Charleston, South Carolina: Take One

Last night I arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. It's way down south where DC's unusual heat wave is but a normal day's temperature. Right away, I realized that I'll only make it in this town if I hop from one air conditioned venue to another.

The DC boy wearing his Natty Boh.

As I'm traveling alone, I decided to stay at a hostel where I could meet some people. However I was disappointed when arriving to the hostel after midnight, I found everyone going to bed instead of heading out to the bars. So I ventured out on my own.

I wandered the streets until I found where all the bars are. All of the bars had long lines of frat boys and sorority girls. So when I found a bar called Macintosh that looked like Meridian Pint in Columbia Heights, I went in. I figured that if a bar decorated with a nod to the industrial then it would play better music and attract more interesting people, and I was right.

Sitting next to me at the counter was a boy from the Maryland side of DC who moved to town last week to work as some sort of chef at Husk, a restaurant that only uses ingredients from south of the Mason Dixon line. From his description, it sounded like fancy home cooked or soul food prepared with the idea that ingredients should be more local. I will definitely be trying that place.

We talked til the bar closed, and he walked me back to my hostel. Along the way, other Maryland people stopped us in the street to loudly slur, "Naaaaaaaatty Boh!"

Back at the hostel, all the night owls greeted me from the porch. The German au pairs swooned at the thought of my house so full of kids and asked me to come visit them in Europe in order for them to watch my brood. Um, can they swear to that in blood?