Jaws Resortwear 100-ft shark facade

Garden City, South Carolina, United States

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Buildings and structures

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A giant shark facade, reported by the Myrtle Beach Sun News in 2024 as 100 feet long, forms the entrance to Jaws Resortwear, a beachwear shop on U.S. 17 in Garden City Beach, South Carolina. Sculptor Bob Duato built it for a store that opened in September 2000.

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Jaws Resortwear 100-ft shark facade

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Site-level location · 33.5878° N, 79.0083° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

In 2024 the Myrtle Beach Sun News described visitors entering this beachwear shop through the open jaws of a shark. The paper said the idea began as a dream: in the late 1990s businessman David Eliyahu pictured tourists by the thousands entering his shop through a giant shark's mouth. He took it to Bob Duato, a sculptor who had come to Myrtle Beach from Cape Cod in 1989 to help rebuild after Hurricane Hugo, and who worked in concrete, fiberglass and steel from a small shop off Pine Island Road.

Duato told the paper he had to work out the engineering for himself. A structure of that size attached to a building in Horry County had to meet strict building codes and wind requirements, so he welded a rebar frame, covered it with a concrete and stucco mix and painted it. He charged $20,000 for the first sculpture and, the paper says, upwards of $50,000 for similar pieces later.

Jaws Resortwear opened in September 2000, and by June 2001 the Sun News described the area as being in a "frenzy" of themed sculptures on building facades. Duato's explanation: "If you have a strip of five or six stores and you put a big shark in front of one of them, all those people are going to stop at the one that's got the shark."

The Sun News reported that the shark has been regularly repainted and has stood up well to the storms that have passed through. Eliyahu's son, who ran the business in 2024, called it a "staple of the area", and said visitors stop daily to be photographed in its mouth. Length is given differently elsewhere: Roadside America's field report describes the blue shark as "at least 50-ft. long". The Sun News also reported that a restored shark head from a Clearview Cable billboard was placed at the front corner of the parking lot.

Roadside America lists the shop at 3055 South Highway 17 (listing from 2013).

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

The Sun News (2024) and Roadside America describe the shark's mouth as the shop's entrance; visitors were reported in 2024 to stop daily for photos in its mouth. Check the shop for opening hours.

ACCESS

Jaws Resortwear is a working beachwear shop on U.S. 17 in Garden City Beach, SC; Roadside America lists the address as 3055 S Hwy 17.

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Wings World Shark

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

A large fiberglass shark sculpture, part of the wider Grand Strand tradition of oversized novelty shark sculptures at beachwear and gift outlets pioneered by artist Bob Duato, stands in a parking lot between a gas station and the Wings World store at 5700 South Kings Highway in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Roadside giants

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8.1 km away

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