Arriving in Charleston
There Are No Smokestacks; Let's Go East.
It always gets worse before it gets better.
Like the other places we arrived in, we drove through the outskirts rapidly. We kept going where we saw tourists flock together. And floored the accelerator when we noticed a hen party cackle and cluck. We drove until the streets became quiet again and the city suddenly unlocked its beauty like a gentle slap in the face.
That's mostly how we embrace first time places.
We are notoriously anti-social urban explorers. We refuse to stop when Google Maps, terraces with aluminum and rattan chairs, filtered influencer photos on Instagram, and horse drawn carriages equipped with black manure bags persuade us that we should.
Unless we are approaching from the west. Because in most cities, the east is the poorer part of town. It's where the city's pollution used to settle down from the prevailing westerlies.
At least, that's what scientists in London proved after simulating 5000 industrial chimneys across UK towns and applying mathematical models to reconstruct the air movement in 1880 within their topography. Eureka, we found a pattern! The next morning they took the tube to work whistling Dust in the Wind.
Imagine getting all fired up about the fact that the average wind speed in Manchester in February 1880 was 4.13 knots.
But we came from the north. So we kept heading south.
There was something about her walking down Church Street's brick road with two mongrel dogs on that late spring afternoon in Charleston. Overly aware of everything around her, it appeared as if she didn't belong there. Like it was the first time she saw the colonial mansions. But she fit in somewhat too perfectly.
She surely must have lived in one of them.
In the picture perfect neighborhood, you would have expected her dogs to be purebred and leashed. Expertly trained Golden Retrievers. Or Poodles, still smelling of the salon, not a single curl misaligned. They sniffed the sidewalk with its ornamental grasses that had started to bloom. She had stopped in front of another expertly painted front door without even the tiniest of cracks in its black lacquer.
None of the three seemed particularly poised.
She briefly looked at her reflection in the glaze and spotted us staring at her from across the road. Her dogs were already sniffing ours.
A sharp "Twain!" and "Roth!" cracked like a whip. Their heads jerked up. Ours too. She was Dutch; obviously well-read.
The Dutch never lose their accent. They may have been living abroad for decades, speaking the local language faultlessly, but a trace of the harshness of their native language persists in their pronunciation: hard Ts and rolling Rs.
They seldom lose their sense of childlike fascination either. Layering lacquer on a front door is an exploit of craftsmanship and grandeur that screams for attention.
"They are repainted as soon as there's a single chip missing," she said without the slightest introduction. "Or even a scratch. This town has the best painters in the country."
"Same for the gardens. New plants come in as soon as the flowers have withered. Old chapels need fresh bouquets to sparkle. That's what my mother used to say. Feels like home, long time ago. Amsterdam. Just the shiny bronze letter plates are missing from the doors.
She must have figured that we were European. Most Americans do. Even before we can say a word, there's something that screams, "Hey, we're not from here."
"Brussels," I replied. "I wish we could say the same. We can fatten a flock of sheep on the weed that's growing from the joints in the pavement and share the roasted lamb legs with our neighbors the following Easter. Let's not talk about lacquered front doors, polished letter plates, or flowering front gardens."
"It's a matter of pride," she said. "We cherish our history. It's brief, so it's doable. Europeans take theirs for granted. There's too much of it to handle."
She told us she lived between Rhode Island and South of Broad for over 25 years. A surgeon who quit her job at the hospital to open a haberdashery. A curious career path, but not entirely inconsistent. At least she's proficient in stitching, whatever the material.
"What brings you to Charleston?" Mr. Watson was particularly dedicated to Twain's rear end, while Roth remained at a distance, philosophically observing the nose-to-tail interaction his partner was engaged in.
"Southern smiles," I quipped and promptly got one.
"Plenty of those around," she said.
We did go east in the end.
The London scientists were dead wrong as far as Charleston is concerned. There has never been a cloud of chimney smoke in the eastern part of town. A crisp five-knot sea breeze is more like it.
Mount Pleasant isn't exactly the poorer part of town either.
We walked into the Old Village as if we walked onto the set of a historic Netflix series. Pitt Street Pharmacy compounds prescription medicine while you're having a soda from the fountain and a five dollar egg salad sandwich in an interior unchanged since it opened somewhere in the 1930s. There are no more post riders at the Post House, but lunch is superb.
And Sullivan's Island feels like Amagansett with a generous dose of Southern charm.
It might have been the weather or the sea, but Charleston reminded us of the Mediterranean. The city has class. A chic nonchalance is tangible. It radiates friendliness.
But unlike the Mediterranean, there is a smoothness that makes everything come about easily.
https://www.aestheticnomads.com/
Contributors:
Hans Pauwels, words - Reinhilde Gielen, photographs
Locations:
Basic Kitchen, Charleston - Sorelle, Charleston - Post House, Mount Pleasant - Pitt Street Pharmacy, Mount Pleasant - Sullivan’s Fish Camp, Sullivan’s Island