Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

I caught an evening of the Lighthouse Café open mic recently (held the third Friday of every month at the Baptist Temple, 209 Morris St.). Then was struck by the trés cool lighting on the Temple steeple after I left off into the night. (This shot was taken with the camera’s sepia filter switched on.) The thumbnail at right is a slightly different angle with even moodier shadows.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

The Tap Room is one of the few clubs in the area whose front — the Quarrier Diner — reveals nothing about what’s out back. You gotta know it’s there. Which is the point, no?

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

I perhaps have a love of alleys and backstreets that not everyone shares. But I do love the spare scenery and striking lights of this alley scene at dusk which you see after turning right off Leon Sullivan Way just before the Food Among the Flowers shop.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

This year’s FestivALL Charleston serves up a thick schedule of cultural offerings across the city Wednesday through Sunday. I’ve been impressed by marketing around the event, including these FestivALL coasters and napkins which suddenly appeared at area restaurants a couple weeks back, as on this bar counter at Blues BBQ Etc., across from the Clay Center. Things kick off Wednesday with a FestivALL Preview concert starting 6 p.m. on a stage on the Clay Center lawn, featuring area rock, country and Latin bands. Samples will also be sold of West Virginia brews. The Clay Center gets proletarian! There’s a welcome trend.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

The Broadway flies its colors prominently one blustery day along Leon Sullivan Way. Last we saw the building it was shrouded by night.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

Everytime I look at this photo, it reminds me of a postcard or an architect’s conception of a building. (Click on it to enlarge it to postcard proportions.) Does the Clay Center sell postcards of itself? Is the Clay Center yet loved enough in Charleston to have people buying postcards, affectionately recalling the place? If not, why not? Questions for another day…

Photo by Walker DeVille. Click to enlarge

The Chase building looms formally, with rigor and dead-true lines, over the shoulder of the more freely styled ease and curlicues of the faux Victorian row houses on the side of the City National Bank Building, near the entry to the South Side Bridge.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

A painterman adds some finishing touches one recent week to the new business beside the Blossom Delie, at the corner of Quarrier and Hale streets. It’s called Traders and alas is not an outpost of Trader Vics. Some kind of stocks and bond-y kind of outfit. But they did add a new cash machine right on Quarrier Street, which was a wise move. There are too few in the immediate downtown area, though, of course, if it’s not your bank’s machine, they are likely to charge usurious fees. The ones at the Huntington Mall, where I was this past weekend, are set to gouge you for $2.50 — too much to pay on principle.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

Hi, my name is Walker and I have lost control over my consumption of green tea smoothies at the recently opened Inta Juice shack on Summers Street. This has been devastating to my family lunch budget as these addictive substances cost $5.45. Yes, I know I could buy a sandwich for that at Blossom Dairy. I blame Randy Moss. Plus, the interior is cool and red and green and I just want to sit and hide out from the world, while tossing back manly shots of wheatgrass. Well, maybe not wheatgrass.

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

Work continues apace on the dome and upper reaches of First Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Leon Sullivan Way and Virginia Street. If you have never been inside to see the dome from the underside, plus its most excellent stained-glass windows, it is one of the Seven Wonders of Downtown Charleston.