![]() ![]() Still, legacy holdouts like Croghan’s Jewel Box and Berlin’s Clothing survive, along with independent high-end fashion boutiques like Ibu Movement and Hampden. ![]() King Street is the hub of Charleston retail, although many of the local shops have been pushed out by high rents and replaced by national chains that use the high-profile storefronts as a billboard. For a reasonable ticket price, you can attend and find yourself with a flowing keg of local beer, all-you-can-eat oysters, and the good conversation of locals gathered to support a cause they’re passionate about. (The restaurant is officially closed on Sundays, but most weeks that’s so it can host oyster roast fund-raisers for local charities.) If you visit during winter, check the Post and Courier or the Charleston City Paper to see if there’s a charity event listed for Bowens Island that week. You stand outside around a homemade plywood table and talk, flinging the discarded shells into a bin.Īt Bowens Island Restaurant near Folly Beach, this experience is recreated every day in the humble ground-floor oyster room, where oysters are sold by the bucket. Charleston oysters are meant to be eaten by the cluster, lightly steamed and warm. These aren’t pretty Massachusetts singles, served raw and chilled with a pinch of lemon. Lowcountry oysters grow in clusters of at least a half-dozen shells, all stuck to one another as they emerge from the pluff mud exposed during low tide. From Halloween until beach season, if you’re gathering with friends outside, it’s likely to be beside a table piled with steaming oysters, holding a rag in one hand and a knife in the other, saltines and cocktail sauce at the ready. If you’re simply not the stop-and-listen tour type, there’s an option for digging into the city’s rich history: Charleston Steeplechase conducts three- to four-mile running tours of the city, which allow you to multitask by seeing various sites while getting in a workout.Īs the rule of thumb goes, oyster season spans the months whose names contain an “r,” although in Charleston, September’s waters are still so warm that most locals wait to host their first oyster roast until October. ![]() But if it’s your second visit, or you’d like to go deeper into a particular neighborhood or aspect of the city’s past, look beyond the kiosks of the bigger name tour companies on Market Street for a niche guide like Carol Ezell-Gilson, a local artist and Broad Street resident who offers specialized tours on the Great Quake of 1886 that devastated downtown, the local story of Porgy and Bess (the book that inspired the movie and opera was by a Charleston writer DuBose Heyward Porgy is thought to be based on a real person), and the ornate ironwork that distinguishes gates of churches and homes in the historic district (much of it forged by Philip Simmons, an African American blacksmith who was active in the city for seven decades). ![]() A ghost tour and a carriage ride are almost mandatory on a first visit to Charleston, and in a city this charming-and with some seriously scare-inducing history-each is worth the time and expense. ![]()
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