Charleston, South Carolina–This city survived the first Reconstruction era, but just barely. It will be interesting to see how it handles the second one.
Around every corner, hammers are banging and dust is flying, as stately old homes are freshened up for sale to Yankee carpetbaggers. With approximately one horse-drawn, tourist-laden carriage for every bona fide resident, the city has reduced traffic accidents to almost zero by making it impossible for any car to reach a speed of more than 8 miles per hour. For New Yorkers, Charleston presents a familiar, even consoling sight: a pendulous land mass, overlooking a harbor, with a battery at one end and solid traffic for most of its length. It almost feels like home.
The tourist rush that has transformed Charleston in the last 10 years has brought an unanticipated benefit: good restaurants. A decade ago, fine dining took place in people’s homes. Restaurants worthy of the name could be counted on the fingers of one hand, with several fingers to spare. Now, it takes both hands, and some toes as well. In fact, it would be hard to think of another American city of the same size — Charleston has a population of less than 100,000 — with a more dynamic, promising restaurant scene….
High Cotton, one of Charleston’s newest restaurants, struck me as a shining example of the new culinary wave.
Read it all. Guess where the family took Nathaniel and his girlfriend out to eat after graduation? You guessed it– High Cotton. If you are ever coming to Charleston, you must put it on the list–KSH.
I grew up in downtown Charleston in the 60s/70s. At that time (right before the rise of real estate values, etc.), there were many families downtown (and only two restaurants). I babysat at almost every house on my street. Since the 80s/90s, fewer and fewer families are downtown because they cannot afford it. Those with the dotcom boom or the New York financial boom have bought houses they have refurbished with care, but are only in town for a few months a year. They have little vested interest in what goes on in the city. The street I grew up on no longer has any families with young children (with the exception of one – a family member who was able to buy a house there because of a generous parent). It is really sad – when I go back to visit, most of the houses where I knew people growing up are now owned by out of towners looking for a little “Southern” connection. Of course, those selling are (or were – the market is definitely down) holding out for the best prices, so who’s to blame? Well, according to some I know – it’s the government to blame. How, you ask? Well, Charleston (most of the peninsula) is below sea level and prone to hurricanes. No one wants to spend a large amount on a house only to have it flooded every ten years or so, so house prices remained relatively low (and the South, even in the 1960s was still recovering in some ways from the War Between the States). Then the federal government introduced federal flood insurance. All of a sudden, the owner no longer had to fear the flooding from hurricanes – the federal government would take care of it all. So house prices exploded over the next twenty years, and no more families downtown. The price of progress.