Downtown Charleston

Every other time I’ve gone downtown I’ve just stayed in a small three or four block area, but for my last visit, we ventured out and really explored the area. It was quite a sight. I know that there are a lot of wealthy people in Charleston. I needed no other indication then the many Hummer H2 and H3 vehicles that I see on an almost daily basis. However, I now have several more reasons to add to the list.

There is so much to the area, mainly, clothes, expensive clothes, and more expensive clothes. There is also antiquing, if that’s your thing. It’s such a bizarre sight to see beautiful, historic, colorful buildings being the homes to luxury line products. My first impression of the place is that each store should be some locally owned mom and pop kind of place and it struck me off guard, that even in a place as unique at historic downtown Charleston, American consumerism wins out. It’s kind of sad really. As you drive towards the area you pass a sign that says “Charleston: All American City.” Well, I guess they got that right; you can’t get any more all American than block after block of store after store.

We did find a luxury chocolate store. I have never spent so much money so few pieces of chocolate, but it was definitely worth it. I’m beginning to think that maybe the wealthy have good taste or at least good taste when it comes to lovely chocolate. I was about to just let that comment go as simply good taste, but then I remembered the really large, tacky chancellor that I saw in the hotel we walked through and had add an additional two cents to the comment. Why is it necessary again to have stores inside the hotel? It was an odd sight as well. Are there really people whom would fly out to Charleston only to never leave the hotel? Maybe people just forget to buy a new outfit before they get down here so it’s convenient to have a Gucci store downstairs so you can pick up a new purse before any one sees you in public.

There is only so much window shopping one can do in an afternoon. (No, I didn’t have the guts to walk into Saks Fifth Avenue wearing my target clothes.) We ended up going through all the antique stores. We didn’t really have any business in those shops either, but the people who run them are really friendly and as long as you look like you aren’t going to randomly break stuff, they’ll let you stand there and fondle old books to your heart’s content. It was a nice outing. After several hours and talking to people I really started to appreciate antiquing and why people spend their own life in that line of work. It was really quite fascinating. It is so much more than owning a piece of history because almost every item has its own history. When tend to think of history as simple big events, but walking through a bunch of antique shops reminded me that there were so many little events too. Yes, it’s important to have historic districts and preserve the locations of important events in our history, but there is something to be said for also taking care of the furniture that existed in a local home during the civil war or turn of the century brass buttons.

I guess it’s possible to get too carried away. You can’t really preserve everything. I wonder if we’ll ever reach a point where we think enough is enough and are more selective about what is preserved and what isn’t. I wonder if a group of people will sit down at some point and reevaluate all of that and decide that it’s okay to bulldoze Rainbow Row and make way for a different kind of development that would suit the needs of the people better. At some point, it will happen. Things only last for so long. It’s because if that thought I ended my day thinking that the small things in those antique shops were even more important because I would imagine it will be the small things like silver serving spoons or snuff boxes that will last longer. After all, it’s easy to have a museum exhibit of old civil war weapons, but it’s difficult to imagine that people in the distant future are going to go visit a museum and see an exhibit of original, colonial houses (it’s not like they are easy to transport) so when they tare them down, they’ll be gone for good, but people will probably always be able to see bits and pieces and from that try to imagine what it would have been like to live in years that have already past.