Isle of Palms Magazine Summer 2017

16 www.IsleOfPalmsMagazine.com | www.ILoveIOP.com | www.IOPmag.com vacation. He moved to Isle of Palms shortly after taking his new job. He explained that he did a little too much drinking one Friday night and didn’t make it back to James Island. While he was on his route the next day, he saw a “For Rent” sign on a house on Cameron Boulevard. He knocked on the door and let the owner know he was ready to move in, and he did so immediately – before he finished delivering the mail. Myatt, who still lives on Isle of Palms, has fond and vivid memories of his days as a bar owner and as a young, unattached male living in a somewhat isolated beach town. There was the time, for instance, that he finished delivering the mail and changed from his Postal Service uniform into a ragged Citadel T-shirt in preparation for a night of drinking at the Windjammer, which is still a popular island bar. When closing time rolled around, he was atop the pool table – for reasons known only to him – and a friend thought it might be funny to light the tee on fire. The end-of-the-night show was so entertaining that the manager of the bar asked him to return the next evening for a repeat performance. Then there was the Jan. 26, 1986, Super Bowl party at Malibu East. Myatt and his partner, Barry McClellan, concocted a plan to make the battle for National Football League supremacy between the Bears and the Patriots a little more interesting for their patrons. Every time one team lit up the scoreboard, the opposing team’s fans were required to get lit up by guzzling down beer and schnapps. Myatt and McClellan thought they would drum up publicity for their party by running radio ads, but they soon realized that such a plan would be beyond their limited financial means. They solved this problem with the help of a friend at the radio station, who provided them with the ads that everyone in the bar thought were being broadcast throughout the entire Lowcountry and beyond. In fact, the only people who were hearing the ads were those who were already enjoying the festivities at Malibu East. “We should have gone to jail on that one,” Myatt commented. A few days later, he got a frantic phone call from his manager, letting him know that a health inspector had showed up at the bar. Myatt’s orders were to do everything possible to keep him from seeing where the food was prepared. “”We had used the kitchen for the Super Bowl party, and it looked like something from the Lucille Ball Show,” he remembered. Myatt arrived at the bar shortly thereafter, offered the inspector a beer and a shot and maybe another beer and another shot and eventually had to help him to his car. The inspector never laid eyes on the kitchen and Malibu East “earned” an “A” rating. Myatt’s best marketing idea ever had to do more with women than with beer. Since bars didn’t admit potential patrons who were wearing only a bathing suit, an acquaintance had purchased a large number of half shirts that provided cover for bikini tops and such – but he was unable to sell them. Myatt offered to buy them all if he would print “Follow Me To” on the front and “Malibu East” on the back. “We gave them to every woman on the beach. It was one of our greatest gimmicks,” he said. Another marketing effort didn’t work as well. A local radio station came up with a plan to drop 5,000 pingpong balls from an airplane onto the beach. Each ball was imprinted with “Follow Me To Malibu East” and the name of the station, and every 50th ball was worth a free drink at the bar. Myatt and his cohorts soon found out that ocean breezes can play havoc with airborne pingpong balls. The first group landed in the Red & White Market parking lot on Palm Boulevard, while the next set of balls found the Atlantic Ocean, about 100 yards off shore. “Every drunk in town was out there swimming, looking for pingpong balls,” Myatt remembered. Later, Some of Ricky’s marketing ideas were winners and others were losers. This one would probably be considered to be in the latter category. Photo by Jess Wood Photography.