Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Situated in north-east South Carolina in Horry County (the H is silent.. it's not pronounced Whore-y as some people may try to tell you).

The second-most popular travel destination by car in the United States (the first being Disney World), which explains our irritating holiday and summer traffic. Believe it or not, there is nothing to do here for locals. Nothing. Yes, it is the home of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, a crappy minor league baseball team, and there is a House of Blues that has some semi-mediocre bands that stop by every now and then, but other than that, you are in the middle of a disconnected, disfuncitonal city that is impossible to get around.

Is the location of several traffic fatalities (estimated to have around 89 in 2000), not the kind of place you want to raise a family, drunk drivers racing up and down the Atlantic coast. Technologically impaired. And for some God-awful reason, is known for its hotels at night, which have flourescent pink lights highlighting them, a great sight for drunks.

Perhaps someone can post the converse writeup with a more optimistic view.

See Also: HELL

The only reason to dislike Myrtle Beach is if you yearn for a refined, cosmopolitan Yankee lifestyle, working at a dot com and going to Europe on your vacations. If, on the other hand, your ideal lifestyle involves golf, the ocean, big-name concerts every other week, a different nightclub every night, and/or the best fried seafood on the planet, then the Grand Strand is where you oughta be.

Everyone from the South knows about Myrtle Beach. If you graduate from a high school anywhere between Jacksonville, Florida and Washington, DC, you're more or less expected to spend a week getting drunk, high, and/or laid on the Strip. No matter who you are, you can find a party in this town. One club, The Attic, is exclusively for people under 21. If you're actually of legal age, then your options for getting blissfully wasted and throwing up in front of the Gay Dolphin (a famous gift shop unrelated to homosexual water mammals) are practically infinite.

Then there's the golfing, for the more mature crowd. Even if you hate golf, you will quickly discover that Myrtle Beach has golf like Australia has sheep, ranging from spectacular pro courses to night-lit par 3's to intricate miniature golf courses (Mayday Golf being the coolest).

The beach itself is nice. Unlike my native sunning ground, South Florida, Myrtle's beach has been carefully protected from high-rise development and the accompanying erosion, so it's wide enough to land a space shuttle on, assuming you can scare all the rednecks and belles away first. Of course, like any popular beach, there's oil and tar and feces in the water, but you won't care about this when you see the gorgeously-ratioed half-naked males and females on every side of you.

There's good entertainment in the Beach, too. This summer, you could see Snoop Dogg, Weird Al Yankovic, the Chairmen of the Board, Travis Tritt, or Audioslave at the House of Blues, depending on when you visited. There are also a gazillion stage shows to see, including a Riverdance knockoff called Spirit of the Dance, and Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain-inspired Dixie Stampede (aka "eat to the smell of manure").

You have to be in a certain state of mind to enjoy all this, and that state of mind can be easily achieved with a little bit of beer or poontang. Of course, if you have neither, you might produce a writeup like the one above. Selah.