For the seventeenth consecutive year, readers of Condé Nast Traveler magazine designated Charleston a “Top 10” travel destination in the U.S.
Charleston was honored with the No. 2 slot – topped only by San Francisco. This ranking maintains Charleston’s spot as the No. 1 east coast destination.
July, 2008 we started the process of tearing up lower king street- removing the old trolley tracks, putting in new sewage lines, ripping up the old sidewalks and laying bluestone, making new curbs, adding lamp posts and new trees and blacktopping the street.
The last 16 months could be called ’survival of the fittest’ with the retail stores; not only did we have a recession on our hands, but also a daily battle with construction noise and obstacles that have turned tourists away. Check out the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ photos below and come visit us on November 12th for the ribbon cutting! 
And After!
The Lower King Street Ribbon Cutting and Streetscape Celebration is Thursday, November 12. Mayor Riley will cut the ribbon between
4:30 and 5:00 PM followed by speeches, media attention and a classic King Street Stroll.
Published by the advertising branch of the Ministry of Information, this anonymous invitation to visit the second most populous country in the world invites us to experience the spiritual side of India. The Maha Bodhi Temple, where the Gautama Buddha acheived supreme enlightenment, took place became a place of pilgrimage. Inside the temple there is a colossal image of the Buddha in the “touching the ground pose”, bhumisparsha mudra. This image is said to be 1700 years old and is facing east exactly at the place where the Buddha in meditation with his back to the Bodhi tree was enlightened.
Walter Thor was one of the turn-of-the-century artists designing posters for car and bicycle companies. Born in Munich, he studied in Paris for a few years and then returned to Germany. Peugeot, like many early car companies, had its origins in the bicycle manufacturing business. Here, in rich colors and with sharp outlining, Thor depicts an aristocratic lady surrounded by her dogs as she cycles toward a music pavilion. Although virtually devoid of Art Nouveau ornamentation, the graceful, winding bicycle path in the background serves to adorn the images much as a plume of smoke might in an image by the Father of Art Nouveau, Alphonse Mucha.
By allowing women the feeling of freedom, mobility, and independence, the bicycle helped to fundamentally transform social relations between the sexes. Not only did the bicycle play a large role in freeing women from the restraints of constricting fashions, it changed the idea of female beauty by dispelling the myths of women’s fragility and helplessness. The early women’s liberation movement found in the bicycle a vehicle for change; as the famous women’s emancipationist Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton proclaimed: “Woman is riding to suffrage on a bicycle.”
Artist Gunther Kieser (1930- ) belongs to the class of artists whose lifestyle and thought process find their way into their work with startling impact. Laymen experience his posters; experts appreciate them. Kieser says that he sees poster design as a challenge “to translate a mental image into a real image” (Kieser, p. 12). His usual method is to create that image in a solid form, like a sculpture or collage, and then take a photo of it. His objective determines his mode of expression; all he wants to do is communicate an immediate, powerful impression, and in this he succeeds brilliantly.
The American Folk Blues Festival was a music festival that toured Europe beginning in 1962. These captivating posters by Kieser are from 1964 and 1965.
German jazz publicist Joachim-Ernst Berendt first had the idea of bringing original African-American blues performers to Europe. Jazz had become very popular, and rock and roll was just gaining a foothold, and both genres drew influences directly back to the blues. Berendt thought that European audiences would flock to concert halls to see them in person.
Promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau would bring this idea to reality. By contacting Willie Dixon, an influential blues composer and bassist from Chicago, they were given access to the blues culture of the deep South. The first festival was held in 1962, and they continued almost annually until 1972, after an eight year hiatus reviving the festival in 1980 until its final performance in 1985.
Blues musicians who performed include: Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, Lonnie Johnson, Son House, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, John Lee Hooker, Skip James, Sleepy John Estes, Little Brother Montgomery, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, Fred McDowell, J. B. Lenoir, Little Walter,Carey Bell, Louisiana Red, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Joe Turner, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Memphis Slim, Magic Sam, Otis Spann and Willie Dixon. Many of the concerts were released on a long-running annual series of records, which was collated again for release in the 1990s.
