‘A place for the kids to go’: Myrtle Beach native’s surf shop brings life full circle
Myrtle Beach native Phil Jackson was all about the ocean growing up. He began surfing at about the age of 8.
He lived close enough to the beach to take his bike or golf cart there and surfed most days for several years in his youth.
Then he dropped out of Socastee High School and got away from surfing, beginning a string of bad decisions.
“Through my teenage years everything was surf,” Jackson said. “Then in my early 20s I got into drugs. I first started smoking weed, then I started doing crack and coke and that led to meth. I was selling drugs and doing all the bad stuff. I ended up losing everything in my early 20s. I was on that path of destruction for a little while, and I met my now wife and she helped me get clean.”
Jackson, 41, has come full circle, in a sense, with his Monday opening of Good Vibes Surf Shop in Surfside Beach with a partner.
Jackson’s first store will assist in his mission, which he pursues through his Surf Dreams Foundation, to get youth into surfing and away from the pitfalls that derailed his life.
“Eventually we wanted a surf shop. We didn’t really think it would be this soon in our path, but the world works in mysterious ways,” he said. “. . . Now we’re going to have a place for the kids to go and a place to call home and have a home base for everything we do, and be able to get some kids into equipment and gear and everything they need.
“It’s a place they can come hang out, watch surf movies and play surfing games on the TV, skate around and have that spot to go.”
Hitting rock bottom
Jackson said he was so desperate for money and consumed by his drug habit that he once put a gun in the mouth of someone who owed him $20 and threatened to pull the trigger.
That was among the instances that opened Jackson’s eyes to the realization his life was spiraling.
After encouragement from his now wife, Ola, he said he detoxed on his own, without the help of professionals, in a hotel room for a week.
“Then I had to start the rebuilding process in my life,” he said. “That took a long time, to gain trust back from people and start doing positive things in the community.”
Getting back into surfing was something that helped Jackson pull through his travails.
“That first day when I stood up on a surfboard I felt that fire again,” he said. “I had so much fun, then I had kids and I wanted them to enjoy it, and my kids love surfing, which was a blessing because I was into it. . . . From then on surfing has been our life. We’re super excited and super blessed to have the support from the community.”
Making a difference
Jackson created the Surf Dreams Foundation in 2014 and is the executive director of the nonprofit that gives youth access to surfing, instruction and equipment without the financial burden of taking up the sport.
“When I got clean I decided I wanted to do something positive with my life,” Jackson said. “I wanted to make a difference in kids’ lives in our community. . . . I wanted to help other kids and give them an opportunity to not go down the path I went down and give them an outlet. Surfing is a great tool to keep them busy and give them something to do.”
Jackson offers surf camps and surf lessons, and the nonprofit foundation provides free surf clinics, paid contest entry fees, group day trips to surf breaks, surf trips for little or no cost to families, scholarships for area high school students, ocean safety instruction, free surfboards to kids in need, and a free wet suit trade-in program.
Tom Palmieri and his family are among those who have experienced the positive power of Jackson and the foundation.
He returned to surfing about a year ago with his oldest daughter, Lilley, after attending a “Take a Kid Surfing Day,” and he is already on the Surf Dreams board of directors and often volunteers in the community through the foundation.
“Anybody that gets around him, he brings the best out of them. He encourages them a lot,” Palmieri said of Jackson. “He helps the [young surfers] from a leadership capacity, how to look out for each other, how to socially give back.
“The Surf Dreams Foundation has done so much for the surf community. He started it in 2014 and if you think in such a short amount of time how many kids he has impacted, and it has impacted the families, too.”
Both of Palmieri’s daughters, Lilley and Lola, now surf and Lilley has taken great personal strides in the year she’s been involved in the foundation.
She surfs competitively and is now a Team Rider for the foundation, which is a position of merit attained through surfing in contests, joining surf clubs, assisting other kids and being philanthropic by taking part in volunteer events such as beach sweeps, Take a Kid Surfing Days and water safety instruction.
“It has been fantastic. In over a year it has totally changed the kid,” Palmieri said. “She suffered from a lot of anxiety and stuff like that before going to school and socially, and once we got involved and started volunteering and she really found her niche for helping others, that really brought her out of her shell. The anxiety has really kind of vanished.”
Jackson is also one of two directors of the O’Neill East Coast Grom Tour, which stages about 10 surfing competitions per year on the East Coast from New York to Florida for youth and adults.
“I’m a contest director by trade,” Jackson said. “I’ve worked really hard to develop that skill to run the surf contests on a professional level. I just want to give the kids a really good surf contest atmosphere with a professional level of production at the local level.”
Opening a surf shop
Jackson is a partner in Good Vibes Surf Shop with Mike Hufham of Wilmington, North Carolina.
The store is in the Deerfield Plaza next to Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, and Jackson said the name reflects an ambition of the two owners.
“I was [considering] some names and we’ve always [promoted] good vibes and just to be kind and spread stoke, so we wanted to kind of keep it in our wheelhouse and that’s what we represent and we wanted to make sure the name of our surf shop describes what we represent,” said Jackson, who intends to sponsor and be involved in a number of community events through the store.
Good vibes sells surf-related equipment and accessories and beach lifestyle items including surfboards, board shorts, wet suits, skateboards, flip flops, T-shirts, etc.
But Jackson wants it to be more than a store. It will be a base for the foundation and tour, and more.
Though it’s a relatively small retail space, he has a couch and TV set up with a couple tables and a Sony PlayStation video game console, and welcomes youth from the community to spend time there.
“We also want to make it a cool place for kids to be able to hang and kind of a safe haven for kids, if they need somewhere to hang out or they need to come somewhere and talk and just be a part of something bigger,” Jackson said. “We’re gonna have that available.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2021 at 12:52 PM.
