Charleston

July 29, 2010Here was a missed opportunity, the Queen Street Grocery. Apparently it is the be all and end all - good local and organic foods, excellent crepes and wine! Who could ask for anything more? This should be a fixture in any downtown, a nice corner market where you can stock up on a few groceries from the CSA, buy a newspaper, have a coffee, catch up on the gossip and oh, maybe buy that nice bottle of wine for dinner. Their slogan is "Local Fresh + Organic Deliciousness." I just liked it for the beauteous "Q" on their window. People who get the typography right might be ...

Read Post

When you go to Charleston you must tear yourself away from the glories of the gardens and window boxes and your new friends, the gardeners. You simply have to visit Blue Bicycle Books at 420 King Street. The facade is narrow, but the shop itself telecopes and extends magically back from the street for miles! The Tall One and I had to make two visits because we were overcome with Stendahl's Syndrome after the first go round: the sheer number and array of books was too much for us.We had a restorative lunch at The Pita Pit (351 King Street) another little, narrow, crooked-fence sort of ...

Read Post

July 27, 2010Double secret probation bird's eye view of a garden on Meeting Street.I imagine this is the what the Tall One might have seen (had he stirred himself from bed, early one morning during our Charleston trip) strolling up Meeting Street. Once again it was just me and the gardeners and a few people scurrying off to their jobs. It was too early for the horse drawn carriages and rubber-neckers, so I found lots of almost-legal places to park as I wandered. Two Meeting Street has architecture that challenges my liberal arts college art history training. The Calhoun House has a ...

Read Post

July 26, 2010 This is the Charles Drake house at 50 South Battery. The garden echos the strange melange of architecture: Sweet potato vines! Colonial Revival! Shocking pink crape myrtle! Queen Anne! Asparagus fern! Arts and Crafts style!Heavens to Betsy, this house has it all. Circa 1890, it is a veritable newcomer to the neighborhood. The Drakes eclectic tastes called for a stone foundation with a paneled, shingled and clapboarded second-story. There is a porte-cochere, an arched arcade and curved windows, interior and exterior shutters, gingerbread, columns, capitals, balustrades ...

Read Post

July 23, 2010It's Food Friday!I am always eager to conduct serious field research in pursuit of the best bar burgers to be had and Charleston offered up one of the best at 39 Rue de Jean. The menu at this French bistro offered many more tantalizing and sophisticated food stuffs (read: seafood) with excellent service and ambiance. And no, not one of those fussy places with brass and potted plants. The wait staff was swift and efficient - and I loved the carafes of water on the table, and the big gleaming silvery mirrors which increased the size of the room and let us obsserve (and ...

Read Post

July 22, 201040 Tradd Street, circa 1718In case my Gentle Readers were under the impression that all of Charleston is ablaze with vulgar or un-neighborly pigments, I wanted to show you the tasteful restraint of the current residents of 40 Tradd Street. The deep purple of the petunias is echoed in the shadows behind the periwinkle blue shutters. Cool, calm colors on this side of Tradd."John Bullock or his widow Mary built this two and one-half story house c. 1718. Col. Robert Brewton sold this property with the house on it in 1752 to Daniel Badger."Charleston County Public Library

Read Post

July 21, 201032 Tradd Street, circa 1790 (eight years younger than Washington College)An interested reader wrote to tell me yesterday that after Hurricane Hugo ripped through Charleston in 1989 workers from Ireland were brought in because only they had the expertise to repair the roofs. “Historically, many roofs on Charleston houses were wood shingle. Because of the many fires that plagued the city, this roofing material was outlawed by city ordinance. After Hurricane Hugo in 1989, many metal roofs peeled back to reveal the early wood shingles ...

Read Post

July 20, 201017 Tradd St. c.1750. On the corner of Bedon's Alley.One of the houses on Tradd Street as recommended by Mr. H. Number 17 is austere, dignified and restrained. The flowers in the window boxes and the planter are white, mirroring the white crape myrtle trees in the street. One imagines the residents of Number 17 wear crisp, pressed garments and never speak in anything but full sentences, with few contractions or meaningless pauses. Fountain pens, never ball points. IMs? How vulgar!"Tradition says Tradd Street was named for Robert Tradd who supposedly was the first child of ...

Read Post

uly 19, 20108-10 Tradd StreetThe Lamboll Double TenementI was strolling up the East Battery one morning, before all the tourists mobbed the place, smug because I had snagged a legal parking place. I was enjoying the relative quiet - the only other people around were gardeners who were tending their tidy gardens, some with hoses and clippers and one perfectionist with a weed whacker and a patch of grass that refused to conform itself to his pictured ideal.I wandered off the main road and was tiptoeing along Tradd Street when I had an encounter that usually only happens in gauzy movies ...

Read Post

July 16, 2010It’s Food Friday!No recipes this week – as we were not concerned with cooking last week – just consuming all the best foods we could find in Charleston. We had a splendid time at Hank’s. Yumsters. I had the fried chicken and it was quite simply the best I have ever eaten. The chicken was boneless, crisp and crunchy and sweet with the tang of buttermilk and fresh pepper. Had my grandmother come from Charleston I imagine she would have fried up batches of this chicken. It came with garlic mashed potatoes (also divine) and collards (which I moved around the plate, fooling ...

Read Post

July 14, 2010This was just the beginning of my pilgrimage through Charleston’s wonderful world of window boxes.I managed to tear away from Best Beloved and Tall Boy on the first afternoon in Charleston. They set me down on King Street, where the first store I stumbled into was this divine antique shop, Jack Patla Antiques. I love garden ornaments. I have three wrought iron garden chairs I liberated from the side of the road a few years ago, and a concrete cherub astride a dolphin which once poured water in a Sewall’s Point fountain and now stands on a plinth on our back porch. And ...

Read Post

July 13, 2010Best Beloved and Tall Boy and I spent last week in Charleston, SC. Ostensibly I was doing my usual serious and productive field research with the Tall One as my companion and cohort in crime, and Best Beloved was attending a fishing tournament. The reality was that we wandered around in the Charleston heat, looking at the many beautiful buildings and flowers and historic sights –while constantly thinking about our next meal. We had many, many meals which were so deelish – Tall Boy kept pronouncing each one the best he had ever eaten! How is that possible? Anything is possible in ...

Read Post