This Saturday: Dragon Boats, a Drummer Costume Contest, and a Line You Can Skip

The Ground Zero Dragon Boat Festival hits Grand Park this weekend. Here's what to expect — and how to eat well while you're there.

Saturday morning at Grand Park, twenty paddlers and a drummer climb into a dragon boat and try to go faster than everyone else. Then they do it again. Spectators watch for free from the shore. Someone shows up in a full costume to bang the drum. A DJ keeps the energy up between heats. Kids are running around in the family fun zone. It's a little chaotic, a little competitive, and completely free to attend — which is honestly the best combination.

The Ground Zero Dragon Boat Festival is an annual fundraiser, and it's been part of the Grand Strand's spring calendar long enough to feel like a fixture. The format is simple: teams of 20 paddlers race in boats shaped like dragons, with a drummer at the bow setting the pace. There's an awards ceremony, a live DJ, food trucks, local vendors, and — this is the detail that earns its own sentence — a drummer costume contest. The whole thing runs 9 to 4.

This is the kind of event that says something real about Myrtle Beach. Not the beach bars, not the tourist strip — a Saturday morning where local teams show up in costume to paddle for a charity, and a whole stretch of shoreline turns into cheering section. The city has a personality. This is part of it.

If you're going — and you should — Nito's Empanadas will be on site. Fresh off his Peoples Champion win at the Myrtle Beach Food Truck and Music Festival, Damian's truck is one of several vendors at Saturday's festival. If you want to skip the line: open Nito's on Shortlist Pass, pick your empanadas, and choose a pickup time. They'll be ready when you walk up. No waiting, no guessing where the truck is parked.

Favorite Nito's now and their location drops straight to your home feed — you'll know exactly where they're set up the moment they post it Saturday morning.

See you at Grand Park.