Chahhhleston

No wonder people love Charleston. It has Stephen Colbert.

OK, not the real Colbert, but the real portrait of him that used to hang on his set, which he auctioned off for charity.

The owner of Sticky Fingers, a rib joint clearly named after my favorite Rolling Stones album, bought the painting and proudly displays it.

Betsey and I went to see the Columbia State House yesterday (with its flying Confederate flag), and the Strom Thurmond memorial statue. The best part of the statue is that not long ago, sculptors added the name of his half-black daughter to the list of his children. Better late than never.
South Carolinians like their statues. As Betsey said, there's a new one for something every week.

She kindly took me on a tour of Columbia, a lovely town filled with interesting things to see, including the University of South Carolina, the state government and everything Gamecocks football, including a massive football stadium that seats 80,000 people and is used for six games a year.

Developers are building condominiums -- or "Cock-ominiums" as people call them, near the stadium just for people who have cash to burn and need party houses for Gamecock home games.

I've got to get a shirt that says "Go Cocks" on it. For job interviews.

Last night, we went to the Publick House for going-away drinks with one of the reporters from Betsey's paper. Not that she owns a paper. The one she works at.

Gotta love a cute bartender who sings to you, smiles a lot and calls you "darlin'." Charming Southern tip whore.

Today, we went to Charleston and took a boat ride around the harbor.

We went out past Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began.

And back to the Cooper River Bridge, which connects the Charleston Peninsula with neighboring islands.



We ate at Sticky Fingers, then jumped on a Tennessee-mule-drawn carriage tour of the city. These were our mules, Pigeye and Lightfoot.

What a beautiful city. Three hundred years old, there's Revolutionary War history, Vice President Calhoun, it's the city where the Civil War began, the place where South Carolina signed the South's first secession papers, it's got the Hunley, a pirate history (Yaaaarrr, Blackbeard), multi-million-dollar mansions and Colbert.

There's no resisting Charleston's charms.

I'd like to own a house with porches on all floors. Many of the homes are called "Charleston singles" because they are built one-room wide, but they go deep and high. Many have "Charleston porches," which are built on the breeziest side of the house, instead of in the front, and have doors that lead to them, even on the second floors, as a way to formally welcome guests. And several have "open-arms" staircases in the front -- where one set of stairs curves down from the right side of the landing and the other curves down from the left, like a pair of open arms waiting to welcome visitors into the house.

A couple of the biggest mansions in the waterfront Battery district even have their porch ceilings painted "haint blue," a color that is supposed to discourage evil spirits from lingering by tricking them into thinking the sky is right above them and they can move on.

There are beautiful old churches everywhere. At one time, Charleston was known as the Holy City because it had more churches per capita than any other city.