Complaints about shooting and violence are nothing new in downtown Myrtle Beach. In 2017, a shooting on Ocean Boulevard on Father’s Day injured six people and brought much attention to Myrtle Beach because a tourist happened to livestream the incident on Facebook.
In 2018, an off-duty employee of RidTydz on North Ocean Boulevard was shot inside the establishment and died. A lawsuit filed by the man’s family said that the popular tourist spot “was becoming known as a problem area for increasing incidents of violence, shootings and murders to the extent that Myrtle Beach had been infamously nicknamed ‘Murder Beach.’”
In 2020, then-Myrtle Beach City Councilman John Krajc told ABC 15 News that the violence had to end. “If we stop making ourselves the ‘discount beach,’ over time that culture can change,” he said. “We have to remember this is Myrtle Beach, not ‘Murder Beach,’ not ‘Dirty Myrtle.’” …
[The mayor complained about] “hotels who choose not to clean themselves up, and offer rooms at $40-$45 a night” and businesses along Ocean Boulevard that cater to the wrong crowd by selling “graphic” T-shirts, drug paraphernalia and “things that are not welcoming to families.”
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Murder Beach isn’t working class; it’s sub-proletarian. It’s dirt cheap, ugly, porny, druggy, boozy, gunny. Its clubs are loud, extremely gross, and feature really cheap alcohol. Outside the clubs, squatted trucks and hordes of motorbikes screech by. “The last time I was in Myrtle my Uber driver had a gun between his knees because he was worried about getting robbed again.”
And Myrtle Beach is wall to wall gun ranges, so don’t forget your own guns!
All wrapped up in South Carolina itself, Murdaughville!
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I mean, yeah, this might appeal to a few… non-standard… families, but I’m thinking all of that plus a pretty constant atmosphere of menace on the main thoroughfares – deepened by a huge police presence – doesn’t exactly broadcast safe family fun. I mean hey why do they need battalions of officers? Aren’t we supposed to be having a relaxed carefree sort of experience?
Any family with the means to vacation someplace better than Myrtle Beach should certainly be expected to do that. Your chance of getting shot might not be great, but you can count on feeling menaced and cheapened by the setting.
And of course everyone says that thing about changing the culture, but there’s real big piles of real big money behind the purulence, and the business owners making all that money aren’t about to fuck with their model.
