Locals and visitors alike will tell you there’s no finer way to spend an evening than sitting on a deck watching the sun set over the Intracoastal Waterway. The Boathouse restaurant at Breach Inlet is one such spectacular place to enjoy Mother Nature’s bounty, especially while enjoying a refreshing cocktail and a sampling of Lowcountry seafood.
The spot has long been a place near and dear to locals’ hearts but not in the way we recognize it today. In the 1950s, the Bunch family owned the Inlet Inn there, a popular small restaurant with a few rooms for rent upstairs. Later, a full-service Esso gas station was built on the property. “The gas station sold more beer than gas,” one former resident quipped. Another resident who grew up on the island in the 1960s played on a youth baseball team at the Isle of Palms playground that the business sponsored. He wore the Esso name on his team uniform.
The Esso station later became Texaco. “They had a huge goose named Huey who watched over the gas pumps,” Mount Pleasant resident Stewart Nilsen remembered. Huey apparently took his job very seriously and was known to attack customers pumping gas. Former island resident Bobby Garey added, “He was a fierce goose – scary,” and explained that the goose would see a reflection of himself in the chrome. “Huey was in love with the gas pump!”
The service station was comprised of two buildings that were connected – one side was the filling station, and the adjacent building was a taller structure which served as the garage. That side was built higher to allow for vehicles to be lifted so that mechanics could work underneath them. In the late 1970s, the business was sold and the new owners embarked on a completely different venture. The taller side of the building became a tackle shop, and the other side became a bar. It also had a separate wing for a pool room.
The bar was called “Down Under” by locals. “It was actually named Mai Li’s,” Garey said. A woman named Mai Li and her husband known as Buddha Bob took over the entire site. She ran the bar which also was a restaurant, and he ran the tackle shop and the marina. Mai Li was a great cook and served Thai food prepared with peppers that her sister in Thailand sent her. She was especially famous for her wonton soup but also offered fish specials cooked with what she had caught herself. And she made great beef jerky.
Most of the bar’s music came from a jukebox stocked with fantastic selections. There was also a house band, the Idol Hanz, which had a weekly gig on Thursday nights. Garey played bass for the group. “The bar was almost strictly a locals’ spot,” Garey said. “It was rare for someone to come in that none of the regulars knew.” However, he recalled that Jimmy Buffett’s bus pulled up one night. The road crew came in, although Buffett stayed on the bus. Garey added that two young women sang there fairly regularly. They later became popular as the Indigo Girls.
The action wasn’t just confined to the bar and restaurant, though. “The marina was quite an active scene,” Garey explained. “On Saturday nights, after the bars on the Front Beach closed down, a lot of people ended up on the floating dock. And there were always girls down there sunbathing, too.”
People lived on some of the boats that were moored at the small marina. “Our band had a boat, also called the Idol Hanz, and I lived on our boat,” Garey said. “I had a job working in the tackle shop and would open it at 6 in the morning. I was paid with free meals in the bar and lived off Mai Li’s cooking.” The tackle shop had an icehouse and sold big blocks of ice for commercial fishermen who launched their boats from the ramp there. Folks planning to crab or fish off the bridge at Breach Inlet could get what they needed there as well.
“It was a glorious time. And it was home for a lot of years,” Garey mused.
The couple later sold the businesses to Scott McClain, and it was renamed Creekside Marina Tackle and Restaurant. But in 1989, Hurricane Hugo wreaked havoc on the buildings and they were subsequently demolished. The rest, as they say, is history.
By Mary Coy
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