SC Day 7 - Good Food, Good Art, and Goodbyes
Today was my last day in South Carolina and similarly to yesterday it was more about the quality than the quantity. I started out by trying to go to one last coffee shop I hadn't been too in Columbia called the Wired Goat Cafe. When I got there however, it was closed because the owners had just had a baby. This was just about the best reason for a coffee shop being closed I'd ever seen though, so I couldn't be too upset. I found out they actually had another location about a half an hour away that would still be open, so I figured why not. It was a nice little drive, and the cafe was really great. Ally said the Columbia location was really hip with couches and records, but this one was more of a classic homey cafe, with lots of open space and cozy tables. I got an iced coffee and a blackberry scone both of which made for an excellent breakfast. I shared a few jokes with the baristas and then sat for a while eating and getting some writing done.
After my breakfast, I had the strangest hankering to get some fruit juice. I don't know where that came from, but I guess I hadn't really been consuming a lot of fruits on the road so maybe it was long overdue. I went back to Columbia to the Good Life Cafe. It was right in downtown Columbia, which, for all my time spent there, I hadn't seen much of because I spent most of my time in the Five Points neighborhood. It's a deceptively huge city!
Good Life was a really nice but kind of bougie place. Lots of brunching yuppies and families. They were able to satisfy my juice craving though, and they were having a special student discount on waffles so I couldn't say no. Plus they were like vegan or something, so they must be healthy! The juice I got was called Love Potion, and was a mix of pomegranate, orange grapefruit, and lime. It was an interesting mix and very refreshing, though I hope it's not an actual love potion because the first thing I saw after drinking it was my waffle. The waffle was very good. You couldn't even tell the batter was any different than the non-vegan stuff, so that's always good. Plus it came with a little bowl of fruit so that made me happy. The whole time there was also a guy with a smooth white guy voice and an acoustic guitar playing live music inside for the brunch crowd. I give him a lot of credit though, because he would casually work in Outkast songs and Chance the Rapper into the repertoire of easy listening and holiday songs. It was pretty great.
After what I guess was my second breakfast of the day, I just kinda walked around downtown for a bit looking at all of the shops. Some of them were kinda cryptic though. If only there was some way of telling what this one specialized in:
I also walked by the Tapp's Art Center and was casually blown away by their window display of different super heroes doing ballet. In particular I love how Batman and Superman are completely confident but Spidey is still trying to get all laced up because he's a baby. This is everything I look for in art.
After walking around for a bit, I took Ally's advice and went to the Old Mill Antique Mall, while she got ready to meet up. Old antique shops are some of my favorite things in the world. They are such wonderful depositories of the weird and unexplainable, yet everything there was at one point valuable to someone. The antique store was actually in an old mill building with lots of other little shops rounding out the rest of the complex. As for security, don't worry they put their best man on the job:
Ally had warned me that I would spend at least an hour in the antique store, and I was shocked at how right she was. There were two massive floors and a tiny little attic packed to the gills with odds and ends. My favorite things were obviously a plastic bust of Michael Jordan from the movie Space Jam, vaguely horrifying decorative ET glassware, and a dreamy poster of ALF that looks like it was meant to be hung over the bed next to a Farah Fawcett poster. For some reason. The thing that always takes up the most time for me in Antique Shops is looking obsessively through every single used CD. If it isn't obvious by now in the blog, I'm a bit of a musical hoarder. I would say I or someone in my family has a hard copy of 90% of the albums I've been listening to each day. It's a monumental waste of money, given that libraries and the internet exist, but a waste that has brought me a lot of happiness and the illusion that I am helping keep my favorite shops and musicians afloat. I did end up buying a Stevie Wonder album and an album by the band Cracker, because the AV Club had just written a thing about how underrated one of their songs was and I really like David Lowery's other band Camper van Beethoven. I try to be frugal but it's always some esoteric justification like that that ends in me buying stuff. I did like both CDs a lot though.
Something that set this antique shop apart from all others, for better or for worse, was their multiple shelf spanning Clowns on Parade Museum. Rows and rows of different clown memorabilia to tickle your funny bone or fuel your nightmares depending on where you land on clowns.
After poking around for an hour, I went to another shop in the same little plaza called The Warehouse, a fun consignment shop. They had lots of handmade furniture, home goods, and original art. I was a big fan of their "Soaps for Men" because I didn't know we needed more convincing to use soap. The weird sculptures of robots, and Miss Piggy-esque paintings of opera singers were also big highlights for me.
After the Warehouse, I went to the nearby Cafe Strudel to meet up with Ally. I got there a little bit early so I had some coffee and an old fashioned. When Alley got there, we split an order of duck fat fries with possibly the best garlic aioli. I don't know why frying with duck fat makes the potatoes taste so good, but I'm not complaining. We hung out there for a bit, and she told me all about the new Star Wars which I was waiting to see with my siblings when I got home. You know you've made a good friend when they can accidentally spoil a major movie, and you don't do even really notice or care. I'm sure high school me would be shocked by that sentiment, but I guess growth is possible.
After finishing up a respectable amount of fries, we boxed up the rest and went to get donuts at Duck Donuts in Cross Hill Market. Duck Donuts is apparently the fastest growing donut chain in the country but they started with just one store in a tiny beach in North Carolina. This happened to be where Ally used to go for vacations, so she was way ahead of the curve on this one and was pretty excited when they opened up in Columbia. I was really glad she shared them with me, because it was a real donut experience. Everything was made fresh in front of you, and you get to choose a topping and a glaze for your donut. She got blueberry frosting with sprinkles, and I got maple frosting with coconut. If mine seems odd, it's because I was originally going to get a plain glaze but Ally (rightfully) teased me for being boring so I panicked. It was really good, but definitely an odd combination. When I said this out loud, she was shocked and said, "It was such a weird order I just assumed you knew that it would go together somehow." What can I say, this whole website is basically one big testament to my impulsivity.
We actually ate our donuts in a little impromptu picnic at nearby Riverfront Park. It was really nice, because then we could walk around the park after eating the donuts and because it was night time we basically had the whole place to ourselves. We thought we were being really cool and sneaky when we found a way in to an old factory building, but upon entering we quickly discovered that there was another entrance on the other side that was wide open. That was a fun little sitcom moment in real life.
We sat at a picnic table for a while and just talked before saying our goodbyes. I've had a few tough goodbyes along the road, but this one was particularly hard because hanging out with her had really been a defining part of how I got to see and do so much in SC. I think I also met her at time where I had been feeling very sad, and there's something deeply comforting in knowing that it's still possible in different states to meet a nice, funny stranger and end up making a deeper connection. It really renewed a lot of my optimism in this trip at a time when I in danger of starting to get burnt out.
This did make it all the harder to say goodbye, because I had honestly no clue when I'd be in South Carolina again. The nice thing about phones and the internet though is that nobody is ever really all that far away even when geographically they are.
In my odd bittersweet emotional state, I made my way to Georgia at the end of a nice day. I was staying with some very good friends from college who lived just outside Atlanta in a suburb called Decatur. They both had to work in the morning so we didn't stay up too late, but it was so great to see them again and the little bit of catching up we did get to this night was fun, funny, and much needed. The pure sweetness of seeing old friends again definitely helped temper the bittersweetness of saying goodbye to new ones.
Favorite Random Sighting: Yard-Vark; Farm Boy's BBQ; Wet Willie's (not a strip club); Wild Wayne's Fireworks
Regional Observations; In terms of chains I had never heard of before but now see everywhere I don't think anything went more from 0 to 60 than Zaxby's Fried Chicken. I'm told it's quite good, so I'll have to eventually, but it's just so strange to see none of restaurant and then see it everywhere.
Albums Listened To: Magnetic Bodies/ Maps of Bones by Maritime (I haven't really listened to this one that much. It's still not one of my favorites but it's growing on me); Malcolm in the Middle Theme Song by They Might Be Giants; Malibu by Anderson .Paak (the fact that he is such a good singer, rapper, and drummer all at the same time amazes me. I'm excited to see what's next for him); Innervisions by Stevie Wonder; Kerosene Hat by Cracker (these last two were my antique store albums)
People's Favorite Jokes:
This one's kind of gross, but the real joke is that the barista told it to me because another customer told it to her and she said she didn't get it which is kind of sweet in a way:
What's worse than Come On Eileen? Grease
SC Superlatives:
Favorite Restaurant: Circle M BBQ in Liberty
Favorite Seafood: Fleet Landing in Charleston
Favorite Dessert: The Bourbon Vanilla Pie at the War Mouth in Columbia
Favorite Bar: Art Bar in Columbia
Favorite Beer: Legal Remedy's Malice Maple Bacon Russian Imperial Stout
Favorite Coffee: Pure Taste- Carmella's in Charleston Best All Around- Coffee Underground in Greenville
Favorite Attraction: Pearl Fryar's Topiary Garden in Bishopsville
Favorite Museum: Greenville County Museum of Art
Favorite Open Mic: Art Bar in Columbia
General Impression of the Comedy Scene: Very welcoming, i think a bit more improv/stand up overlap at least in the Greenville and Columbia performers I saw, which I think give them a bit more of a flair for both storytelling and more unusual performance bits over one liners and set-up punchline bits.
Songs of the Day:
Incredible band, even more incredible outfits
This one is long, but it's also so clearly the best song off the album. A real 90's ennui saga
This video is so damn joyful. It is an explosion of good vibes.