Myrtle Beach Killings. May 2014

It's sad for me to watch the changes that have occurred over the years in this city. If six months ago someone had a crystal ball and foretold there would be a multiple homicide like this take place at the oceanfront, and allow us to place bets on guessing when it was going to take place, some of us including myself would have been able to predict which week without even thinking about it. It's just a fact.

MB has a special place in my heart, being a regular vacation spot as a child, teenager and young adult growing up in the southeast. It's unfortunate to see the city slowly chip away at the elements that made it what it was. Demolishing the Pavilion (what in my mind was a historic landmark) still makes no sense to me. I can at least partially understand not wanting to keep the amusement park going, at least in its current form, but I don't see how getting rid of the Pavilion building itself was a wise or even necessary move. I heard some of the Burroughs & Chapin rationale but it did not seem very well thought through, and as if some folks were being disingenuous in their reasoning.

Myrtle really didn't need any more of the kind of publicity this latest shooting will bring. Maybe now, however, the city will focus more on finding ways to address violent crime than worrying about whether girls at strip clubs are showing their boobs or not. I still believe that the more they do that is injurious to the strip club industry the more they are harming the future of the city.

If it seems like an off-topic rant, it's really not off-topic at all. A lot of us here have wondered about the future of the adult industry in MB -- probably the only thing aside other than golf (and we all know the two go hand-in-hand) that keeps this city going. Very clearly being close to the ocean is just not enough these days.