I also visited the Seacrest Beach area last week and was SO dismayed to see a solid line of chairs stretching from the Sandy Shores neighborhood all the way down to Rosemary. We bring our own two chairs and one umbrella and could not find a single tiny piece of water front sand to sit on without hiking down to Paradise by the Sea and "trespassing" on "their" sand. We stay in Sunset Beach which shares the access with the big Seacrest neighborhood across the street. That access has always been busy, but it all my years coming here I have never seen the chair vendors so bad. It's a sad day when you can't sit at your own neighborhood access without sitting behind three rows of chairs.
It seems like the chair vendors are being hired to basically build temporary fencing every day marking off "their" private beach. The menacing PRIVATE PROPERTY signs and chair set ups created a terrible vibe on the beach between vendors and people who want to carry in their own chairs. I witnessed angry confrontations between chair vendors and people who tried to set up around them. One person tried to sit between the property lines / a gap in the chairs and was told to move because they "have" to keep the lane cleared for water sport rentals. BS. The mood on the beach that week was anything but chilled out and relaxing. The look of the beach was the exact opposite of
what is being heavily marketed by local realtors, rental agencies, the tourism board and sites
like SoWal.com and 30A.com.
People who have never been there before probably assumed you HAVE to pay $60+ a day to rent a chair. Some people do want to rent chairs, but not everyone. There has to be room on the beach for both. I understand there is a complicated public vs private debate, and that these guys are just doing a job that they have been hired to do, but there has GOT to be a better solution. Most of these chairs sat out all day at less than 50% occupancy. I even thought I would "outsmart" them one day and set up my own chairs at 7 a.m. but they were already out there in full force at that early hour!! I don't want to sit right in front of a rental chair anymore than they want me to.... and I would practically have to sit IN the water because they set up so close to the wet sand.
Seems like an easy solution would be to not set them up until people actually arrive to use them. If they arrive at noon, they sit behind other visitors who've arrived early. If they leave early, the chair gets picked up or dusted off and reset for the next guest. No moving other people's chairs. Leave a towel on your chair if you're leaving for lunch and coming back later. Or restrict vendors to 50% of the area, and not the 50% right next to the water! But it all comes down to enforcement and it seems like these vendors have been allowed/hired to have the run of the beach, to the detriment and disappointment of MANY visitors. Everyone I chatted with that week was shocked at how much valuable beach real estate the vendors were taking.
As to the discussion above, our beach set up consists of two $30 Nautica chairs and a $40 SportBrella from Sam's Club. The umbrella is very sturdy and we can safely stake it down if it gets windy. This set up has served us well for years and we don't mind carrying it over. A set up to last for years for the same price as two days of chair rentals - makes sense to me! Now if only we could find a piece of water front sand to put it on! I really do try to
"beach like a local" but these rampant chair vendors sure do make it hard!!
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