There are no strangers at Bert’s Market. “Patronized by freaks, surfers, skaters, crunks, retirees, tourists, stoners, day trippers, hippies, hipsters, and regular folk,” as the website proclaims, the small corner store is the only grocery on the island of Folly Beach, South Carolina. It’s hard to say whether Bert’s grew into a community hub or was born that way. Either way, it beats to the island’s easy coastal rhythm around the clock.
To step inside is to enter an eclectic, sun-soaked Folly Beach town hall that’s open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year. Stickers around the shop promise, “We may doze, but we never close.” The staff greets familiar faces by name and newcomers with equal warmth in their smiles.
Outside in the morning light, surfers coming in from dawn patrol beeline for the sidewalk order window, eager for warm breakfast burritos swaddled in tinfoil; beachgoers stock up on sunscreen and pick up wide-brimmed straw hats; construction workers tote out housemade wraps, sandwiches, and slices of pie for lunch; musicians swing by for guitar strings and picks on their way to gigs; families renting bungalows down the street plan tomorrow morning’s breakfast with packs of frozen Callie’s sausage and cinnamon biscuits. As the main street bars empty out at two a.m., Ms. Lee, a ten-year-plus veteran staff member, holds down the fort as revelers flood the shop and unwrap cheeseburgers and corndogs for the walk home.
Bert’s has only closed once in recent memory—with a push from the city of Folly Beach, and to relieve any burdens to Public Safety Department officers—during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. But otherwise it remains open, even during storms. Omar Colon, who bought Bert’s with his wife, Julie, in 2010 from his father-in-law, founder Bert Hastings, is no stranger to staying with a few staffers in the apartments above the store during severe weather, helping neighbors through the aisles, and illuminating the way with flashlights when the power goes out.
“Everyone is on an equal tier—there’s no hierarchy,” Colon says, “whether you’re homeless and there for free coffee and a seventy-five-cent hot dog, or a local, or a tourist, or a wealthy CEO.” The shop and its always-free coffee corner have seen a few changes over the years, including a wave of local products added to the shelves and a stocked, organic deli. But the ethos has stayed the same: “It’s a gathering place where we can be present.”…