I’ve been to 133 different cities in 6 different countries on 3 different continents. I’ve seen the Great Barrier Reef. I’ve seen Hampton Court Palace. I’ve seen Leopoldskron Castle. I’ve seen the Malecón. But none of this could prepare me for what I saw at the Gay Dolphin!
I recently went to Myrtle Beach for the first time, and like a lot of resort towns, the city has a ton of gift shops selling key chains, shot glasses, snow globes, airbrushed license plates, tacky t-shirts, and other assorted knickknacks and trinkets with the city’s name on them… and, in the case of Myrtle Beach, Confederate flags, too.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I bought a Steelers koozie, a Steelers beach towel (only $9.99 with coupon!) and a $7.99 Myrtle Beach t-shirt from a shop called “Bargain Beachwear” (which boasts 13 locations, 12 of which are on the same stretch of Highway 17).
But as the trip went on, there were more and more calls from my crowd to visit the “Gay Dolphin”. The Gay Dolphin is either “The Nation’s Largest Gift Shop”, “The East Coast’s Largest Gift Shop” or “Myrtle Beach’s Largest Gift Shop”, depending on which billboard you see. But any way you look at it… it’s just… something.
We were staying in Cherry Grove in North Myrtle, so it was a 35-40 minute drive to the Gay Dolphin. That alone would make me cranky, but it was raining, and Lisa and I were in one car, following a car with our fellow vacationers. After being in the car for what seemed like hours, I blurted out: “this damn gift shop had better be worth it!’
And oh, how it was… but not for the reasons you might expect.
You see, the Gay Dolphin has typical tourist “gak” like Myrtle Beach t-shirts, bottle openers and kitchen magnets. But what the Gay Dolphin truly specializes in is collectibles. Miles and miles and miles of collectibles. The kind of junk your grandmother collects. Shelf after shelf after shelf after shelf of dusty and unwanted clown figurines, firefighter figurines, “lone wolf” figurines, American Indian figurines, Precious Moments figurines, and knockoff Precious Moments figurines. There were figurines of Winston Churchill with a bulldog. There were figurines of Winston Churchill as a bulldog. They have figurines that are clearly Martin Luther King, Jr., and figurines that are supposed to be Martin Luther King, Jr. , but which actually look like Steve Harvey. There had lighthouse figurines in various sizes from “thimble” to “almost life-size”. Really, Gay Dolphin has any kind of figurine you can imagine.