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MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - Whether you’re sporting a jersey or watching for the commercials, Grand Strand bars are getting ready to become Super Bowl headquarters Sunday.

Sunday, Kansas City fans will gather at the designated “fan” bar 20 minutes down the road from where Philly fans are heading.

Many Chief’s fans call Thee Office Casual Food and Spirits their headquarters on Sundays. Anthony Ciccone, the bar’s owner said they are pulling out all the stops for the Super Bowl.

Aside from your typical wings on game day, Ciccone said he ordered ribs and barbecue from Kansas City. They’ll even have cheesesteaks and soft pretzels for the Eagles fans.

He said it’s all hands on deck for the big game and it’s been great having the fans come out in full force all season long.

“Whether it’s Monday night, Saturday, Sunday, they all show up. It’s funny because, in the beginning, it was 10 or 12 people, but as they started rolling along the crowd got bigger and bigger,” said Ciccone.

Meanwhile, Philly fans sing “Fly Eagles Fly” at the Coastal Ale House.

Kurt Buchler, Coastal Ale House’s owner said fans will have a chance to win a 55″ TV and a 50/50 raffle prize.

Buchler said they are serving up an all-day happy hour and Philly favorites like cheesesteaks, Taylor pork rolls and egg sandwiches.

He said it will also be all hands on deck at Coastal Ale House except for staff members who are Eagles fans who are getting the night off.

He said he loves having the fans eat, drink and cheer on the eagles every Sunday.

“I think they’re just superstitious like hey this is where we go and get wins so we’re going to come back this week and hopefully get one more win. This year with the eagles has just been really special,” said Buchler.

No matter who you’re rooting for, get there early because both bars are typically packed with fans.

Super Bowl LVII kicks off Sunday at 6:30 p.m.

Copyright 2023 WMBF. All rights reserved.

How the mighty have fallen.

Cryptocurrency companies grabbed the spotlight during the 2022 Super Bowl, with commercials from a handful of newcomers to advertising’s biggest stage: FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro. Some marketing experts dubbed it the “Crypto Bowl.”

A year later, the industry has been humbled by a massive downturn in crypto prices, as well as the bankruptcy of several well-known companies.

The dramatic turnaround harkens back to 2000, when dot-com companies such as Pets.com ran Super Bowl ads, only to go out of business within a year or two.

This year, crypto companies have “zero representation,” said Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports.

Here’s a look at the crypto companies that advertised in last year’s Super Bowl and where they stand now:

FTX: BANKRUPT

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX was one of biggest advertisers in last year’s Super Bowl, featuring ads that included celebrity comedian Larry David. While at the time FTX was the world’s second or third largest crypto exchange, it didn’t operate a large business in the U.S.

Within 10 months of the Super Bowl, FTX was bankrupt. The Bahamas-based company collapsed after investors started pulling their deposits on concerns about the company’s balance sheet. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 11.

FTX's founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested and charged with defrauding customers out of billions of dollars. He is scheduled to go on trial in October.

David, along with other celebrities such as football star Tom Brady and basketball star Stephen Curry, was named in a lawsuit that argued their celebrity status made them culpable for promoting the firm’s failed business model.

CRYPTO.COM: HUMBLED

While Crypto.com still is operating, the company is significantly less healthy than it was a year earlier.

The Singapore-based company announced in January that it was laying off 20% of its workforce, on top of layoffs implemented in late 2022. The company also disclosed that a significant part of its assets were tied up in low-quality cryptocurrency coins like the Shiba Inu Coin.

Like FTX, Crypto.com tried to make a name for itself through sports sponsorships. The company spent $700 million for the naming rights to the former Staples Center, where the Los Angeles Lakers play. It's now the Crypto.com Arena. The company's 2022 Super Bowl ad featured basketball superstar LeBron James, with the tagline “fortune favors the brave.”

Crypto.com said its layoffs were due to a “confluence of negative economic developments” but its CEO placed a significant amount of blame on the collapse of FTX.

COINBASE: IN LEGAL HOT WATER

Coinbase had one of the weirder ads at least year’s Super Bowl, involving a floating QR code that would take users to a promotion where the company was giving away millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies. Marketing experts named it one of the more successful ads of the game, since it took people by surprise and stood out, though many viewers found it confusing.

Shares of publicly traded Coinbase have fallen by more than 70% since last year’s game. With digital currencies such as bitcoin plunging, the company has seen trading revenues dry up as investors have avoided buying crypto altogether.

The company also announced layoffs equal to about 20% of its workforce and the company’s CEO has said the company is bracing for what they are calling “a crypto winter.”

Further, Coinbase has drawn the attention of U.S. regulators. The company had to pay $100 million to settle a New York State investigation into whether it was allowing users to sign up for accounts without adequate background checks. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also looking into whether to ban the cryptocurrency practice of “staking,” which had been big business for Coinbase in the past.

ETORO: NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS?

The fourth crypto company to have a Super Bowl ad last year was eToro. The company, based in Israel, ran an ad promoting "social investing.”

Unlike FTX, Coinbase and Crypto.com, eToro has largely avoided any negative news in the past year. The company expanded its offerings beyond crypto to allow users to buy stocks and options as well as non-fungible tokens, better known as NFTs.

This story was originally published February 10, 2023, 10:18 AM.

One day in 2020, at the pandemic’s height, an earnest-looking man with long hair the color of Buffalo sauce stepped up to a podium in Lincoln, Nebraska, to address his city council during its public comment period. His unexpected topic, as he framed it: It was time to end the deception.

“I propose that we as a city remove the name `boneless wings’ from our menus and from our hearts,” said Ander Christensen, who managed to be both persuasive and tongue-in-cheek all at once. “We’ve been living a lie for far too long.”

With the Super Bowl at hand, behold the cheerful untruth that has been perpetrated upon (and generally with the blessing of) the chicken-consuming citizens of the United States on menus across the land: a “boneless wing” that isn’t a wing at all.

Odds are you already knew that — though spot checks over the past year at a smattering of wing joints (see what we did there?) suggest that a healthy amount of Americans don't. But those little white-meat nuggets, tasty as they may be, offer a glimpse into how things are marketed, how people believe them — and whether it matters to anyone but the chicken.

This weekend, according to the National Chicken Council, Americans are set to eat 1.45 billion chicken wings. So if you ever wanted a deep dive into what it means to eat the wings that aren't — and how the chicken wing's proximity to beer, good times and football sent it soaring — now's the time.

Today's food landscape is brimming with these gentle impostors — things we eat that pass as other things we eat.

Surimi is fish that effectively becomes crab or lobster meat for many of us — and stars in California rolls across the land. Carrots are cut and buffed until their edges are curved and smooth, becoming “ baby carrots ” or, slightly more truthfully, “baby-cut carrots.” Impossible Burgers are plant-based delicacies that carry many of meat's characteristics without ever having been near an animal. And “Chilean sea bass"? Not a bass at all, but a rebrand of something called a Patagonian toothfish.

Part of the reason for the rise of the “boneless wing” is money. In recent years, with prices of actual chicken wings rising, the alternative became more cost effective. The average price for prepared “boneless wings” is $4.99 a pound compared with $8.38 a pound for bone-in wings, according to Tom Super, senior vice president of communications for the National Chicken Council, citing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He calls it “a way to move more boneless/skinless breast meat that continues currently to be in ample supply.”

“While many wing consumers argue that the wing needs a bone to impart a special taste, the ongoing success of the boneless wings has proven there are plenty of boneless wing diners,” Super said in an email.

Why? Part of it is because “boneless wings” — the quotation marks will remain for the duration of our time together — summon a powerful backstory.

“You’re associating it with the Super Bowl and parties and fun, so you transform the perception of the product,” says Christopher Kimball, founder of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, a company whose magazine and instructional TV show help people cook and teach them about food.

“Most people have no idea where any of this stuff comes from,” Kimball says. “You can blame the food companies, but we’re buying it.”

We accept them — embrace them, even. And what does it really matter, you say? They're delicious, they're convenient. So why poke into things that pair so perfectly with beer and make the sports-watching world a better place?

Here's one possible reason: Could they be a microcosm of the national willingness to accept things that aren't what they purport to be? And isn't that something that this country struggles with mightily, particularly in the misinformation- and disinformation-saturated years since the “boneless wing” entered our world?

“It’s not really wrong, but are we tricking people?” wonders Matthew Read, who teaches advertising at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, after two decades with ad agencies. He hosts a cooking show on local television called “Spatchcock Funk.”

“The wing,” he says, "has gone from being an actual part of chicken to being just something you can sauce and eat with your hands.”

Whether cut from actual flying-related appendages or not, “boneless wings” have taken hold. The chicken council, which credits the behemoth chain Buffalo Wild Wings with inventing them, asked wing eaters in 2018 which kind of wings they preferred, and 40% placed themselves on Team Boneless. Previous years were even higher.

Christensen, a chemical engineer by day, has been on his wing crusade for years. It began when he was in college, and a group of friends had all just split with their girlfriends. Suddenly they had extra money and time, so they started going to wing restaurants three times a week. He began noticing how many “boneless wings” were ordered with no sense that they weren't what they purported to be. A semi-comedic cause was born.

“I'm looking around and saying, `Why doesn't anybody care?'” he said in an interview this week.

He has done informal surveys, accosting people about their wing habits, including at one recent college football game in Ohio. “The vast majority of people have no clue. Most people think it’s part of the wing. Some think it’s part of the thigh. A small group realized that it was from the chicken breast.”

His theory: Generations that grew up on chicken nuggets turn to “boneless wings” as a way of allowing themselves to continue those eating habits. “They get to pretend they're eating like adults,” he says.

Could the very definition of the word “wing” be changing? Many wing places now offer a “cauliflower wing” alternative, whose only relationship with an actual wing is the sauce. And some vegan “wing” recipes even suggest inserting a popsicle stick into the cauliflower to approximate a chicken bone.

“Our idea of what a wing is comes from what we’re told we’re eating,” says Alexandra Plakias, who teaches at Hamilton College in New York and is the author of “Thinking Through Food: A Philosophical Introduction.”

“These kinds of mini-deceptions that seem fun kind of normalize manipulation,” Plakias says. “Is a wing a part of a bird, or is a wing a style of sauce? And that ambiguity is where I think we open up room for deception."

And so perhaps the language evolves, though there are pockets of skeptics.

“Personally, I do think it matters. I want to know exactly what it is that I’m ordering and what’s in my food," says Natalie Visconti, 20, of Bridgewater, New Jersey, a sophomore at Penn State University and a self-described “traditional wing” aficionado.

Christensen vows to carry on, and mentions — almost in passing — that he's gunning to become “the world's first chicken-wing lobbyist.” His efforts have drawn some scorn; people right and left accuse him of carrying a coded message about something political. He insists it's nothing more than culinary truth-seeking.

“Genuinely, I really only care about boneless wings,” he says. "I have one small hill to die on. But it’s mine.”

Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation for The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted

This story was originally published February 10, 2023, 10:01 AM.

Imagine what it’s like to live in a tourist area when all the tourists go home.

All that stuff to do? A beach without crowds? Restaurants easy to get into — golf courses, amusement parks and shopping. And parking spaces!

If follows then that Travel Lens, an online travel publication, found most of the top 10 best places for a Staycation are well-known vacation spots.

And the No. 1 location in the United State is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina’s golf course mecca with its 60 miles of uninterrupted beaches.

It scored 8.15 out of 10 based on Travel Lens’ analysis of cost, number of restaurants and attractions, climate and safety.

“20 million visitors a year are drawn to Myrtle Beach thanks to its reputation as the best location for golfers, playing host to over 90 golf courses,” Travel Lens said, noting that it is “known affectionately as the seafood capital of South Carolina.”

There are about 1,900 restaurants and 425 hotels. The population of Myrtle Beach itself is about 37,000 and the greater Myrtle Beach area has more than half a million people, making it one of South Carolina’s fastest growing areas.

Once home to the Waccamaw people, Myrtle Beach was launched as a resort area with the development of a railroad from Conway and the Seaside Inn on the beach by Franklin Burroughs in the early 1900s. The company he founded ultimately because Burroughs and Chapin, which is largely responsible for the development of Myrtle Beach as a tourist destination.

They own Broadway at the Beach, Barefoot Landing and a host of other properties.

Through the years, Myrtle Beach has worked with some success to make it a year-round destination.

Also in the top 10 on Travel Lens’ Staycation list is Charleston, a perennial favorite on practically every list of favorites. Charleston was ranked at number eight with a score of 6.72.

The other cities in the top 10 were Orlando, Florida; Key West, Florida; Page, Arizona; Moab, Utah; Tampa, Florida; Miami, Florida; Stanley, Idaho; and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

NORTH MYRTLE BEACH — Singer Jimmy Buffett is expanding his island lifestyle-themed business brand along the Grand Strand, this time with hotels in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach.

A groundbreaking is slated for later this year on a 150-room Compass by Margaritaville hotel located on the former site of the Castaway Beach Inn at 1717 South Ocean Blvd. in North Myrtle Beach’s Crescent Beach, according to company officials.

The boutique hotel, scheduled to open in 2025, will feature indoor and outdoor pools, a fitness center, meeting spaces, a breakfast buffet, Provisions Grab & Go and a 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar & Grill.

Margaritaville Hotels & Resorts officials said they also plan to bring a future Margaritaville Beach Resort in neighboring Myrtle Beach but did not share any details on the planned project.

Compass by Margaritaville is the newest concept for the hospitality group founded in 1985, with its first boutique hotel opening in 2020 in Anna Maria Sound, Fla. and later expanding to Medford, Ore.

In all, more than 40 Buffett-themed hotels and condos have opened or are planned from Times Square to San Diego to the Dominican Republic. The Grand Strand hotels are Margaritaville’s first in South Carolina. A 130-room hotel is planned for Beaufort, N.C.

Buffett, 76, has recorded more than 30 albums since 1970, creating business empire from his breezy songs about escaping to the beach and sea.

Buffett already has a Margaritaville restaurant at Broadway at the Beach and two LandShark Bar & Grill locations, one at Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach and another next to the SkyWheel in downtown Myrtle Beach.

His sister Lucy Buffett separately owns a restaurant, LuLu’s, in Barefoot Landing about three miles south of the planned North Myrtle Beach hotel.

“We have a dedicated and rich history in Myrtle Beach with our Margaritaville Restaurant and two LandShark Bar & Grill locations,” said Jim Wiseman, president of Development at Margaritaville in a statement. “With the addition of Compass Hotel North Myrtle Beach and Margaritaville Beach Resort Myrtle Beach, we are expanding our presence and bringing our award-winning hospitality experiences.”

A Buffett-themed 55 and older residential community called Latitude Margaritaville, named after his popular song, opened in Hardeeville near Hilton Head Island in 2020. Amenities include hatched-roof bandshell with a concert stage, Fins Up! fitness center, Latitude Bar & Chill Restaurant, Changes in Attitude Bar, Barkaritaville dog park, Last Mango Theater and the Coconut Telegraph business center.

Rob Salvino, professor of economics at Coastal Carolina University, said there’s no question that the popularity of the Margaritaville brand is driven by Buffett’s fans who are commonly nicknamed Parrott Heads.

“My general economic thought would be the demographics,” Salvino said. “I mean the Jimmy Buffett fans are a huge part of the Baby Boomer generation and they’re moving to coastal regions.”

Salvino said he is teaching a commercial real estate class this semester and as his students research different sectors, they are finding the hospitality industry on a national level as a whole is suffering, but not leisure travel as many people are starting to travel coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That’s Myrtle Beach,” Salvino said. “We’re not business travel. We are kind of the opposite of the national experience with that, but then again Buffett, leisure tourism. It all just fits very well.

“It just fits that island lifestyle. It’s a very popular product for people wanting to be on the coast.”