The August 1st gallery is up! A new panaramic of Juanita Greenberg’s Nacho Royale, too!

We headed down to downtown Charleston today, and after finding somewhere to park,
we headed over to “King St”, a pretty cool Bardstown-Road-esque section of town with
little shops and whatnot. Between the Gospel music stores, and aging relics of 1960′s
commerce there were cool little shops and restaurants, like Atomic Comics and Juanita
Greenberg’s Nacho Royale.
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Atomic Comics was a nicely laid-out, reasonably adult (not adult-oriented, but mature
comics and graphic literature) oriented comic shop. Plenty of neat stuff there. After
most of us made purchases (kelly a new lunchbox-style purse, Hunter a number of graphic
novels, and Jessica an issue of PowerPuff Girls comic), we headed to Juanita Greenberg’s
Nacho Royale. A cool little nacho/taco salad/pseudo Mexican restaurant that was really
skinny and long. The decor was kick-ass — replete with neat 1960′s bowling alley lighting,
wooden tables, and an old school bar. It was real cool. Kelly and I split a Chicken Nacho
Royale, which was more like a pizza thing, with nacho toppings. Very tasty, and with a
Corona with lime on the side, it was all good. The food really wasn’t spec-freaking-tacular,
but it was better than La Bamba in Louisville (and that isn’t real great). The surroundings
and overall laid-back atmosphere was good enough for a weekly visit. (It was cool enough
that I actually bought their t-shirt, and I don’t do that too often).

We headed towards Factor V (five), which was a neat little user-clothing/record/piercing
shop. Jessica had considered getting her nose pierced, though I think she couldn’t get
up the courage to do it (which is perfectly fine). There are plenty of good piercing
shops in Louisville, and coupled with the fact that you can’t get tattooed in Charleston
(apparently due to a hepatitis outbreak in the 1960′s), I think she decided to do it a little
closer to home.

Later on, we walked to the Market, which is a pretty cool 3 or four blocks of old-style
markets. Lots of crafty stuff, and most of the businesses around the market are obviously
catering to the tourist crowd. The blocks radiating around the Market were much more
inviting to me, as there is apparently a University downtown. Neat little shops on cramped
streets. Apartments mixed with neat little independent shops, college kids selling italian
ice from refrigerated carts, neat neat neat. Oh, a 2 bedroom, 2 bath 3rd floor walk-up is
apparently $1800/mo. That’s nutty.

We then went out to the Waterfront park. It was a manicured 2 or 3 acre plot, with a
dock that extended out into the Cooper River (Charleston proper is bounded by the Cooper and
another river whose name escapes me at the moment). The wind was so stiff that most of the
birds we saw struggled against the wind, barely maintaining altitude.

Some in our party were ready to head back to the cars to relieve the stress off their feet.
However, we had one last place to find — The Arcade. As we wound through tiny side-streets
and an alley or two, we stumbled upon The Arcade. Wow! It looked cool from the outside,
anyway. There was a burnt-out sign atop the building, with “The Arcade” spelled out in
lights. It sort of looked like an out-of-place motel, really. It was in a U-shape, with
the doors at the “bottom” of the U, and in the center, a little veranda. It looked very
run-down, and yet cool at the same time. Hunter and Nick ventured into the open doors,
and found… NOTHING! No one. Very strange. Next door, we find the University Laser
Physics Lab. Very odd. Well, “The Arcade” was a wash, but a cool decadent wash at that.

The route back to the islands was through the most run-down section of town, and it was
interesting to see the signature Charleston architecture in ruins, the single-room wide
apartments with screened porches on the outside acting at the halls. In fact, all of
downtown Charleston seemed very decadent. It was definitely the “black” section of town,
and was gentrified sometime after World War II. The Gospel music store next to the
University hangout, next to the chain coffee shop was a little disconcerting, but it’s
better than the segregated south we’ve all come to know and hate.

Charleston was much larger and much more sophisticated than I had expected. It still
retained much of the “charm” and opulence of the Old South, and yet had a sense of
progress forward. Color me impressed.