Here's the online version I think.
<a href='http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/travel/15049678.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/liv...el/15049678.htm</a>
Here's the text if you don't have access:
Where we were young, foolish and happy
Myrtle Beach's Pavilion closes this fall after 58 years, but the memories will last generations
JOHN BORDSEN
Travel Editor
Where we were young, foolish and happy Myrtle Beach's Pavilion closes this fall after 58 years, but the memories will last generations "Farewell Season" events at the Myrtle Beach Pavilion include:
John Bordsen
hink of a great tune celebrating summer fun and romance -- one with a line about everything ending in September.
Add the plink of pinball bells and the bark of carnies; wrap it in a humid sea breeze spiced with car exhaust and the steam of funnel cakes.
For thousands in the Carolinas, what comes to mind is pouring tokens into Skee Ball at the arcade. Looking for romance at the just-teens club. Hanging onto your wallet, friends and lunch on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the amusement park across Ocean Boulevard. It's all at the Myrtle Beach Pavilion.
And it all ends Sept. 30, when the 11-acre site, a tourist tradition for 58 years, closes for good.
Reactions to the announcement range from outrage to wistful resignation. More than 13,000 fans have signed an online petition, which decries the closing and asks that if nothing else, Pavilion owner Burroughs & Chapin save as much of the landmark as possible.
The company says the attraction has been on financial life support; that its point of no return came at the end of the 2005 season, and it's time to pull the plug.
It's open this final summer, they say, as an opportunity for those who've never experienced it, and as a "farewell season" for those who have.
The Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce has a page (
http://www.pavilionmemories.com) where folks can post their feelings and memories.
How it all got started
"The (previous, 1930s-vintage) Pavilion was one beautiful place, made from wood and on huge stakes. It had a beautiful bowling alley, a .22 shooting gallery and a large eating place in the center, a square with four cash registers. "June or July through August, beautiful bands would come to the Pavilion and stay one week. We had a dance floor upstairs where they played each night. Each had a girl singer. She would sit in a chair, stand up and sing, then sit right back in the chair, her hands folded and legs crossed. "Each afternoon at 3, the band would play downstairs in the Pavilion for one hour and all the jitterbugs danced. That was something to see and hear. I would give anything for a picture of the wooden Pavilion."
Frank Leonard Sr., 87, of Charlotte, via e-mail
Franklin Burroughs was a businessman in Conway, S.C., before and after the Civil War, and some of his enterprises involved lumber and turpentine in the sandy scrubland along the Horry County coast. He and a partner linked Conway to the beach with a rail line; the next generation built the Seaside Inn on the shore to attract bathers the way Coney Island did in Brooklyn.
A pavilion -- a covered gathering spot -- was added to the Seaside. That Pavilion burned down in 1920; its wooden replacement, where jitterbugs and the earliest shaggers danced, met a similar fate in 1944.
The third Pavilion, built in 1948, is the one now awaiting the wrecking ball. The amusement park also arrived in 1948 when Burroughs & Chapin purchased a traveling carnival and parked it across Ocean Boulevard from the Pavilion. Two years later, 14 rides were acquired.
This tract, between 8th and 9th streets north, from the shore to U.S. 17 Business, is the egg from which modern Myrtle Beach hatched; a small and compact downtown grew up around the park's inland edges; Ocean Boulevard in both directions sprouted motels, eateries and attractions.
Starting in the 1950s, prosperity, improved roads and the rise of summer vacationing made Myrtle Beach grow, as well as land-rich B&C. The boom in golfing (standard and mini) and shopping expanded the area's high season beyond Memorial Day-Labor Day. Myrtle Beach is now ringed by two outer belts -- U.S. 17 Bypass and S.C. 31 Parkway. Tourist magnets such as Broadway at the Beach, Barefoot Landing and Fantasy Harbour are a mile or more from heavy downtown traffic. While parking near the Pavilion costs $6 to $10, the new mega attractions have their own large, free lots.
Last week, construction began at Fantasy Harbour for Hard Rock Theme Park, a non-B&C project.
Let the music play
"I remember as a young girl being able to wander around the Pavilion with my brother, without my parents -- freedom! Playing 10-cent baseball on the stools and Skee Ball with my brother at the Pavilion arcade. One year, we must have played every day to get enough tickets to get our mother a gift (a hard-plastic mother deer and her two fawns)."
Patricia Lattimore, Mississauga, Ontario, at
http://www.pavilionmemories.com "I am a third-generation member of my family that attended the Pavilion. My parents took my brother and me every year. ... When we became teenagers, we would go to the Magic Attic at the Pavilion. We were excited to see the big bands at the Attic. "The most notable: Sugarcreek. They were from Charlotte but we could not see them around Charlotte because of our age."
Keith Earnhardt, Concord, via e-mail
The Pavilion was built to last -- a hulk of reinforced concrete that was one of the few buildings in Myrtle Beach to be unscathed by Hurricane Hazel in 1954.
The left corner of the Ocean Boulevard entrance has sprouted a small 4-D Theater, and outdoor and to the south is the $5-a-ride Atlantic Speedway kart track. Much else that you see is practically timeless.
The first floor is the raucous arcade: banks of Skee Ball, pinball, shooting galleries and other token-fed amusement machines.
The heavy metal railing overlooking the beach is painted light blue in its most recent of many layers. Wide outdoor stairways lead to the second floor, where you can sit and watch the cars cruising Ocean Boulevard -- or enter the Attic, long known as the Magic Attic, directly above the arcade.
The Pavilion is not the only public seaside gathering spot. Nor is its amusement park the only spot downtown where you can find rides: Family Kingdom amusement park, home of the Swamp Fox coaster, is just 10 blocks down the street.
But the Attic has long been the Grand Strand's only nonalcoholic teen nightclub.
Such beach-music stalwarts as the Chairmen of the Board, the Catalinas and Embers gigged there in the '60s and '70s. Sugarcreek had one of the longest Attic runs, taking the stage more than 350 nights between 1972 and 1990.
Tilt-A-Whirl, whirlwind love
"I have pictures of me, at age 3, riding in the little boats that go in a circle. They seemed much larger then and seemed to magically float on their own. `Ding-ding-ding ...' I would ring my little bell. Daddy would be grinning and waving like I was a long lost relative each time I would pass. ... "Mom and Dad are gone now and I am 47 years old. ... I am now the proud mother of Zach, 11, Zoe, 7, and Zana, 4. I also have the same photos of Zach at age 3, and Zoe at age 3 ringing the same little bells in the same little boats."
Susan Ramsey Lumpkin, Ball Ground, Ga., at www. pavilionmemories.com
"Sixteen years ago this June 16, I met the love of my life at Myrtle Beach. I met him as I was walking along the (Ocean Boulevard) strip, and we caught each other's eye. We talked for a while and I very excitedly said, "I want to ride that" as I pointed to the Rainbow. My future husband took me by the hand and we went for a wild first ride together. I will never forget our first date at the Myrtle Beach Pavilion."
Ashley Alexander, Kernersville, via e-mail
Memories of the Pavilion's amusement park tend to be of visiting as a young child or young adult: The wonderment of rides; the wonderment of romance. You don't pay admission to enter the park -- a plus for young parents seeking only kiddie rides; a plus for cash-strapped teens.
On the well-kept green asphalt are 30-odd rides aimed at all ages: the Hurricane Category 5 wooden roller coaster for adults (110 feet; 3 G's of gravitational pull); the Little Eagle coaster for small fry; the Siberian Sleigh Ride trabant; swiveling teacups; the compact, elevated Mad Mouse coaster with its hairpin turns; the HydroSurge raft ride; the ride-through haunted house. Food stands and games are scattered throughout.
The careful compact jumbledness of it all speaks to the park's antiquity -- its midway roots. Among its attractions are time-honored classics.
There's the Tilt-A-Whirl, an all-American (and Elvis' favorite) ride, invented in 1926 and still being produced by Sellner Manufacturing of Faribault, Minn. The Pavilion's isn't especially old, but a Tilt-A-Whirl of 1980s vintage can fetch $45,000 to $60,000, according to Sellner.
There's the elegant Wave Swinger, the long-chain carousel swing you also find at Chicago's Navy Pier, Cedar Point and King's Dominion parks.
It has always been the classic photo op -- riders sent up and out by centrifugal force, silhouetted against the sky; the faux Victorian jewels that decorate its axis and rims.
Most beloved perhaps is the Herschell-Spillman Carousel near the main gate -- a 1912 wonder that has been at this park since 1950.
An old-timer near it: The German Baden Band Organ, a fixture since 1957, a 2-ton wonder that made its debut in 1900 at the World Expo in Paris.
Hear the organ for free. To try these others one last time will run you two to five tickets ($2-$5) apiece.
B&C hasn't announced whether it will sell the rides and attractions -- or move them to another operation.
An uncertain future
PUBLIC NOTICE The Oceanfront Grill is not affiliated with the Myrtle Beach Pavilion and amusement park. We will stay open and plan to stay open for many years to come. We thank you for your patronage and please come back often. Thank You!
Sign at Boardwalk Café, next to the Pavilion
B&C has yet to offer specifics on how it intends to redevelop the property. To some Pavilion die-hards, this makes the Pavilion's demise a too-sudden act of cultural vandalism.
Not that B&C is excited about the shuttering. For decades, the Pavilion was the keystone of the privately held firm, whose holdings now include NASCAR SpeedParks, the Grand Strand's sprawling Broadway at the Beach complex and even larger Coastal Grand mall.
At the news conference announcing the Pavilion closure, chairman of the board J. Egerton Burroughs said, "When we say that change -- particularly this change -- is difficult, we most certainly mean it."
Some believe redeveloping the Pavilion grounds may revitalize downtown Myrtle Beach -- or, at any rate, not cause undue harm over the long haul. The Pavilion is edged by T-shirt/beachwear shops, jewelers, eateries and bars, a convenience store and empty storefronts. Walk this perimeter and you'll see no evidence of the ongoing commercial boom elsewhere on the Grand Strand.
If there was a kiss of death for the Pavilion, it may have been B&C's decision to fence the amusement park for the 2000 season and charge admission: The entry fee, to reduce teen loitering, lasted only one season. But attendance never topped its 1999 peak.
Nostalgia doesn't turn a profit
"The stark reality is that the Pavilion has not been a viable business for a number of years. The world has passed it by. People's ideas have changed as to what constitutes `entertainment.' As we have said many times before over the past several years, `Everyone loves the Pavilion, but not everyone who loves the Pavilion patronizes the Pavilion.' "
Douglas Wendel, Burroughs & Chapin president & CEO, in statement at March 9 news conference
OK, raise your hand if you're under 30 and love to play Skee Ball. On a recent Monday afternoon, the Pavilion's ball-toss games were mostly unused.
Perhaps B&C is right: Times change. Tastes change. Time for something new. Boulevard area businesses, led by Myrtle Beach Downtown Redevelopment Corp., have been hoping for a boardwalk; the current dream is for a 12-block stretch on either side of the Pavilion. But the price is high ($10 million or more); state as well as city money would be required, and any construction along the beach would require review from and approval by environmental agencies.
A boardwalk capable of bringing new visitors and more upscale retailers is several years off.
In the meantime, what B&C does with its post-Pavilion site is the $1 million game token. The phrase "mixed-use development" has been used by the company several times. B&C says it will show its hand after Sept. 30, after the Pavilion is closed.
So we asked Chuck Roberts what'll replace the Pavilion. His opinion is as good as any: Roberts is one of the Fool the Guesser guys at the park who will GUESS YOUR WEIGHT or GUESS YOUR BIRTH MONTH for THREE DOLLARS. Plus, he has history here: He says that long ago, an uncle was part-owner of this concession.
His guess: "Townhouses."
In any event, memories of this old place will remain untouched -- dancing between your ears.
For a 15-year-old boy from the big city of Charlotte, the Pavilion on a summer night was heaven. Did I mention 15-year-old girls from places like Kingsport, Tenn., Taylors, S.C., and Hickory? There was nothing like a walk on the beach in front of the Pavilion, just a few steps down and the moonlight beckoned to walk further and away from the shadows where you could finally steal a kiss as the sounds of "Under the Boardwalk" faded.
Ted Hooks, Harding-West Meck Classes of the '60s Web page (
http://hardingwest reunion.myevent.com)
