CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. This town is what I’d imagine would happen if Austin, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana, had a lovechild on the Atlantic, dressed it in Seersucker, and fed it hush puppies and BBQ. It’s quaint, “aristocratic” and quiet considering it’s the biggest city in the state.
The marble columns that make up the Greek façade in front of old homes and portside government buildings give the town an air of overindulgence. A glamorous aesthetic paid for by a troubled past, and by people and moments we shouldn’t be proud of. It’s polite like towns in Texas, and simultaneously colorful like the back alleys of Bourbon Street. Southern charm meets Texas hospitality on the Atlantic seaboard, or at least that’s how I saw it.
I’d been before. A few times, actually, but was always passing through on my way to elsewhere. My last visit came during a cross-country motorcycle ride that began in Baja California, where I met a fellow motorcyclist from Charleston. He’d ridden his Ducati Multistrada to Los Cabo, then north to the sleepy fishing village on the Sea of Cortez where I’d been staying. He owned a sailboat and ran charters out of the Daniel Island Yacht Club and made the mistake of telling me, “Next time you’re in Charleston, I’ll take you sailing.”
