barbara Spurlock of Ormond Beach, wasn’t too happy.
The 80-year-old Spurlock was revving the engine on her Betty Boop-themed motorcycle on Main Street when a Daytona Beach Police officer stopped her and waved her off to a side road.
Revving the engine is one of the things police frowned upon from the parade of bikers cruising Main Street on Friday, Feb. 27, the first official day of the 85th annual Daytona Bike Week.
The rain held off for much of the day before the drops started falling around 4:30 p.m.
After officers had a word with Spurlock, they let her go with a warning.
“He said he warned me that I revved my pipes and I didn’t hear him warn me up there,” Spurlock said, “so he’s going to let it go and then when I did it again, they could take me to jail and confiscate my bike for revving my pipes.”
She has been riding for more than two decades. She said she used to be paid to ride representing Betty Boop.
“I ride on my own now,” she said.
Spurlock said a particular Daytona Beach police officer keeps an eye on her every year.
“I will say I’m kind of a revver. That’s what people like, so I wave at them and I rev the motor. I did not see him,” Spurlock said. “He makes sure that he stays on my butt every year.”
Iron Woman biker rides in for Daytona Bike Week
Sparky Betty Boop wasn’t the only celebrity-themed person. There was also Becky da Cosplay Biker Chick, a Daytona Beach influencer who wore an Iron Man outfit complete with mask and long teal and white tresses.
She said Iron Man is her newest helmet, but she has others like Venom and Darth Vader. She attracted a crowd when she parked her sport bike. People gathered around to take photos and videos of her with a man in a Transformers’ costume.
Victor Hernandez, her manager, says she has more than 50,000 followers and growing on social media, including Instagram and TikTok, and gets invited to many events.
Another person drawing attention on Main Street was Lakeland resident Jerome Kelly, who goes by “Biker Roshi” on social media. Kelly rode in on a customized 2009 Kawasaki ZX14 which was decked out as a show bike and hand- and spray-painted by Chris Crews Artistry in DeLand in the theme of Dragon Ball.
“Pretty much all the main characters from Dragon Ball,” Kelly said.
He said the paint job alone cost more than $9,000.
Kelly has also installed speakers on the bike and plans to add an amp so he can start doing sound competitions.
Daytona Bike Week bikers get Bibles
Joan Nicolette from Murrysville, Pennsylvania, wasn’t cranking the throttle on a motorcycle. She was revving up the Word of God as part of a biker ministry by handing out Biker Bibles.
“We’ve had a good response from them, people are nice, bikers are great,” Nicolette said.
She was standing on the sidewalk handing out the Bibles. Above her on the second-floor of a bar could have been a gateway to sin as bikers drank and a scantily-clad server worked.
Nicolette said a team of about a dozen people expected to be in town probably through Wednesday to hand out about 3,000 Bibles.
Nicolette said the biker Bibles have a story called “The Last Ride” to remind people to be ready to take that trip to heaven.
“We know anytime we get on that bike it could be our last ride, anything could happen,” Nicolette said. “It’s very important to know that Jesus died for our sins, rose again.”
Many people were just sitting by the sidewalk at some of the bars and taking in the start of Bike Week. One such person was Doug Cain of Daytona Beach. He was at Main Street Station drinking a beer and watching the people and bikers pass by. He said he has been coming to Bike Week since the ’90s when the scene was rougher and the women were sometimes topless.
“It’s a lot more calm than it was,” Cain said. “You don’t have the biker gangs you used to have in the ’90s. Every once in a while you see one. There’s a greater police presence.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Betty Boop busted as Daytona Bike Week officially starts
Reporting by Frank Fernandez, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
