LoserFest Grand Strand
Oct. 21st, 2025 01:18 pmThe first of the two trips I took in September was to South Carolina for LoserFest Grand Strand. For those who are unfamiliar with the Loser community, it’s essentially people who are involved with what used to be the Washington Post Style Invitational, which now has its afterlife via Gene Weingarten’s substack page, as well as a couple of related Facebook groups. There’s a lot more information on The Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society website. There are a number of Loser social events, with brunches roughly monthly and a couple of big parties a year (a post-holiday party around January and the Flushies award ceremony around June). Every year or two, a group of Losers get together to go somewhere for what is called LoserFest. I first went to one in Pittsburgh and have since been to Frederick (Maryland), Niagara Falls, and Philadelphia. My schedule worked out to enable me to go to this year’s LoserFest in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area.
Why there? Well, a long time Loser, Kathleen, moved to Surfside Beach a while back and lobbied for it. The primary organizer (known as the LoserFest pope), Kyle, published a “Fungenda,” and people signed up for which events they wanted to go to, including various meals and sightseeing events. He’s very good at finding things to do and I also appreciate that everything is optional.
Anyway, I flew down on Wednesday, early in the afternoon. It was easy to pick up my rental car and a short drive to my hotel, though it was a bit challenging to actually find the front desk since my GPS had outdated directions. (I’d gotten a good deal at the Grand Palms Resort, where am entire 2 bedroom villa cost slightly less than a room at the Holiday Inn.) I had time to settle in and take a short nap before going to Kathleen’s house for an informal dinner. She’s got a lovely little place, with a plant-filled backyard. There were probably a dozen or so of us there and we had the usual lively conversation, while nibbling on various goodies.
We had originally been scheduled to do a dolphin watching cruise on Friday morning, but the weather forecast was unfavorable so it got switched to Thursday morning. We had an excellent breakfast beforehand at the Golden Egg before driving to the Crazy Sister Marina, where we boarded a RIB (rigid inflatable boat). We saw a lot of dolphins, including some leaping right in front of us. Alas, I failed at dolphin photography, which is not surprising since every time I’ve been whale watching I’ve mostly gotten pictures of where whales were. It was really awesome watching them and an excellent start to the day.
Then we drove north to Myrtle Beach, where we had lunch at Margaritaville. That was followed by the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, which was fun, even though pretty much all the pinball machines were after my time. I thought the Munsters themed one was the most interesting machine, but most of them were fun.
From there, we went to Ripley’s Aquarium. This was a bit pricy for its small size, but they did have some interesting exhibits, starting with African penguins.
There were plenty of assorted fish, including at least one robotic one. There were also a lot of jellyfish. And sharks. They didn’t have any leafy sea dragons (my favorites at any aquarium that has them), but they did have weedy sea dragons.

And there was an axolotl, a creature I’ve been mildly obsessed with since I learned about it via a crossword puzzle.

That, of course, had me singing The Axolotl Song for days.
We finished the day with dinner at 42nd Street Bar and Grill. The food was good, but rather pricy.
On Friday, we started the day with breakfast at Blue Sky Restaurant. I suggested the Myrtle Beach Art Museum as a substitute for the dolphin cruise which had gotten shifted to Thursday. The museum proved to be small, but very good. There were two exhibits. The upstairs gallery had enhanced cyanotypes by Cora Ennis Morris.

The downstairs gallery was more to my taste, with an exhibition of winners of the Artfields competition. This piece by Brent Afford is titled Remember This as a Time of Day and pays homage to cast iron skillets.

The intriguing thing about this portrait by Stefanie Glen is that it was drawn in one continuous line.

I think most of us really liked Consume by Mike + Patz Fowle.

My very favorite piece was Mexicans in Canada, by Amira Hanafi. This is an interactive exhibit, which you can stop by touching the television screen. You can also start and stop the on-line version to see how clever it is.
We drove up to Brookgreen Gardens, a former rice plantation, where we started with a lovely lunch at the Austin Harvest Restaurant. After eating, we had a docent tour. Unfortunately, the docent started out by standing in one place and talking for over 20 minutes. We assumed he’d seen all the grey hair in front of him and thought we wouldn’t want to walk. But, actually, standing in one place is harder on most of us than walking.
It wouldn’t be South Carolina without a live oak allee and Spanish moss.

The main thing to see is the collection of American figurative sculpture, which is huge and impressive.

Our next stop was at Atalaya Castle. It would have been helpful if the directions had mentioned that the actual entrance is marked as Huntington Beach State Park, instead of claiming that it was “just across the street” from Brookgreen Gardens. The only sign that actually says “Atalaya Castle” is some ways down the state park road.
The castle was built as the winter home of philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Frankly, I wasn’t particularly impressed with it. Apparently, they kept bears, horses, monkey, and a leopard in enclosures within the castle, which might have made it more interesting.


I was feeling rather grumpy. And the Red Sox were playing the Source of All Evil in the Universe, so I decided to skip out on dinner at the Gulfstream Cafe in favor of takeout food and watching the ballgame. Which, alas, my Bosox lost.
We had breakfast on Saturday at Johnny D’s Waffles, which had the advantage of being particularly close to my hotel. Then we went back to Brookgreen Gardens, where we did the Creek Excursion. This is a lovely and peaceful boat trip along the creeks of the property.

After that, some of the group went to the zoo, but I’m a lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) kind of gal and don’t feel the need to look at non-predators. The plan to have lunch at a barbecue restaurant followed by miniature golf and shopping for tacky souvenirs also failed to do anything for me. But Brookgreen had a Gullah Geechee Junkanoo Festival going on and music and dance and, especially, storytelling are very much my sort of thing. So I listened to a singer and a storyteller who had an Anansi story. Then I checked out the art exhibit and sampled jollof rice and delicious pound cake. There are also several recordings which you can listen to which feature local people of Gullah descent talking about their lives.
I finished the day by strolling around more of the gardens and looking at more sculptures. Here’s an interesting one relating to the Pledge of Allegiance.

There was a brief downpour, which started ironically just as I reached Rainey Plaza. I took refuge in the gift shop, but didn’t see anything I wanted. I drove back to my hotel and rested for a while before heading back down o Murrell’s Inlet for dinner at Dead Dog Saloon. We were rather crowded together and the food was just okay, but the atmosphere was fun, with lots of 1970’s music.
My travel home the next day went smoothly.
All in all, it was a fun trip with a lot of interesting activities and, more importantly, fun people (which is really the point of it) and I look forward to the next LoserFest. (I’ve been lobbying for New Orleans, by the way.)
Why there? Well, a long time Loser, Kathleen, moved to Surfside Beach a while back and lobbied for it. The primary organizer (known as the LoserFest pope), Kyle, published a “Fungenda,” and people signed up for which events they wanted to go to, including various meals and sightseeing events. He’s very good at finding things to do and I also appreciate that everything is optional.
Anyway, I flew down on Wednesday, early in the afternoon. It was easy to pick up my rental car and a short drive to my hotel, though it was a bit challenging to actually find the front desk since my GPS had outdated directions. (I’d gotten a good deal at the Grand Palms Resort, where am entire 2 bedroom villa cost slightly less than a room at the Holiday Inn.) I had time to settle in and take a short nap before going to Kathleen’s house for an informal dinner. She’s got a lovely little place, with a plant-filled backyard. There were probably a dozen or so of us there and we had the usual lively conversation, while nibbling on various goodies.
We had originally been scheduled to do a dolphin watching cruise on Friday morning, but the weather forecast was unfavorable so it got switched to Thursday morning. We had an excellent breakfast beforehand at the Golden Egg before driving to the Crazy Sister Marina, where we boarded a RIB (rigid inflatable boat). We saw a lot of dolphins, including some leaping right in front of us. Alas, I failed at dolphin photography, which is not surprising since every time I’ve been whale watching I’ve mostly gotten pictures of where whales were. It was really awesome watching them and an excellent start to the day.
Then we drove north to Myrtle Beach, where we had lunch at Margaritaville. That was followed by the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, which was fun, even though pretty much all the pinball machines were after my time. I thought the Munsters themed one was the most interesting machine, but most of them were fun.
From there, we went to Ripley’s Aquarium. This was a bit pricy for its small size, but they did have some interesting exhibits, starting with African penguins.

There were plenty of assorted fish, including at least one robotic one. There were also a lot of jellyfish. And sharks. They didn’t have any leafy sea dragons (my favorites at any aquarium that has them), but they did have weedy sea dragons.

And there was an axolotl, a creature I’ve been mildly obsessed with since I learned about it via a crossword puzzle.

That, of course, had me singing The Axolotl Song for days.
We finished the day with dinner at 42nd Street Bar and Grill. The food was good, but rather pricy.
On Friday, we started the day with breakfast at Blue Sky Restaurant. I suggested the Myrtle Beach Art Museum as a substitute for the dolphin cruise which had gotten shifted to Thursday. The museum proved to be small, but very good. There were two exhibits. The upstairs gallery had enhanced cyanotypes by Cora Ennis Morris.

The downstairs gallery was more to my taste, with an exhibition of winners of the Artfields competition. This piece by Brent Afford is titled Remember This as a Time of Day and pays homage to cast iron skillets.

The intriguing thing about this portrait by Stefanie Glen is that it was drawn in one continuous line.

I think most of us really liked Consume by Mike + Patz Fowle.

My very favorite piece was Mexicans in Canada, by Amira Hanafi. This is an interactive exhibit, which you can stop by touching the television screen. You can also start and stop the on-line version to see how clever it is.
We drove up to Brookgreen Gardens, a former rice plantation, where we started with a lovely lunch at the Austin Harvest Restaurant. After eating, we had a docent tour. Unfortunately, the docent started out by standing in one place and talking for over 20 minutes. We assumed he’d seen all the grey hair in front of him and thought we wouldn’t want to walk. But, actually, standing in one place is harder on most of us than walking.
It wouldn’t be South Carolina without a live oak allee and Spanish moss.

The main thing to see is the collection of American figurative sculpture, which is huge and impressive.

Our next stop was at Atalaya Castle. It would have been helpful if the directions had mentioned that the actual entrance is marked as Huntington Beach State Park, instead of claiming that it was “just across the street” from Brookgreen Gardens. The only sign that actually says “Atalaya Castle” is some ways down the state park road.
The castle was built as the winter home of philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Frankly, I wasn’t particularly impressed with it. Apparently, they kept bears, horses, monkey, and a leopard in enclosures within the castle, which might have made it more interesting.


I was feeling rather grumpy. And the Red Sox were playing the Source of All Evil in the Universe, so I decided to skip out on dinner at the Gulfstream Cafe in favor of takeout food and watching the ballgame. Which, alas, my Bosox lost.
We had breakfast on Saturday at Johnny D’s Waffles, which had the advantage of being particularly close to my hotel. Then we went back to Brookgreen Gardens, where we did the Creek Excursion. This is a lovely and peaceful boat trip along the creeks of the property.

After that, some of the group went to the zoo, but I’m a lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) kind of gal and don’t feel the need to look at non-predators. The plan to have lunch at a barbecue restaurant followed by miniature golf and shopping for tacky souvenirs also failed to do anything for me. But Brookgreen had a Gullah Geechee Junkanoo Festival going on and music and dance and, especially, storytelling are very much my sort of thing. So I listened to a singer and a storyteller who had an Anansi story. Then I checked out the art exhibit and sampled jollof rice and delicious pound cake. There are also several recordings which you can listen to which feature local people of Gullah descent talking about their lives.
I finished the day by strolling around more of the gardens and looking at more sculptures. Here’s an interesting one relating to the Pledge of Allegiance.

There was a brief downpour, which started ironically just as I reached Rainey Plaza. I took refuge in the gift shop, but didn’t see anything I wanted. I drove back to my hotel and rested for a while before heading back down o Murrell’s Inlet for dinner at Dead Dog Saloon. We were rather crowded together and the food was just okay, but the atmosphere was fun, with lots of 1970’s music.
My travel home the next day went smoothly.
All in all, it was a fun trip with a lot of interesting activities and, more importantly, fun people (which is really the point of it) and I look forward to the next LoserFest. (I’ve been lobbying for New Orleans, by the way.)