Beach Boogie & BBQ Festival Hosting Full Slate of Saturday Events
By Lenore McKenzie-Morris
With a full moon lighting the skies above and a band rocking on stage, the winners of Friday night's barbecue competition were dancing under the canopy tents that lined the football field at Grand Park in Myrtle Beach late into the evening after most festival attendees had gone home.
But that party's not over yet.
This Beach Boogie & BBQ Festival will continue today with renewed energy and fun. Beginning at 8 a.m. some very serious competitors from all over the Southeast fire up their cookers for the Official S.C. Barbecue Championship and the newly added Kansas City Barbeque Society Cook-Off.
"The Kansas City Barbeque Society is bringing a different type of cooker here," said Dennis Weaver, coordinator for the Omar Shrine Temple's Smoke on the Beach event, which is part of the Beach Boogie & BBQ Festival. "These guys compete nationally in four categories - chicken, beef brisket, Boston butt, and pork ribs."
Weaver said adding the Kansas City Barbecue Event will make the Myrtle Beach festival more of a national event. "We've got teams coming from as far away as Alabama and Kentucky," he said.
Festival goers can check in on the competition throughout the day and buy barbecue sandwiches beginning at 11 a.m. The judges awards for S.C. champion and Kansas City champion will be announced at 4 p.m.
Proceeds from the barbecue event fund the Omar Shrine Club charities, including the organization's hospitals for children. So when the winners were announced on Friday evening after a very well attended concert by Grand Lake on Farrow Parkway, the general feeling in the air was one of success and celebration. Tickets for the evening tasting of Cook-Off dishes had sold out within an hour. The air was cool after months of stifling heat. And it was the beginning of Labor Day weekend at the beach.
The Coast Runners Band from Charleston was playing beach music with a full brass section to a small crowd around the football field. There was some shagging going on near the stage, but the real party was in the tents along the field where the teams were celebrating their awards.
Columbia's Basting Away team took first place in the dessert category; VIP Escorts Team I won the Shriner Competition; and Mike's Catering took the People's Choice Award for the tasting event.
The $1,000 award for the Anything Butt category went to the Holy Smoke Team from Mt. Pleasant for its Grilled Cantaloupe Shrimp Wrapped in Bacon.
Competition food tasting will be limited to the judges today, but the festival will offer barbecue sandwich combos, and several vendors are offering a variety of foods including gyros, turkey legs, freshly fried potato chips, funnel cakes and other festival classics.
At 10 a.m. the festival gets into full swing with a car show and the opening of the kid's zone with inflatables and other activities. Wakeboarding demonstrations are planned throughout the day from 10:30 a.m. on, and the music beings at 11 a.m. with the Rhythm Pirates, followed by Sea Cruz at 2 p.m. and Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs at 7:30 p.m.
Friday night's crowd at The Tams concert on the main stage (at the lake in Grand Park, just off Farrow Parkway) was a lively group. Rare as it might be to come across men singing in public while walking around, it was quite common to see them join in with Tam's warm-up band on "Brown Eyed Girl" and "My Girl." Bob Wrigglesworth of Murrells Inlet was waving his arms in a chair dance during 14 Carat's performance as he waited for the Tams to appear.
Wrigglesworth said he often attends the concerts at Grand Park.
"We do this on a lot of Friday nights," he said. "We come up and enjoy the music; it's a great place to be if you're over 50. We're coming back tomorrow night to see The Zodiacs."
When the Tams took the stage and asked everyone to stand, the crowd of more than 1,000 didn't hesitate and joined right in, waving their hands and singing along to "Shout."
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