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The Partner Desk Charleston's most engaged audience is reading right now Your business could be in this spot next week
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Happy Thursday, Charleston!
I've been vague for two weeks. Here's the whole thing.
CHS Happenings has a community now. A room where the 11,700 of us who read this every Thursday can talk to each other instead of just to me.
It's free. Go join it. Tell me what neighborhood you're in and where you send people who are visiting.
That's the front door. Here's what's behind it.
On August 27 I'm opening the members side. It's called The Regulars, and it's for people who want to be closer to this city than a Thursday email can get them.
| • | Dinner Club first, at half price. Regulars get the link 72 hours early and pay $8 instead of $16. |
| • | A direct line to me. Where to eat for an anniversary. Whether that neighborhood is right. The stuff you'd text a friend who knows. |
| • | The full calendar. Not the handful I squeeze in here. All of it. |
| • | Every live music show in town, not just the weekend picks. |
| • | What's opening and what's closing, including what I'm hearing before anyone announces it. |
All of that is $150 a year. The first 100 people don't pay that.
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The First Seating $100 a year Locked for as long as you stay. |
That's about eight dollars a month, and it never goes up. Come to Dinner Club every month and it pays for itself.
You can claim one today.
Doors open the 27th either way. Come hang out in the meantime.
| Join the community — free |
| Claim a First Seating — $100 |
On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention came back from a ten day recess and was handed the first printed draft of the United States Constitution. The man who delivered it was John Rutledge, who studied law in Charleston under his uncle before finishing at London's Middle Temple, and who chaired the committee that wrote it.
Article 7, Section 4 of that draft barred Congress from prohibiting the importation of enslaved people, with no expiration date attached. The 1808 cutoff that ended up in the finished Constitution came out of a separate compromise weeks later. Rutledge's house still stands on Broad Street.
Folly is finally studying its 800-license cap. Do you own a place around here that you rent out?
Dinner Club is two weeks out, and it's in the French Quarter.
That's the one you've been asking for. The French Quarter has been our most popular neighborhood since we started Dinner Club, which means these seats don't sit around waiting.
This one's for you if…
You moved here in the last two years and your social circle is still mostly coworkers and your spouse.
You keep telling yourself you'll "put yourself out there," and keep not doing it.
You work from home and your most interesting conversation today was with the Harris Teeter cashier.
You watched the last three Dinner Clubs roll by and felt that little twinge.
If even one of those landed, this is the one to stop scrolling on.
Wednesday, August 19. French Quarter. 6:45 PM. Six people to a table, matched by vibe, spread across a few of the neighborhood's best rooms. Afterward everybody converges in one place for the after-party.
Don't think about it until the French Quarter tables are gone.
Congrats to Sue H. of James Island who guessed correctly in last week’s “Where Are We?” I was at Mosquito Beach on James Island. In the early and mid-20th century it functioned as an oasis for Lowcountry African Americans during the dark days of "Jim Crow" segregation. Today it remains a vibrant gathering place, bringing people together in community.
WEATHER
Thursday 86° / 78° ☔ 💧49%
Friday 89° / 77° ☔ 💧42%
Saturday 85° / 77° ⛈️ 💧71%
Sunday 88° / 78° ⛈️ 💧58%
CITIES
Charleston just cracked the top ten happiest cities in America. Columbia landed 79 spots behind us, which is its own kind of satisfying.
The part worth sitting with is the salary where more money stops making anyone happier. In a city that costs what this one costs, that number reads differently.
WHERE ARE WE?
Just reply to this email, or if you’re reading on our website, email me here. The first person to guess correctly will get a shout-out at the top of our issue next week!
HAPPENINGS
Thursday, August 6
Full STEAM Ahead (5-8) | 1 PM | Children's Museum of the Lowcountry | Painting with robots. Bugs that dance. Free with admission.
North Charleston Farmers Market | 3 - 7 PM | Park Circle Pavilion | New food truck every week. Live music starts at five.
Student Improv Jam Night | 8 PM | Theatre 99 | Five bucks. Put your name in the hat. Get onstage.
Friday, August 7
Teacher Appreciation Happy Hour + Music Bingo | 4 - 9 PM | Firefly Distillery | You don't have to be a teacher. Bingo hits seven.
8th Annual Pack The Back | 4:30 - 8 PM | Flight Adventure Park Charleston | Free school supplies before the bell rings. Bring the kids.
Charleston RiverDogs vs. Kannapolis Cannon Ballers | 7:05 PM | Joe Riley Stadium | Rock Night, and the fireworks go off after the last out.
Saturday, August 8
Lowcountry Seafood Festival | 11 AM - 7 PM | Exchange Park, Ladson | All-you-can-eat blue crabs. Surprise performers. Year one, so go.
Saturdays at the Distillery | 12 - 5 PM | Firefly Distillery | Free, dog friendly, live music, food truck. Bring a blanket.
Candle Making Happy Hour | 4 - 6 PM | Island Candles | Free, BYOB, and you leave with a candle you made.
Sunday, August 9
PopUp Bagels x Walk With CHS | 8 - 9 AM | PopUp Bagels | First crack at the tangerine cream cheese. Walk it off.
American Gardens Sunday Bazaar | 10:30 AM - 2:30 PM | American Gardens | Flower farms and live music in King Street's newest park.
NERDFEST 2026 | 11 AM - 7 PM | Frothy Beard Brewing Company | Cosplay, tabletop, Pokémon Go, nerd trivia. All inside a brewery.
| Broker’s Take | August 6, 2026 |
Everyone Says Nobody’s Buying
The line I keep hearing at parties is that nobody is buying anything right now. The Charleston region closed more than two thousand homes in June, up sharply from the same month a year ago. That is not a frozen market. That is a market people have decided is frozen. The confusion is fair, because higher rates and longer market times feel like a stall even when the transaction count says otherwise. But the deals are getting done, quietly, by Charlestonians who stopped waiting for a headline to give them permission. Mood and volume are two different things, and only one of them shows up at the closing table.
Jimmy Farrell
Broker, The Farrell Group
ICYMI
Folly Beach capped its short-term rentals three years ago and is only now getting around to measuring what that did.
→ What Folly's first real look at the cap will actually measureMini golf and a two-story retail building near the Folly Road intersection cleared their first design review. The parking garage and office building didn't, and they're headed back to the drawing board.
College of Charleston is building a hospitality school on Calhoun Street, and the old College Lodge has to come down first.
→ What goes up at 159 Calhoun Street insteadAn 8,000-square-foot butcher and seafood market just opened on Coleman Boulevard, betting Mount Pleasant is done with prepacked steaks.
→ The one thing in the case worth waiting until November forDuckpin bowling, axe throwing and mini golf are landing on Dorchester Road in a room designed to look like Miami.
→ The drink order that explains the whole place
LIVE MUSIC
FRI — Dumpstaphunk at The Charleston Pour House — New Orleans funk built on family and low end. Or Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: A Tribute at Forte Jazz Lounge — hard bop in a room built for it.
SAT — Tim McGraw at Credit One Stadium — two decades of hits under open sky. Or Mariachazo at North Charleston PAC — a century of mariachi tradition, two orchestras deep.
SUN — PJ Morton at Charleston Music Hall — gospel-raised soul with serious range. Or Reggae Sundays at The Washout — Folly Beach, salt air, easy rhythm.
FEEDBACK
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