Globe Corner Blogs

Most people who grow up in tourist hot spots will tell you that along with insider tips on the best seafood buffet (the Calabash joint on Kings Highway South), comes a general sense of superiority over the outsiders who flock to vacation in your hometown. You roll your eyes at all their pale, northern skin; you laugh at the Canadians from places with strange sounding names like Ontario and Quebec, who come down to sunbathe in February; you immediately look at a car’s license plate if it commits a traffic offense, knowing-even before you visually confirm- that the driver is one of them. A tourist. A rubbernecker. Often a Yankee.

So it is a little strange when I return to Myrtle Beach every year to visit my family. I have been away for about ten years, and I am no longer a local. The license tag on my car is not from South Carolina. I have lost my perennial tan. I own snow boots…

Myrtle Beach is a much bigger place now than when I grew up there, not the sleepy small town I remember. The New York Times recently named it one of their “31 Places to Go This Summer.” The city has torn down the oceanfront Pavillion where my grandparents would go on dates and have replaced it with Hard Rock Park, a rock ‘n roll theme park complete with a Led Zeppelin rollercoaster. Admission is fifty dollars, and it overlooks a strip mall and the highway. “How in the world (pronounced “whirled”) are families goan afford that?” asks my grandmother, a lifelong resident.

A lot has changed, but the actual beach, the original tourist attraction, has not. It is still just as beautiful- the sand still as soft and the ocean still as gray and vast. And that still feels like home.

Read more: South Carolina, South US, Touring with the Parents, Travel


Nicole -- Nicole hails from metropolian Conway, South Carolina. While she's not busy doing Southern things like eating biscuits and heavily buttered grits (often together), she likes to travel to other countries and eat their food. Her favorite exotic treats include: Icelandic Skyr, South Indian dosa, British Jaffa Cakes, and Austrian strudel.

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