Golf cart ‘taxis’ zip fans around Gamecock football tailgates. Has it gotten out of hand?

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The kids are packed in like sardines, limbs overlapping and pouring out of the too-small-for-six-people golf cart taking them to their next tailgate.

Something loud and up-tempo is bleating from the vehicle’s speakers. The students, dripping in garnet and black, are dancing and singing along. It’s a party, after all.

The scene repeats all around the area encompassing Williams-Brice Stadium, south of downtown Columbia. This somewhat blighted, industrial-looking corridor transforms seven or eight times a year, when University of South Carolina football draws 60,000 to 80,000 people each home game.

Some shrewd business people have taken that party atmosphere and turned it into an entire economy. There are people selling peanuts and water bottles, while others offer front lawns and business lots for $30, $40 and $50 per parking spot.

And a host of intrepid individuals bring out golf cart “taxis” offering rides for hire, parading people around the stadium and shuttling them from one tailgate to another.

But the taxi culture has created what some describe as a more chaotic environment around game days. Golf cart drivers say fan safety is a priority, but not everyone believes it. And where there has been a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude toward the carts up until recently, city leaders now say someone may have to intervene.

‘Looking for a hustle’

Chucky Hamilton’s six-seater golf cart is decked out with flashing lights, a karaoke machine and even a video camera to give his customers a memento from their ride with him.

His party-bus version of a golf cart “taxi” stands out among the dozens of other carts zipping around the outside of Williams-Brice. About an hour before the game begins Saturday, he lingers on Key Road, outside of the Cockabooses, looking for his next fare among the line of retrofitted railroad cars where fans host tailgates.

Even if they’re not going to the game, people come out in droves for the party atmosphere that surrounds the stadium seven or eight times each year. And it’s easy to rack up several miles of steps traveling between tailgates. That’s where Hamilton and his colleagues come in.

“People are looking for a hustle,” Hamilton said, explaining that there’s good money in shuttling people around big events. He charges $10 per person during events like this.

Hamilton bought his first golf cart to help promote a friend’s music, but then he quickly discovered he could also use it to offer people rides home from the bars around Charlotte. That’s when he started his business Goldie’s Chariot, which gives $5 rides around that city’s bar scene on weeknights and $10 per ride on weekends. Now, he works around the region, covering events in Columbia, Charlotte and various spots in between.

He estimates he gives 20-200 rides per game, depending on factors like weather and attendance. On this day, as USC prepares to face Missouri, he’s doing pretty well.

“It’s always been crazy chaos since day one,” he said, but he added it feels like it’s gotten more chaotic since the COVID-19 pandemic because more and more people are looking for ways to make money on the side.

He drives to make money, he acknowledged, but he also said one of the big reasons he does it is to provide a safe ride for people who have had too much to drink, or otherwise can’t safely navigate the roadways during and after a USC game.

“It started off with just trying to get kids back and forth safely,” agreed Darnell Anderson, who operates a golf cart taxi business on game days with his family. They live in a home on Andrews Road, just around the corner from USC’s fraternity tailgate lot and many other popular tailgate locations.

Anderson’s family started offering golf cart rides during games about seven years ago, after watching potentially inebriated fans and students stumble home in the midst of heavy post-game traffic.

Reckless driving?

But while golf cart drivers say they are there to make game days safer, not everyone agrees they are accomplishing that mission.

A caravan of golf carts whiz down Rosewood drive with precision – pick up a fare, drop them off, repeat. It’s carts, carts, carts by 2:15 p.m. when the gates at Williams-Brice open: Carts weaving through traffic, carts cutting through the grassy street shoulders, carts sitting in emergency lanes.

“I would say reckless is a good word,” to describe a lot of the driving, said Columbia City Councilman Peter Brown. “It’s really bad.”

This summer, Columbia council members discussed effectively banning golf carts “for hire,” outlawing operations like Hamilton’s within the city limits.

Mayor Daniel Rickenmann at the time said there are “clear safety concerns,” specifically with the commercial use of golf carts. But the council tabled the conversation and hasn’t picked it up since.

Joey Bass has watched the chaos unfold pretty much every game day for the last 20 years. He, too, mans a golf cart on game day. Today, he’s selling parking spots at the Young Office lot on Shop Road. He will occasionally give someone a lift to the stadium gates, but mostly he watches over the parking lot.

The golf carts have not always been part of USC game day culture. He estimates they started to really get popular around seven or eight years ago.

He doesn’t think it’s bad that they are part of the ecosystem, but he said he’s also witnessed some bad behavior from cart drivers, like the weaving through traffic. He said he’s even seen a cart driver hit students before.

But the cart drivers say the judgment isn’t always fair.

“You really don’t want to see anything bad happen in your city,” Anderson said.

One issue, Bass and Hamilton agreed, is that not every cart is properly registered.

To operate a golf cart on a public road in South Carolina, the vehicle has to be registered with the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Hamilton said he also has to have insurance on his cart to operate it commercially.

“The majority of golf carts down here don’t have that [registration] sticker,” Bass said.

‘Something bad is going to happen’

A small golf cart is kicking up dirt as it rolls up to a group of students walking toward the stadium. The driver asks if they need a ride – $3 per person. The students decline, but then change their minds and flag the driver down before she disappears around the bend.

There aren’t enough seats for all of them, but that doesn’t bother the students or the driver. The students simply double-up, sitting on each others laps.

Right now, pretty much everyone is asking to be taken to the fraternity tailgate lot, Hamilton said. Then they’ll either want to go to the game or be taken back to their dorms. In the meantime, the drivers look for foot traffic elsewhere.

“We’ll be going all night,” Anderson said.

A week from this interview, drivers will report to the last home game of the season — a 4 p.m. Saturday match against Wofford that is sure to bring even more energy.

But whether things will remain the same next season is unclear.

“It’s likely we’ll have to head down a road where [the carts] will have to be regulated,” Brown, the city councilman, said. “The question is, who’s going to regulate them?”

One problem is that the carts have already been given an informal green light, simply by being allowed to operate. Brown described it as a “don’t ask, don’t tell” environment. But businesses of any kind in the city or county are supposed to be licensed. Neither the city nor the county have programs to give the drivers those permits, according to Brown and Richland County Council chair Jesica Mackey.

The city would like the state legislature to step in and add clearer language to state law around the golf carts for hire. But if that doesn’t happen, it’s likely the city will enact its own rules.

“At some point, we’re going to have to deal with it,” Brown told The State. “One of these days, something bad is going to happen and everybody’s going to say, ‘I don’t know why we never did anything about this.’”