Myrtle Beach’s Most Historic City Block

If you are strolling on the boardwalk or are cruising along North Ocean Boulevard, when you reach the stretch between 8^th and 9^th Avenues North, you have found yourself in the middle of arguably the most historic city block in Myrtle Beach. Once the home of the beloved Myrtle Beach Pavilion, it’s now featured in world-class competitions and musical performances that are broadcast all over the planet.

The World’s Strongest Man (WSM) franchise took Myrtle Beach by storm with its inaugural competition headquartered within this historic block in April of 2023.  What was a little-known sports event in these parts was anything but that around the world.  The year before, the competition had been aired in almost 500 million households in nearly 70 countries.  According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, “…it’s in the top eight sport franchises on Facebook ahead of ATP tennis, the NHL and has gained more followers [just recently than Formula One Racing].” 

For more than forty-years, a Christmas tradition in England has been the viewing of the WSM.  In the same way that my family and I watch the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV every year, our friends across the pond watch the World’s Strongest Man competition at Christmas.  In the four decades of viewership, it has been seen on Christmas, Boxing Day (December 26) or the day after.

American viewership is catching up, just not at the holidays.  Myrtle Beach was featured from May to July following the event, on CBS, CBS Sports Network and Paramount+.  The US has become one of the biggest television markets for the WSM.  When CBS found that broadcasting the competition throughout the summer worked best for their scheduling, they influenced the annual event that was usually held in September to be moved to April to accommodate the summer broadcasts.

However, droves of fans wanted to witness these history-making competitions in person.  Fans came in by the thousands from around the globe.  WSM organizers claimed that it was the biggest crowd that they have had for a first-time host.  In fact, there were a lot more attendees than even the long-time organizers had expected.  Bleachers were provided to view the events, but they weren’t enough. Overflow crowds squeezed in wherever they might catch a glimpse of these unparallelled tests of strength. 

But a wave of enterprising spectators who couldn’t see in the back took matters into their own hands.  All of a sudden, our local big box hardware stores started selling out of tall step ladders.  Fans were buying them up and using them as innovative elevated seating so as not to miss a thing. 

The annual event, referred to by some as the Olympics of Strength, is held in different locations each year as decided by the WSM council.  From California to Botswana, you never know where it’s going to be staged.  It was a real coup by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce to get them to come here.  “Visit Myrtle Beach South Carolina” was displayed prominently on banners around the outdoor arena where beach volleyball nets are usually set up for much of the year. 

Then, in another coup, Myrtle Beach was named host again for 2024, in only its second year!  For more information, click here (https://www.visitmyrtlebeach.com/events-calendar/worlds-strongest-man-competition-0).  Additional seating is already being made available.

The muscle men of May will then make way for the country music stars of June when the main stage of the Carolina Country Music Festival (CCMF) is set up where the colorfully named competitions such as Fingal’s Fingers, Atlas Stone and Reign Shield Carry were recently held.  Myrtle Beach didn’t really know what to think about this country music festival at first, but it has certainly found its way to the top of the list of the best anywhere.  The Academy of Country Music named the CCMF among the top seven in the world in 2023, and the top five in the US the year before. 

We had had music festival attempts in the past with 1976’s Grand Strand Music Fair headlined by B.J. Thomas and featuring comedian Bob Hope.  And there was 1981’s Coastal Country Jamboree with Dolly Parton, Conway Twitty, and an up-and-coming band called Alabama.  For two days, festival goers could enjoy nearly 40 country music acts of varying degrees of celebrity.  Neither event ever made it to their second year, but the Bluegrass Festival held each Thanksgiving weekend at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019. 

The CCMF has been picking up momentum since its start in 2015, and now it sells out nearly a year in advance.  The biggest stars grace that main stage:  Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan, Keith Urban.  In 2023, we had our first lady headliner, Miranda Lambert.  She’s followed by Carrie Underwood in 2024. 

These are wonderful events that have brought a whole new life to a city block that used to be almost entirely filled by the beloved Myrtle Beach Pavilion.  But that one that stood along the shore from 1948 to 2006, was not the first.  Its predecessor, made entirely of wood, burned down just after Christmas in 1944.

Prior to its demise, airmen from the US Army Air Corps Airfield, located where The Market Common is now, would join the tourists and locals there during WWII to enjoy the arcade and dance the nights away to live music.  They would also go next door to The Bowery that opened in 1944, along with Peaches Corner and the Fun Plaza next door to that.  Those three venues are still welcoming customers today. 

In fact, that up-and-coming band from the Coastal Country Jamboree in 1981, was the house band for The Bowery from 1973 until 1980, when they hit it big.  In 2019, they performed at the CCMF as the Country Music Hall of Fame legends that they had become.  Forty number one hits and countless awards had replaced the tips and beer that they had worked so hard for in those early days. 

On the other end of the block, there is another adjacent establishment of note, The 8^th Avenue Tiki Bar.  In 2014, the cast and crew finished the last scene on the boardwalk of Warners Bros.’ second film to be made in Myrtle Beach, Magic Mike XXL.  The first of their movies was released in 1994, Chasers. 

While the scene was shot north of where the Pavilion had been, the wrap party for the film was held on the south side of the historic block at 8^th Avenue Tiki Bar.  Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Amber Heard, Jada Pinkett Smith and the rest just meandered down the boardwalk to the party when the last of the filming was over.  A few days before, the stars had come into town, in character, driving a convertible Rolls Royce.  Extras were dressed in red, white and blue as they portrayed 4^th of July parade spectators in their shorts and t-shirts…and goosebumps.  It was shot in November. 

But before that, in the fall of 1990, the Pavilion had been transformed by Disney into the Atlantic Steel Pier of the 1930s for Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.  The films' stars were just starting and ending their careers, respectively, with that one movie.  Gabrielle Anwar hadn’t yet done that memorable scene in Scent of a Woman where Al Pacino and she did the tango. 

Meanwhile, her leading man in Wild Hearts, Michael Schoeffling, had achieved heartthrob status in 1984 when he portrayed the perfect boyfriend, Jake Ryan, in Sixteen Candles.  He played in a string of other films where he was cast as the heartthrob in all of them until he finally decided to give it up to return to his native Pennsylvania to raise his family and handcraft furniture.  Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken was his last movie.