When I woke up, everything hurt. Especially my elbow, which had hit the pavement hard when I fell. I managed to get up, get dressed and head out to breakfast at Omega Pancake House, which I had seen the night before as I was going to the hotel. After breakfast, I went back to the hotel and registered for the conference. Since I wasn’t scheduled to speak until Saturday, I spent some time in the whirlpool on the pool deck, and then I walked down onto the beach. There was nobody in the water, and after testing it with my feet, I learned why, because the water was icy cold. I started walking south along the beach, noticing birds and shells as I headed down toward the Days Inn hotel to the south.
The weather was cool, but overcast and quite windy, and I walked back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. I had scouted out a place called the Liberty Brewhouse at Broadway at the Beach. The restaurant was a brewpub featuring steaks, and was owned by T-Bonz out of Augusta, so I figured it would be good. Getting to Broadway at the Beach proved to be more difficult than I had expected, however, since traffic was backed up for miles because of an incident in front of a McDonald’s where a car had struck a child on a bicycle, and everyone was stopping to look as the ambulance was pulling up. Broadway at the Beach proved to be an elaborate outdoor shopping village built around a manmade lagoon full of catfish, other fish and ducks. One of its anchors was a Hard Rock Cafe built in the shape of a pyramid, and there was a Kiss Coffeehouse (the name and logo licensed from the band), a Tripp’s Family Restaurant, a Crab House, a Key West Bar and Grill, and many interesting shops. I decided to walk around a bit before eating dinner, and I walked through nearly all of the facility, stopping in a few shops to look around. In addition to the shops and restaurants, there were entertainment options like Dragon’s Lair goofy golf, and some sort of Adventure Quest laser game, and a theatre. I soon walked right to the Liberty Brewhouse, and, to my surprise, had no trouble getting a seat. The Liberty Brewhouse brewed their own root beer, which was excellent, and the steak and lobster dinner was really good as well.
Afterwards, I stopped into a Kaldi’s Coffee Bar for a latte, and then drove over to Ocean Boulevard, to drive that way along the Grand Strand back to the hotel. The sun was going down red to the southwest, and I stopped to take a number of pictures.
When I arrived back at the hotel, showcases were still in progress, with artists performing and being critiqued by some of the panelists. After that, a beat battle and a freestyle battle were held. Unfortunately, liquor was flowing freely from the hotel bar, and a fight was narrowly averted when one young man who had lost in the freestyle battle complained that another man nearby kept staring at him. Altogether, however, day one of the Southern Music and Entertainment Summit went very well. (September 26, 2008)