Saturday is Carolina Day.

1. I've been to North Charleston and it is a terrilbe, terrible place. A haven of the trashiest strip malls amongst sketchy residential areas. Except for the one cute hipster street with a gourmet pizza place that I would go back to.

2. On my way back from North Charleston, I discovered why this city smells: There is a paper mill on the Cooper River. It is big and unsettlingly industrial. Passing it as I drove by on a bridge, I couldn't help but feel almost as if I was in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Though it may be extreme to compare a paper mill to slaughterhouses and other factories. Charleston constantly smells like minty diapers and it is disgusting. It ruins the charm.

3. Onion bagels do not exist here. Seriously. Not at the Harris Teeter I've been frequenting. Not in its bread section. Not in its frozen section. Not even in the store's fresh-baked bagel section. What the fuck. I had to get everything bagels instead.

4. It has been raining terribly lately. The streets are like driving through Venice.





Reminds me of Florida summer.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the deaths of nine firefighters in Charleston.

Last weekend was first genuinely fun weekend I’ve had in the 30+ days I have been in Charleston. I got to see Rilo Kiley last Thursday (a weekend day by Gainesville standards) and it was a much better show than I thought it would be. I always assumed they would be unenthused assholes but they weren’t and Jenny Lewis was so charming. I wrote a review for my paper’s blog that you can read here: http://music.ccpblogs.com/2008/06/13/live-review-rilo-kiley-music-farm-612/.

On Saturday night I went out with some people from work and had the best time. I went to a show (my semi-boss’ boyfriend’s friends were playing at a weird bar on James Island) and then I got my first taste of downtown nightlife. I went to a bar, practically the first bar I’ve ever been to, and I drank more than I’ve drank since the one time I was ever drunk more than two years ago. And it was only three drinks and I wasn’t drunk (though I probably could have been there with one more). I had good conversations with good people.

The Music Farm, where the Rilo Kiley played, and the crowd that was there was so different from Gainesville, by which I mean it was almost completely unpretentious. By which I mean it was hardly “scene” at all. I was not surrounded by an intimidating and immaculately styled crowd of kids that I know or sort of know or just see out all the time like I would at Common Grounds. Gainesville has this strange accumulation of cool kids, whether punks or hipsters or whatever, that don’t exist in Charleston. It’s nice, but at the same time, it’s lonely. I feel dissimilar from kids here. Now, instead of feeling underdressed wherever I go, I feel overdressed.

But just as I am beginning to enjoy myself, my job is starting and is already becoming overwhelming. I am scheduled every day for the next six days. I have a number of friends coming to visit me next week and I’m worried that I won’t be able to spend any sort of time with them. I always go into the summer wanting to be horribly busy all the time with work and I always get overwhelmed by my wish. Two years ago, there were points where I was going from seven in the morning to midnight between my internship at the Coral Gables Gazette and my part-time job at Express. Last summer, even with setting my own hours at “Copytalk,” I had so few weekday hours to myself that it made me miserable. I just don’t want to leave parts of this city untouched because I was stuck in a movie theater.

I luckily found my camera but I haven’t had a chance to go anywhere picturesque since doing so, so here instead is a picture of the bridge that I have to go over to get to work everyday:

It is very hot here.

I’m going to start by saying that I have misplaced my camera (hopefully only temporarily). So no picture this week. Or maybe any of the rest of the weeks I’m here. Which there are only eight more of. Crazy. Bananas. Where is the summer going?

Now I’m going to add that I don’t have much to add. No interesting developments this week. Maybe some interesting new emotions but nothing I feel like expressing so publicly. Fellow blogger and Coral Reef alumnus Justin Dainer-Best (http://www.justindb.com/life/) and I were just discussing our fears of leaving our summer locations without experiencing them as much as possible. That is a nagging feeling for me. I've also been thinking lately that I might miss out on developing relationships with people here, or leave new relationships underdeveloped. It is possible that I will meet a new friend that I will have to leave weeks later. This is something I am going to have to confront not only this summer, but in a year I will have to leave every friend, deep or casual or otherwise, behind.

I’ve been enjoying myself a little more. I went to the Charleston art walk on Friday. I might get to see Rilo Kiley for free tomorrow night and I’m going to a show on Saturday. I might get visited soon and if not, I’m going to go to Gainesville next weekend, I think. Matt + Kim is playing a show and I would like to see them and while I would like to spend Fourth of July weekend there, it might not work out.

Yesterday I went to a vineyard for an article I'm writing and got to try some sweet tea-infused vodka. Only in the South.

Broad Street is named so because it is the broadest street.

After two defeated weeks straining my hand to fill out the same employment history and the same reference numbers for countless job applications, I was finally hired by the 20+ company I contacted. I am going to be working at a movie theater/restaurant/bar aimed at adult audiences that want to eat while watching their film and not have to deal with kids. It seems to be the only decent place in town that is actively hiring, as it hasn’t opened yet. It has its pros (they wanted for “hip/alternative” employees, it won’t conflict with my internship, they actually hired me) and its cons (it’s in Mount Pleasant, which requires crossing a terrifying bridge, and it’s going to be a little while before they actually open). I also managed to get a bartending-at-events gig because of a co-intern. Just the idea of working and having something to do with my time is so invigorating to me.



I am embracing social solitude and have been doing a lot of things alone that I never have before. On Sunday, I went to the beach and sat by myself on an oddly empty stretch of sand and read and tanned for an hour. Yesterday I went to see the Sex and the City - which, by the way, I should have just rented - matinee by myself. I felt surprisingly comfortable being in the theater unaccompanied; I think that the theater was mostly empty helped. And I wasn’t the only “single gal” there, as I counted at least two others.

I want to take a day trip soon. Probably to Savannah, because it seems like the closest interesting place. After a few weeks of wasting my time here, I’ve decided that I need to start making plans for things to do and places to go. I want to explore this city as much as humanly possible because time is already ticking away.



Each day here I realize more and more how beautiful it is. I find it hard to comprehend that people live in these pretty houses with their pretty yards. That these lives are really led by people. But it’s sad that this beauty was built on such ugliness, that these massive houses are where the wealthy lived when it was too cold for the crops to grow, that the bottom floors of these massive houses are where the slaves made the food and did the other chores. I drove to the Citadel today and it has a beautiful park in front of it and I felt to weird to pass through the gates, but if I did it would be to see a place that only started to accept women midway through my lifetime and then harassed those women. Behind what is attractive is always something unattractive.

I think I am going to make a zine to commemorate my time here. It will give me something crafty to do and a way to express myself through words.