Choose Charleston

Every now and again, I run through the local Craigslist just to catch a sense of what folks are buying, selling, or trading. What kinds of gigs are emerging, what openings for talent are on the upswing, and who is scouting out whom?

The method, I’ll grant you, is hardly scientific. Its fundamental limitation is that it only speaks of the segment of the population that chooses to use online posting to announce its hopes and dreams.

Some of it is truly scary. “Surely not in gentle Charleston,” I have whispered many a time while going clickety-click through the ads.

We could simply blame ‘bots for anything too out of character, of course, but it is also true that these are changing times and a changing place. People are moving to the South Carolina Lowcountry at an increasingly rapid rate, each bringing their own individual blend of ideas and expectations into the big old melting pot of Frogmore Stew we call home.

Even old Charleston, South of Broad, has absorbed its share of incoming new money from the North as of late.

We still have our cobblestone and the soft clop-clop of horse hooves from the carriage tours but we also have an emerging digital corridor and a medical district that is soaring skyward like something out of Jack and the Beanstalk.

Strange days may be ahead for this rapidly changing place.

Charleston is a friendly town but there are a few improprieties sure to irk the locals.

Generally, Charlestonians are a kindly lot but very proud of their history, culture, and architecture. Religion is taken quite seriously in this city, so a certain degree of gravitas is expected while on walking tours of churches and churchyards.

Here are a few errors to eschew and boners to bypass while in town:

1. Not all of the grand houses along the Battery are open for tours. In fact, most of them are private residences. Many a family in the historic district has a tale or two of sitting down for an evening meal only to hear a knock on the door followed by a request to “come in and look around.” The answer is generally a polite, “Uh… no,” followed by equally polite directions to the Visitor’s Center, where information on which houses conduct tours and when can be obtained.

2. Asking locals if it is “always this humid” in the summertime. Yes, it is.

3. Wearing black socks with golf shorts. No!

4. Photographing the sweetgrass basket makers without permission. These are local artisans, not costumed actors, and they can be sensitive about this. Besides, asking permission is just polite.

5. Don’t even think about lifting a “little souvenir” from an archeological site or graveyard. This sort of thing shouldn’t even have to be said, but you’d be surprised…

Introduction 

There is a distinction in the local parlance between the come’yuhs and the bin’yuhs. Should you be a bin’yuh, your ancestry may well stretch back to the time of the original walled city of Charles Towne, fortified against attacks by the Spanish, to the time of Northern Aggression, or perhaps only to the early to middle years of the twentieth century. Come’yuhs did exactly that: they came here after being born somewhere else.

I am a come’yuh, just so you know.

This is fine by me because it has, over the last 17 years, allowed me the joy of discovery.

The American South exerts a powerful, at least cinematic if not outright mythic, pull on the imagination. Is it any wonder that brides consistently choose Charleston as one of the most popular destination wedding sites? The semi-tropical coast, barrier islands scattered along its length, is a place of salt marshes and live oaks, Spanish moss slung from the languid dark branches like a lingering image from a half-remembered dream.

Travelers from around the world are drawn to the architectural grandeur and hand-detailed craftsmanship of Southern mansions. Fascination with the history of the plantation system and the war between North and South grabs hold of them and then wild-caught shrimp from local waters, Carolina Gold rice, and sweet tea does the rest.

Little wonder that many a new resident to Charleston, Beaufort, Savannah, or the islands in-between tells a tale of having visited many times, each time lingering a little longer, until finally deciding to pack up their belongings and come here to stay.

Each time you visit, you find a little more to savor.

And I’ll be sharing exactly that, post by post, with you in the days ahead.