New Historic Broadway Street Festival Announced
By TBone Terry
Mr. Fish (Ted Hammerman) and TBone Terry enjoy the 30 degree perfect oyster weather at the first annual Mr. Fish Oyster Festival benefitting the Surfrider Foundation last Sunday at the train station. Proceeds will benefit the many environmental projects that Surfriders provide including the cleaning up and reseeding of oyster beds at Withers Swash.
The biggest buzz around Myrtle Beach comes from Historic Downtown Broadway Street. The merchants of Broadway have come together under the leadership of attorney Angie Knight and others and formed the Historic Broadway Merchant’s Association. From its grass roots, an idea for a street festival was born and Karen Houck, the proprietor of the Broadway Gourmet Cafe, was selected to chair the event. In addition to being a gourmet chef, Karen is also a paralegal and once worked for the governor of Maryland. When she decided to relocate to Myrtle Beach, she chose Withers Swash to live and Broadway Street to locate her business. She is passionate about the history of Broadway Street and is a natural to chair this event.
The festival date is set for April 24 - 25. It will be called the “Historic Broadway Street Festival” and will incorporate food, music, the visual and performing arts. It will be a family festival with children getting involved in the arts. Plans are to block off Broadway from 4th Avenue to 6th Avenue and place a large stage in the middle of 5th Avenue and Broadway where bands, musicians, dancers, actors, mimes and others will perform continuously from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. It will be promoted as a destination festival where the locals can mix with tourists in fun, fellowship and harmony. It will be modeled after the Fall for Greenville street festival in Greenville, S.C.
The festival has verbal commitments from food vendors in the categories of seafood, ethnic foods, hot dogs and hamburgers, Chinese food, Mexican food, pizza, wings, barbecue, ice cream, pastries and desserts. The chairman of the food committee is Mike Safa, formerly with the Ali Baba restaurant on the Boulevard and now with Habibis Middle Eastern food mart and restaurant on 501 across from the Freestyle Music Park.
Mike has extensive experience with outdoor festivals, including the famous San Genaro Italian Festival in New York City.
The art festival will be chaired by internationally acclaimed artist Bill Strydesky, formerly of the GIFU Art Exchange in Conway. Bill promises at least thirty artists will be painting, drawing and exhibiting their arts under tents at the festival. There will be several plein air artists with their easels on site capturing the gaiety of the festival.
Art patron Joey Skipper, a musician with the Strike-O-Matics (R) endears himself to artist Blair Browning by purchasing a piece of her art for more than her asking price. Joey knows the plight of starving artists and was very generous with his purchase.
The festival will also reach out to the performing artists, including dance, theater and music. The music will cover the range from symphonic strings to Cajun Zydeco to Caribbean steel drums to a variety of live bands. There will be ballet dancers, cloggers, tap dancers and Broadway review. There will be clowns, mimes, stilt walkers, face painters, off Broadway skits and tons of entertainers.
The festival plans to incorporate environmental groups such as the Surfrider’s Foundation, the Global Awareness Project and others into the event. The Surfriders Foundation has accepted the challenge to work with the City of Myrtle Beach, DHEC and others to clean up Wither’s Swash, reseed the oyster beds and bring the swash back to health again. God bless them.
Mark your calendars now for April 24 and 25. If you would like to get involved, email the author at Coastmagazine1@aol.com. There will be an update in this column every issue. Stay tuned for more information.
