The strum of music, the smell of seafood and the bustle of a busy festival will greet visitors to the Little River waterfront once again this year.
The 43rd Annual World Famous Blue Crab Festival from May 17-18 closes Little River’s historic waterfront to traffic, with about 250 vendors lining the main streets of the community’s commercial hub.
Mineola Avenue, Riverview Drive and Waterfront Avenue will have vendors on both sides of the street selling arts, crafts, clothing and more from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. More than 20,000 people are expected to attend.
“It’s an old-fashioned southern street festival on the historic Little River waterfront,” said Jennifer Walters, Little River Chamber of Commerce president and CEO. “This year we have about 250 vendors of all kinds. Arts and crafts, local businesses, community organizations. There’s something truly for everyone.”
And then there’s the food. As evident from the name of the festival, seafood is a staple of the offerings. Crab Catcher’s, a seafood restaurant bordering the waterway in the heart of Little River will be having a “crab feast.” Other local businesses like Hurricane Juel’s, Mako’s and Seabrisa’s will be open to welcome visitors, and The Brentwood will make the trip across Kings Highway to set up at the festival as well.
“While supplies last, they tend to go quickly, but we will have steamed crabs in the traditional style and then crab cakes, crab soup, and a variety of vendors selling fresh, local seafood including crabs,” Walters said. “Should you not be a seafood lover, there will be the traditional festival food as well.”
Shanequa Carr will be setting up her business Shanequa’s Signature Garlic Crabs as a vendor at the two-day festival.
Carr said she’ll be serving up her signature garlic crab legs, blue crabs, shrimp trays and six-cheese seafood mac and cheese. The Pawleys Island-based business has set up at the festival the last three years.
“We look forward to the festival every year as we get to meet so many new customers and really look forward to seeing our past customers and the excitement on their faces when they eat our food,” Carr said. “We love showcasing SSGC to different audiences and building great relationships with customers.”
There will be three bands playing each day of the festival playing a wide range of music.
“There’s all kinds of music. We try to satisfy everybody’s tastes, so there’ll be some pop music, there’ll be some country music, there’ll be horns, dance music,” Walters said. “We try to make it family friendly but provide a variety so if you don’t like country, come back in an hour there will be something you can shag to.”
Entrance to the festival is $10, a necessity due to the security, infrastructure and facility needs to hold the festival, Walters said.
“We do charge an admission for our festivals because we don’t have the support of a local municipality to provide us with the infrastructure needs of the festival,” she said. “So we have to offset our costs somewhat because we’re paying for the security, we’re paying for the portable restrooms, we’re paying for the garbage pickup. Things a city would normally handle for their own festival, we don’t have that type of support.”
One big change in the 43rd annual occurrence of the event is that the kids zone with inflatables, coloring pages and other childrens’ activities will be free of charge to attendees.
Walters said the festival started more than four decades ago when local business owners decided to hold a festival to showcase the Little River waterfront.
“The funny story I think the way it goes is the first year they had the festival, the business owners’ children were all over the place getting in the way,” Walters said. “So, the next year they decided to have them go crabbing to give them something to do so the adults could man their booths and host a festival and hence the name Blue Crab Festival.”
The World Famous Blue Crab Festival will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 17 and 18 off Mineola Avenue in Littler River. Information on where to park including lots with shuttles to and from the festival can be found at bluecrabfestival.org/parking.
Tommy Cardinal is the managing editor of MyHorryNews. Reach him at 843-488-7244 or t[email protected]. Follow him on X @BySTCardinal.