Daytona Beach: The Craziest City in America

For most of the year, Daytona Beach is a quiet US seaside resort. But every spring, it becomes the craziest city in America.

There is, of course, the famous car race, the biggest sporting event after the Super Bowl. A few weeks later, there’s also the huge Bike Week, the largest gathering of motorcyclists on the planet, with all the excesses that go with it. Beer, sex, and big engines.

The noise of the engines has barely faded away when students arrive from all over the country for the annual college cheerleading championship, the most spectacular in the world. Not to mention the nearby air park in Spruce Creek, a village of 4,000 souls who mainly get around in their planes, parked in the garages attached to their villas, and who gather every Friday evening to perform aerial acrobatics in the Florida sky.

On land or in the air, in Daytona Beach in the spring, madness and extravagance are everywhere.