Meet Retro Myrtle Beach Guy

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Retro Myrtle Beach Guy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Retro , thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

Well, growing up working class in east Baltimore, you had to work hard to get anywhere. I started as a cart boy at our local grocery store til I could get a work permit and on my 16th birthday I started working full time on a school/work program.

I grew up around folks who worked hard every day but couldn’t ever get ahead and that was a constant motivator to strive for more than the ordinary.
In my line of work now? It all comes from passion for community and your every day people, and the rest was just endurance training to do this.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m the creator and host of Retro Myrtle Beach Guy, a local show about all things Retro, Myrtle Beach, and Guy!
I started in 2020 wanting to both document the vanishing Myrtle Beach of the 50s, 60s and 70s especially the businesses and culture unique to Myrtle Beach and the greater Grand Strand, and to showcase the talent, eccentricities and weirdos that beach towns like ours inevitably attract.

This is of course complimented by my personal affinity for all things mid-century. My wife and son and I live in a 1957 suburban ranch, we have a 1963 Chevy Corvair convertible, and I dress like your grandad (or great grandad) did in his heyday. I’ also pretty much only listen to music from the early 60s, Motown, rock n roll, jazz, exotica, etc..

I think as a child of the 80s, with things like early Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Ren and Stimpy, John Waters, and time with grandparents a lot of the cultural and stylistic influences of the early 60s were still prominent when I was a kid and a lot of that stuff reminds people in my generation of a simpler time, and time with family that may not be around anymore.

I took all this and turned it into a media company, 11 or twelve books (I’ve lost count) a over two hundred original songs for the show, a feature film and were working on a second.

What began as me, just wanting to show people around my town and dispel a lot of myths about Myrtle Beach, has turned into an entire culture of its own sculpted around Carolina beach music, chili dogs, long boarding, and all the things that have defined Myrtle Beach for a generation.

We’re also very excited about our upcoming movie Mint Jelly, a sci-fi mob noir based on the alien underworld operating in the shadows of Myrtle Beach., as well as a short based on the classic television show Bewitched that we’ll be releasing later this year. We have so much talent and such amazing resources the only thing we need more of is time! It’s fun exercising our creative muscles and trying new things with the confidence that our audience will get the bit.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

If I had to pick three qualities that helped me most I would say it’s adaptability, confidence, and humility.

Having moved around a tremendous amount in my life I always tried to immerse myself in the local culture and not carry my baggage around. You can’t “go home again” as they say, and I think too many people who move to a new place get hung up on what they miss from home and miss all the things that make their new home great.
Instead of complaining that there wasn’t any good seafood when I lived in Chicago? I learned to love the Maxwell sausage or a Lou Malnatti’s deep dish. So, really letting go and embracing a new place and its culture can be both liberating and exceptionally helpful in making your voice feel authentic. That’s why I think so many Myrtle Beach Natives are responsive to my show, because I don’t try and tell folks how things “should be” I listen to them tell me about how they are, and how they used to be. Listening is critical to adaptation. You can’t watch 5 minutes of my show and not see the genuine love I have for my city and ALL the people who live in it.

Confidence can be a difficult one, but I find it’s helpful to remember how many people in the performing arts have performance anxiety. So many of us who wind up in front of a camera or crowd started doing so to confront our stage fright (myself included). When you realize how common that fear is? You can kinda psyche yourself up enough to ignore it.
It’s like weaponizing imposter syndrome I guess.

Humility has to be the most important one to me though. As a fan of stage and screen’s greats, it’s never lost on me how my greatest influences, directors like Orson Wells, and John Waters always mocked artists who take themselves too seriously. When you look at your work as somehow more important or impactful than a firefighter or a garbage man, or custodian, I think that is when you’ve lost perspective. I make stupid movies about space vampires and chili dogs, if I ever refer to that as “my art” I should be taken to the shed out back.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

If I had to say who has been the most helpful I would definitely say it’s the locals and natives here. Beach towns like ours are notorious for gatekeeping what’s “local” and who’s “local”, and I understand that and try to approach subjects respectfully. While this is a niche interest of mine, it’s people’s families and legacies I’m talking about and that can be a very sensitive matter so I remember that when I’m discussing events or history.

That said, the natives have been INCREDIBLY welcoming and helpful! Every time I run into a leader or pioneer in our town, they not only take the time to talk to me, even showing me family albums and keepsakes, they point me in the direction of another story or icon I can look more into.

Hopefully the aforementioned passion for our community and respectful way I approach our town’s history is how I’ve gained their trust., but either way I couldn’t be more grateful for our amazing community and the other folks in our town who love our city like I do!
Honestly, if you want to be successful at ANYTHING the answer is always community. I can’t ever say that enough.

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Retro Myrtle Beach Guy

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