Three Colors of Snot
South Battery in Charleston, SC.
Blog Posts…
The first line shared through a blog post was: “I retreated from work today, recuperated, blew three colors of snot into my bandana, answered an email, and finished my book about willie hearst…” by Justin Hall, an American journalist in 1994. I’d like to know what those three colors were. Perhaps they were periwinkle, magic mint, and lavender, the pigments of a Charleston.
I’m coughing from the turmeric powder stuck in my throat from a chai latte from Harken Cafe in the French Quarter in Charleston, South Carolina. I never knew there was a French Quarter in Charleston. Some initial research yields conflicting information as to when the neighborhood was given the name.
One source says that, because of the area’s occupation of numerous French merchants in the 1800’s, it was given the name in 1873. Another (Wikipedia, so who knows) claims 1973 when it was named to the National Register of Historic Places. That’s a one hundred year difference. In either case, it was fairly French at some point. I suppose anything packaged these days as French, with the exception of that year of freedom fries, will draw tourists. Huguenots aside, as long as baguettes, parfaits, and macchiatos abound, I shall frequent the Quarter. Come to think of it, the Quarter, here or in New Orleans, is tolerable for up to an hour. I can only handle so much pleasantness.
Charleston Single house.
A bartender I spoke to the other night referred to Charleston as the clean version of New Orleans. That seems vaguely accurate. I’ve spent the exact same amount of time as of this moment in both places (five days). There are some similarities: they’re walkable, humid, and an architect’s wet dream. As an itinerant observer and certainly no expert in the history and daily realties of either place, the separation seems to be in the general vibe. How is vibe defined? Let’s see, Google’s dictionary definition, provided by Oxford Languages, defines it as follows: “a person's emotional state or the atmosphere of a place as communicated to and felt by others.”
What is communicated by others here? I’ve observed far too many boat shoes, chinos, sunburns, and polo shirts the same pastels as their houses—washed out yellows the color of egg nog and drab pinks similar to the oyster shooters I threw up the other night. The restaurants and cafes certainly are exquisite and full of menu items like grilled brassicas and “compressed” fennel (whatever the fuck that is). All of that is fine for a few days. It’s not my kind of town necessarily.
It’s all fairly charming with its Southern oak trees draped with Spanish moss, bay windows in those giant Queen Anne’s, stately Ionic columns of the Greek Revivals, and of course those Charleston Single houses with unusual doors that open to street facing porches rather than the front of the house. Bizarre. Although, if I were to come back, it might be specifically for She-crab soup, a kind of bisque made with sherry and crab roe. The bastards really have a special thing going there.
But I’m off to New Orleans again tomorrow to see what the rumpus is all about for a second time. The vibe there is not of khakis, overexposure to ultraviolet rays, or art galleries full of easily ignored watercolors of schooners at dusk. If I were to blow three colors of snot into a bandana of the New Orleans kind, I suspect I’d get purple, green, and gold. And while I missed Mardi Gras (thankfully…I’m far too old for that), I’d happily settle for the syncopated swing rhythms, red beans and rice, Creole cottages, and Shotgun homes with front gabled roofs—the supposed dirtier version of a Charleston.
