Route 17, Myrtle Beach

Travel magazine articles recommending spring break destinations came out when it was still mid-January. I came across Myrtle Beach from Condé Nast, and when I asked an East Coast–raised American friend, they also said Myrtle Beach as the first place that came to mind — so I got the endorsement! The reason I wanted to write something after my trip is that Myrtle Beach turned out to be very different from what I originally expected. I checked images on Google and some on social media, and I thought the vibe of the city or the beach could be as bad as Virginia Beach or as good as Florida, kind of depending on weather. But I think it’s still very different from both, and yet, how is nobody posting photos or telling stories about the larger area?

The thing is U.S. Route 17. With downtown Myrtle Beach (or the Boardwalk) as the center, we stayed at The Dunes and went as far north as Calabash, NC, and as far south as Brookgreen Gardens. It feels like a much, much larger Disney World, or some other kind of theme park, linearly flattened out along Route 17.

Both sides of the highway are lined with mini golf courses themed like actual theme parks — giant dinosaurs, pirate ships, volcanoes, pyramids, tropical jungles, and a King Kong clinging to the Hollywood Wax Museum. It’s wild and almost psychedelic. Then there are the huge regional chain beachwear / souvenir shops: Tsunami, Pacific, Bargain Beachwear, ‘I Love Sugar’ candy stores, and on and on and on. And then the very, very American streetscape: McDonald’s, Wendy’s, plaza after plaza, pylon signs, and endless rotation of local tourist restaurants, seafood buffets, and pancake houses. You cannot unsee them.

My first thought was, oh, this is way too American-American. This is how America is. But you know, you don’t actually see this everywhere, it’s just the very typical scene of America. Like the one you get when you search “Breezewood, PA” on Google Images, or Stephen Shore’s photo of Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue in LA. It also gives me a Las Vegas vibe, though I know this is far more East Coast than Vegas out in the Southwest desert.

It’s not like this is my first American road trip — this is actually my 42nd state. I’m shocked not because I’ve never seen funny roadside signs before. I’m still shocked because they are very shocking.

In the year 2026, how could I not chat about this with Claude and Gemini? And I got some more appropriate terms: “strip,” “roadside attractions,” and “commercial corridor.” It’s a space entirely shaped by car culture, consumerism, and the tourism economy. There’s no “urban planning aesthetic” to speak of, but it has its own kind of chaotic energy. There are database website (https://www.roadsideamerica.com), artists’ photobooks, and then there’s Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas — the commercial strip itself is a form of architectural language and cultural expression.

I also had brunch at two pretty famous tourist spots (Blueberry’s Grill and Johnny D’s Waffles and Benedicts), and both servers had European accents. I could tell they weren’t Latin American or Arabic. It turns out that Myrtle Beach does have a lot of young people from Eastern Europe, most likely on J-1 visas through the Summer Work Travel Program. Mid-March isn’t peak season though, so some of them may have longer visa terms, or might be residents have already settled locally. It’s probably similar logic to how Latin labor is in other regions, different places end up building different labor pipelines, and Myrtle Beach happens to be tightly connected to the Eastern European one.

I can’t fully articulate this, but I had a bit of concern about being visibly Asian in South Carolina. It’s the only state where I have two American girl friends who were raised there and one Asian girl friend who went to school there — and all three moved out because they say it’s very conservative. So walking into a restaurant where mostly everyone is very white and speaking with thick Southern accents felt like something. But weirdly, running into all those Eastern European young people made me feel a little more comfortable? Like, the place already has this built-in layer of foreignness.

That said, when I browsed the airport magazine shelf on my way home and saw two National Geographic special issues, one was Jesus and the Origins of Christianity and the other was The Story of Mary: From the Biblical World to Today… yeah. South Carolina. Haha.