North Myrtle Beach sees spike in COVID-19 cases following unofficial shag dancing festival
The deaths of two musicians and scores of newly reported COVID-19 cases are heightening concerns that a recent shag dancing event in North Myrtle Beach may have contributed to an outbreak.
The event in question was resurrected, informally, by Duck’s Night Life after the national organization that stages the Society of Stranders’ Fall Migration Festival canceled plans due to COVID-19 concerns.
The Sun News has been able to confirm that at least 14 people who have recently tested positive for COVID-19 did so in the days after they attended the Shaggin’ On Main event, the name Duck’s Night Life gave to the shag dancing festival. How many more have contracted the virus will likely never be known, but the outbreak has roiled the shag dancing world and highlighted the difficulty of drawing any definitive conclusions about a virus with so many unknowns.
For Robin Morley, the board chairwoman of the Association of Carolina Shag Clubs, which oversees the Society of Stranders, a shag-related outbreak was her worst fear. It’s also why they canceled Fall Migration two months ago without hesitation.
The risk simply wasn’t worth it.
“I have friends that are sick now. It’s just heartbreaking,” Morley said. “It just went wild; it just took off. And now there’s some sick folks, and I do hate it. We canceled SOS because of that very thing.”
The Sun News asked the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control if it was conducting contact tracing related to the event, or specific venues such as Duck’s Night Life or others nearby like OD Pavilion and Arcade, Murphy’s On The Beach and Harold’s On The Ocean. DHEC would not say whether it had contact tracers looking into the event, adding that community transmission often prevents them from being able to “determine definitively the specific location where the infection happens.”
“DHEC contact tracers ask cases about locations they visited in the time period in which they could have been infected, the past two weeks,” DHEC said in a statement. “Visiting that location does not necessarily mean the individual was infected during that visit. We have received cases who reported visiting facilities on this list, however the number of cases who report visiting these facilities appear to not be a source of the recent spike in cases in Horry County.”
DHEC also did not say which facilities the positive cases visited, nor did it say what the source of the recent spike in cases in that area may be caused by.
What is known is that 210 people residing in the 29582 zip code, which encompasses North Myrtle Beach, have tested positive during the past two weeks. That’s nearly twice as many cases as any other zip code in Horry County during that period, despite nine other nearby zip codes having higher populations.
Shag events are a popular local staple each year, boosting tourism and local businesses dependent on the revenue they bring.
Dwayne Porter, the owner of Duck’s Night Life, said it’s unfair to blame him or his business for spreading COVID-19. In addition to receiving an event permit from the state, Porter said he and the staff at Duck’s took proper precautions before hosting Shaggin’ On Main Sept. 23-27.
“Here’s what frustrates me: everyone says they got it at Duck’s. I operated under the guidelines,” Porter said. “We were authorized by the state to do it. This virus is everywhere, but you can’t prove where these people get it. One person can infect 1,000. I hate that anybody got sick, but you can only do what you can do.”
Following the event, Duck’s announced on Facebook that it would close for a few days to allow staff to rest and has remained closed since at least Oct. 9.
Two dead
Two musicians who performed during the festival have since died, though no one could confirm whether COVID-19 directly influenced either death.
Jimmy Weaver, of Clayton, N.C., had performed with The Holiday Band Sept. 26 at Duck’s, according to his website. He died Oct. 10, according to a Facebook post from Steve Owens and Summertime, a band in which Weaver played keyboard and vocalist.
Music totally consumed Weaver’s life from as young as 12 years of age, according to his older brother, John Weaver.
John Weaver, himself a musician, said musical involvement is a long-running tradition with their family, and he recalled the two of them singing in harmony with their mother while driving to the beach on family vacations.
He enjoyed watching Jimmy continue growing as a musician, he said, and described his younger brother as very outgoing and “just an overall good guy, happy and driven by music.”
John said it’s possible his brother’s appearance at the festival contributed to the death, but he noted he had other health issues, and no autopsy was performed. He also questioned whether COVID-19 is ever the sole reason for people dying.
Another musician, from Conway, who performed with his band at Duck’s Sept. 24 and 27, according to the Shaggin’ On Main schedule, died Oct. 7.
His wife, who asked that his name not be included in this article, said his death was due to a heart attack, had nothing to do with him performing in North Myrtle Beach, and he did not test positive for coronavirus.
Who got sick
Glenda Smith Carter and her boyfriend, Jack Bryant, “just wanted to go dancing,” she said, and the couple leapt at a chance to do so when Duck’s announced the Shaggin’ On Main event. Now though, they believe they got sick with COVID-19 after attending the shag events at Duck’s Night Life and the OD Pavilion and Arcade.
Smith Carter, who lives in North Carolina, drove down to North Myrtle Beach to stay with Bryant at a condo for several nights and attend shag dancing events.
Less than a week after the events, both fell ill and eventually got tested for COVID-19 on Oct. 3. By Oct. 6, both were confirmed positive. Bryant, who said he used to get sick with the flu each year before he started receiving regular flu shots, said COVID-19 was similar, but lasted longer. Both experienced body aches, chills and headaches that lasted all day.
Smith Carter says they think they got sick because, while drinking and dancing at the venues, “we were all on top of each other.” She said the couple thought it was safe to go out because government agencies were monitoring the spread of the virus.
“I thought the CDC was keeping tabs on this and was keeping us safe,” she said.
In hindsight, Smith Carter said the venues shouldn’t have hosted the events.
“I just think they shouldn’t be having stuff until it’s better,” she said. “I hate for anyone to lose money, but for all the people who got sick, it’s not worth it.”
Bryant said he couldn’t blame Duck’s or the other venues and said he takes responsibility.
“You can say all you want about Duck’s, but they did what the law allowed them to do. They were abiding by their rules,” he said. “I think we got a little lax, too. We got a little lax with washing our hands, and that might have been part of it, too.”
Business owners and other attendees also aren’t willing to blame any one person or venue for causing the spread.
“You can’t blame anybody for this. I think pointing blame, there’s no value in that,” said Jason Cadier, an audio engineer who worked at several shag dancing events in late September and later tested positive for COVID-19. “Could we have done things better? Sure we could. (But) people still have to live, they still have to make money.”
Although the permit for Shaggin’ On Main only included Sept. 23-27, some events at other nearby clubs began happening as early as Sept. 17, which would have been the original start date for the official Fall Migration event.
Many who tested positive for the coronavirus said or posted that they went to bars and clubs including Duck’s Night Life, OD Pavilion and Arcade, and Murphy’s on the Beach.
The outbreak has garnered interest far beyond the east coast. Swing dancers from Europe to the west coast have posted on social media inquiring about what happened. The owner of one venue in Raleigh, North Carolina, called Loafers, posted that she postponed a shag dance scheduled for Oct. 9 as well as future events for the time being after seeing reports of the outbreak in North Myrtle Beach.
As of Wednesday, 153,729 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in South Carolina and 3,387 have died in South Carolina. The U.S. has seen 7.94 million cases and 216,000 deaths so far.
Duck’s Night Life spearheaded the effort to organize Shaggin’ On Main. After the South Carolina Department of Commerce rejected an initial permit for the event, saying it would draw too many people, the department approved a permit in early September allowing up to 260 people to eat, drink and dance in the club’s indoor and outdoor spaces. However, attendees also went to other nearby venues hosting concerts and other events during that time.
In the days and weeks that followed, Duck’s owners and managers promoted the event heavily on its website and Facebook page, advertising bands and DJs each night from Sept. 23-27.
Because the event happened on private property, North Myrtle Beach spokesman Pat Dowling said Duck’s did not need a permit from the city.
Though Porter said he and his staff took precautions to space out the restaurant’s tables and ensure social distancing, photos of the event posted on Facebook show dozens of people failing to social distance or wear masks, neither of which are specifically required under North Myrtle Beach pandemic regulations. The city only requires that employees interacting with customers wear masks.
So far this year, the Society of Stranders and its parent organization, the Association of Carolina Shag Clubs, have canceled all of their events, from the Spring Safari in April to their three-day summer workshop to Fall Migration, which they canceled in August.
Not only is there a risk posed by the dance itself, Morley said their 10-day festivals are like twice-yearly “spring breaks” for the shag community and serve as a reunion of sorts. People come from across the country to dance and see friends they might not see otherwise.
They hug, they kiss and they shake hands; they laugh, drink and eat together. But the coronavirus, a respiratory illness that spreads most quickly when people come together, turned those communal interactions into dangerous, and possibly even deadly, mistakes.
So when each shag event arrived this year, Morley and SOS board chairman Ronnie Gregory said their organizations knew they had no choice but to cancel given the chance of infection in their dancing community, which overwhelmingly consists of older, often retired people, who more so than most stand at risk of dying from COVID-19.
“This is something we do for our livelihood. This is not life or death,” Gregory said. “Our group is an older group, an older group and which has conditions. And at the end of the day, it was just the right decision for us to say, ‘let’s don’t gamble, don’t take a chance,’ cause one life is too valuable.”
Deciding whether to attend
In the days following the Shaggin’ On Main events, Facebook flooded with posts and comments as more and more people fell sick. Some criticized people for attending at all, while others offered assistance to those who were ill, with many posts garnering hundreds of comments.
Upon seeing the fallout associated with the event, Gregory, the SOS board chair, said while he was heartbroken for those stricken with the virus, he knew that having the official event would have made matters much worse.
“We were actually inquired if we wanted to be part of it,” Gregory said. “We simply said no because if we were going to do that, we might as well have had SOS. We just weren’t going to do that, so we had no part of it whatsoever, and it turned out to be the right decision.”
When they heard the unofficial event would be going on, Morley and Gregory said there was little they could do other than remind people about the dangers of gathering in large groups.
But Morley said she sympathized with the businesses involved. SOS typically rents out the entirety of Duck’s and several other clubs for their members, Morley said. The cancellation of every event this year likely served a devastating economic blow to the clubs, on top of the fallout small businesses around the globe saw this year.
“I certainly understand. They are businesses that are (struggling), and we wish them well,” Morley said. “We understand that it’s been tough… and, sure, there were concerns.”
But at this point, “our wish is for everybody to be OK,” Morley said.
One shagger, Gene Roberts, who lives in North Myrtle Beach, said he initially went to Duck’s to see what things were like. But after one loop through the venue, he said he didn’t feel safe with both the size of the crowd and the lack of social distancing and masks among customers. So he left. Roberts said he tested negative for COVID-19 on Oct. 2.
“I went the first weekend and walked in and made a complete circle and just turned around and walked out,” Roberts said. “I knew what was going to happen.”
What the businesses are saying
In an interview Wednesday morning, Porter said he and the staff at Duck’s did all of the right things while hosting Shaggin’ On Main.
Porter said his staff checked patrons’ temperatures at the door before allowing them to enter and turned away people with high temperatures. He also asked the band members, DJs and others working the events if they were sick and if they had tested positive recently. Everyone told him they were healthy, he said. Porter also had staff separate tables to allow for social distancing and handed out face masks to patrons who needed one.
“Someone came in there sick, but how do you filter that?” he asked. “We had no problems for two months.”
Like several of their customers, Porter and his wife, Robin, also tested positive for COVID-19 recently, though Porter wouldn’t say where he believes they may have contracted the virus.
Harold Worley, an Horry County Council member who owns several restaurants in North Myrtle Beach, said one of the businesses associated with shag events, Fat Harold’s Beach Club, had been closed since March due to the pandemic. Another business, Harold’s On The Ocean, held shag events but hasn’t had any customers or staff test positive, he said. Worley also owns the building OD Pavilion and Arcade operates in and said one employee recently tested positive for COVID-19.
A manager at Murphy’s On The Beach, who declined to give their name, said the restaurant didn’t host any shag events and hasn’t booked a DJ that performs at shag events in recent weeks because the DJ has been sick. The manager said the restaurant has not had any COVID-19 cases among staff and was not aware of any cases among their customers. The manager declined to comment further. However, Smokin’ Hot’s manager, Mack Barnhill, said the band performed there Sept. 26 and the venue posted details about the concert on Facebook five hours before it happened.
Tracking the outbreak
Even though reports about attendees and performers feeling sick and testing positive for COVID-19 began appearing as soon as Sept. 28, the day after Shaggin’ On Main ended, DHEC said Wednesday evening that while it has gotten cases involving people who went to businesses associated with the event, the businesses themselves “appear to not be a source of the recent spike in cases in Horry County.”
In one instance, Cadier, the audio engineer, said a DHEC staff member called him on Oct. 5 after he tested positive, but neither he nor DHEC tied his positive test to Shaggin’ On Main.
North Myrtle Beach spokesman Pat Dowling, citing DHEC policy, said in an email that the city did not have information about an outbreak related to the event.
Dowling said that DHEC does not share specifics of “where and how” individuals get sick from COVID-19, noting that the state only provides information at the zip code level.
He said the city did contact Duck’s prior to Shaggin’ On Main and voluntarily received information from them about it, but reiterated that the business did not need a permit from the city to host an event on private property.
However, when it comes to safety at these events, Dowling said people need to do their part to stay safe and “accept responsibility for their own actions.”
“You can do business in North Myrtle Beach safely,” Dowling said. “Should a person enter a business and not feel safe in that environment, they always have the option of leaving.”
A local tradition
September’s shag dancing events originally came about after the Society of Stranders, a national group that promotes and organizes shag dancing, canceled its annual 10-day Fall Migration shag festival.
Shag dancing, also called the Carolina shag, is a type of swing dancing that traces its origins to Cherry Grove, S.C., and is the South Carolina state dance. The dance involves a six-count, eight-step dance done by two people and often involves dancing with a variety of people, making it potentially more hazardous for spreading COVID-19 than a two-person slow dance, for example.
Each year, the Society of Stranders, one of many shag dancing groups, organizes two 10-day dance festivals in which dancers flock to restaurants and clubs to drink, hear live music and dance, as well as other smaller events throughout the year.
For the organizers of SOS’s official Fall Migration event, the outbreak has shown them that the it was the right decision to cancel. Nevertheless, they are not looking to call out or shame those who did go.
Both Morley and Gregory said they knew friends who went and got sick, and only hope that they get better. They’re not looking to tell anyone, “I told you so.”
“My hope is that everybody will practice social distancing and so forth so we can get back to SOS sanctioned events as soon as possible,” Morley said. “Please take this seriously. We want to get back to what we were doing. And with outbreaks like this, sadly, it could just delay us a little bit. But hopefully not. We just hope, like I said, we just want everybody to be OK.”
Editor’s note: If you have first-hand information regarding this story and would like to speak to a reporter, please contact Chase Karacostas at ckara@thesunnews.com or J. Dale Shoemaker at dshoemaker@thesunnews.com.
This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
