Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
A surprising number of airplanes swoop overhead while walking the downtown Charleston streets on a cloudless afternoon. Sometimes, you swing your camera up to catch a swoop.
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
The Southside Bridge is seen in a lonely moment late one cold winter’s eve. Hey, we need to jazz things up around here. A little camera jiggle might help. Click on the image below for a more jazzed Southside bridge:
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
This QuizScape took awhile for someone to nail the right building. But commentator ‘Eddie’ got it right: It’s the building opposite Ellen’s Ice Cream Shop on Capitol Street across Fife (now more commonly called Brawley Walkway). Below is the original QuizScape challenge.Click to enlarge | Walker DeVille
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
On a drab January day, sky atop the city the color of dirty Styrofoam floating down the Kanawha, a sudden splash of bright color. In triplicate. Does a bold paintball warrior wander Charleston’s after-hour streets, taking urban target practice along Leon Sullivan Way? Has a Technicolor gang war burst out been the Reds, the Blues and the Amarillos?
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
This is perhaps the funkiest looking piece of architecture in downtown Charleston and one of my favorite buildings — but you never, ever see a photo of it. (So I am providing three!) Of course, it is a parking garage exit ramp. But what a ramp! Driving from the top of the parking garage down to the ground level, steering wheel jammed to the left the whole while, the G-forces pushing you up against the driver’s side door (make sure it’s locked!) is better than many an amusement park ride.
Here are two more shots (which do you think is the definitive one for the postcard?) . Click all three to enlarge them:
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
Members of the band Steve and Steve take either a cellphone or nicotine-infusion break, or maybe both, during a gig this past weekend at Blues BBQ, at the corner of Leon Sullivan Way and Lee Street.
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
A lot of angling goes on at the Kanawha County Courthouse. So this is perhaps an appropriate view of the place, looking eastward down Virginia Street. It is a pretty interesting-looking building, with its nubby stone exterior, especially when lit with ground-level spots at dusk.
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
Steeples claim the foreground while the teensy state Capitol dome in the background marks the horizon in this view of downtown Charleston on a bitterly cold December’s night.
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
The storefront to the John’s Keys shop along McFarland Street is old-school-urban. A functionally, yet still somehow hip sign, a crowded yet cool shop interior jammed with keys and lock parts and a big ol’ piece de resistance window decoration. How much is that key in the window?
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
Herewith, perhaps my favorite building in downtown Charleston, the Nelson Building, framed against the pleasant hills that ring Charleston. Life in this city will take a precipitous drop in felicity once/if you look up one day from street level and can longer see green hills on the horizon in all directions.
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