Wandering Elliotborough at dusk in early May, you’ll smell the jasmine before you see it, great swaths covering every telephone pole and picket fence, white flowers glowing in the half-light as vines spill from the eaves. I’m treading carefully but sure-footed, finally having lived here long enough to see the layout in my mind, a tiny web of frequented spots and streets; Daps on Ashley, the bookstore-slash-wine bar on the corner of Bogard and Rose Lane, the shotgun house with the gas lamp and porch I pine after.
Now late in the month, humidity and proper ninety-degree weather has settled, with a sneer, I imagine, over Charleston. It occasionally redeems itself by bringing wicked weekend thunderstorms, when I open my little attic window, humidity be damned, to listen while watching basketball or thumbing through a couple more chapters of a book.
Tucked into the floral wallpaper and late-night lighting at Roseline, we talk about dream jobs and print versus digital and editors we admire, glasses of skin contact refilled once, twice. It’s nearly nine-thirty before we remember dinner, winding our way to the new Spanish tapas place for a few briny olives and anchovies before bedtime.
I am temporarily adopted by the digital team for one perfect evening, where I sip the crispest G&T of my life, listen to ghost story gossip, and eat an indescribable meal at the ever-elusive Chubby Fish, family-style. It felt like a capstone meal; I felt like the luckiest girl alive.
Remembering that I live by the beach, I spend weekend mornings at Folly, early hours by myself, late mornings with friends. Burts, the charming 24-hour grocery whose slogan is “We may doze but we never close,” supplies everything from subs to breakfast biscuits to hotdogs and nearly everything in-between. The beach has never been my preferred place—too much sand, all the time, everywhere, and duh, too much sun—but swimming temporarily solves all my problems.
On a long weekend, Madeline and I make a spontaneous decision to drive up to the North Carolina foothills—it’s like she read my mind, where the words “hiking, mountains, waterfalls” had been looping like ticker tape in my subconscious. We spend two days hiking to waterfalls, getting lost on dubious gravel backroads, watching movies, and trying to find the homemade chips and guac at an Ingles.
The hydrangeas are already blooming in downtown Hendersonville and pink rhododendron plants dot the mountain roads and misty plunge pools. Before our four-hour drive home, we pause at an antique store and follow it up with a loaded hot dog, fries, and a soft serve cone at none other than Hot Dog World. It was a soul-fulfilling weekend.
In our last production cycle now, the interns are soaking up our time together and exercising our unique ability to turn a singular question about formatting or grammar into a twenty-minute conversation about pretty much anything else. We’re finishing up our meetings with senior staff and it’s the last time for a while that I’ll be able to pepper someone with questions about budgeting and what is the difference between a managing editor and a director of editorial ops, anyway? G&G has one of the best MEs in the business and I am trying to figure out how to be her when I grow up.
Not to be overly dramatic, but no other career I’ve considered has filled me with such quiet fervor, a low little vibration that snicks my attention at practically all hours of the day. G&G is not perfect. But I resent it, just a little bit, for giving me such a wonderful example of camaraderie and 180 perfect pages of print, only to spit me back out rather unceremoniously into the ether.
I never expected G&G to hire me—they were candid about this from the beginning—but the lack of opportunities in the industry at present has instilled a genuine fear that I’m getting a taste of something I’ve wanted for a long time but won’t ever have a shot at doing again. This might not be true forever, but the not-knowing is…not awesome.
On a less melodramatic note, the June/July print magazine came out this month, where I have a couple of itty bitty bylines. There’s a sidebar I wrote for the SA Cosby feature that I am particularly pleased with, I snagged the Louisiana blurb and sunflower sidebar in the Agenda section, and wrote a little copy for front of book.
The Cosby sidebar is the coolest work-related thing I’ve probably ever done; I would have been over the moon even without the byline, but it feels like the apogee of this internship. You can read it at the end of this piece here, but the print version is hot off the press (and way cooler, because our design team rocks) so go get yourself a copy and read about frosty beer cocktails, weekend getaways, and Scottish trout fishing while you’re at it.
With bylines and mountain weekends making up my May, there isn’t much room for complaint, though I’ll admit I did schedule in some time to freak out in between glasses of wine and interviews about companion planting. It’s all about balance, though June might be the month to tip the scale. There’s much left to accomplish and about four weeks left to do it. Let’s do it.
I finished the second book in N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy, and y’all, I don’t want it to end. This is the most beautiful, intelligent example of mastering the craft of science-fiction/fantasy that I’ve ever read. While not quite as good as The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate was layered and nuanced and found impossible ways to give its characters even more depth and complexity. I am continually stunned by how easy Jemisin is to read—that’s not to say that her world-building isn’t properly confusing, but I absolutely ripped through this. I’m sad but very excited to read the final installment.
I’ve looked forward to reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, which was marketed as a kind of magical realism novel threaded through with romance. This was surprisingly funny—it has some of that wit and snark that I so adore—and original. In London, a government organization finds out how to time travel (this is never explored or deeply examined, which I actually appreciate) and brings back several “expats” from different centuries, pairing them up with a “bridge” to help acclimate them; romance, secret governmental politics, and some genuinely sweet character-building ensues. I was quite charmed by this book and whoever decided to describe it as a “workplace comedy.”
My copy, inscribed and signed, of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell has been sitting on my shelf for a long time—since my sophomore year, to be exact, when I attended O’Farrell’s talk at St Andrews. I thought I’d lost the thing for several years, but it did survive the move across the ocean, so I finally picked it up. O’Farrell writes with the grounded-yet-magical kind of observatory language that I so love, and that this book is about Shakespeare, or more specifically his son Hamnet, made reading historical fiction really lovely. I knew what was coming and was still shattered, but O’Farrell’s account of 11-year-old Hamnet’s life in Stratford, and the cast of characters that contributed to his life and later were inspirations for his father’s great plays, was truly beautiful.
And a couple of rapid-fire pieces I’ve loved lately:
This article about a restaurant critic who was asked to leave The French Laundry circulated on every industry worker’s socials that I follow and proceeded to initiate a truly insane amount of discourse.
Roger Rosenblatt, the Rules of Aging author, wrote ten tips for being happy at 85 years old and I love all of them.
As we approach the summer season and I get closer to being back home with my trusty ice cream machine, this SF Eater article, “Why Ice Cream Inspires San Francisco Chefs in Tough Times,” was fun to read in order to snag a little bit of pastry inspiration. Pairing Amaro with ice cream? Yes, please.
Chloe Warner, the genius behind Redmond Aldrich Design firm out in California, might have an incredible ability to transform her clients’ homes (see: her Cow Hollow and Big Sky projects), but she also writes a fabulous newsletter,
. She’s effortlessly funny, pulls curated recommendations for homeware, and I love how she crafts her design decks and project recaps.
Chubby Fish has topped my list of must-visit Charleston restaurants since before I moved here. The only catch is that it’s a notorious pain to get in, with a first come, first served reservation policy that has people lining up around the block just to put their name in before 4 p.m. Though I was ready and willing to make my line-waiting plan of attack, I didn’t have to—G&G’s lovely social media director (who I think knows every single person in this town) got a late reservation one evening for the digital team, who had two of their own visiting from out of state.
After work, we all gathered at the Seahorse, where I had the crispest, freshest, most divine gin and tonic of my entire existence. The Gin Sonic, as it’s called, lists its ingredients as Nikka Coffey Gin, yuzu, yogurt, juniper, and tonic. While I have absolutely no idea where the yogurt comes in, I’m dying to figure out how to make this myself.
After ducking into Babas for another drink while we waited for our reservation, by 8:50 we were sitting at Chubby Fish’s central table and talking over each other about which dishes we absolutely must order. Since there were seven of us, we opted to dine family style. The one dish that I have dreamed about is their crab-fat curry oysters, topped with puffed rice, and true to the hype, it was one of the best things I have ever eaten. The flavor combinations, freshness, and sheer ingenuity of each dish were baffling, whether it was fresh asparagus with ramp ranch (!) and butter beans, melt-in-your-mouth charred lamb ribs, tuna crudo, crispy shallots, more ramps, or a single fresh oyster.
I wholeheartedly believe that the company makes the experience—almost all of my favorite meals have been influenced by who I was with and the context in which we were eating. So for it to be nearly nine in the evening, streetlights popping on as we chatted about work and life and a million odd little things, this meal was nothing short of perfect. The lighting was dim, the conversation loud, and the only passable photo was of my perfect, bucket-list oyster.
And, in case you need cocktail inspiration, I wrote a fun interview-style piece covering D.C.’s new Lobby Bar, where Tory Pratt is at the helm of their specialty beverage program. She gives advice on how to mix a foolproof martini—refrigerate your vermouth, don’t listen to Bond, and gin, always.
For something a little easier to sip, I also wrote about the most magical, shiny-bright mimosa from Savannah’s Hotel Bardo. I’m making this the second I get home and thanks to my interviews with various beverage directors, vermouth is quickly becoming the most flexible, intriguing liquor on my bar cart, with brands like Bordiga and Dolin making repeat appearances.
Seven songs from the 80s stuck in my head.
She’s a Beauty by The Tubes
When I Think of You by Janet Jackson
Read About It by Midnight Oil
If This Is It by Huey Lewis
Into the Groove by Madonna
I Would Die 4 U by Prince
Free and Easy by Plush
It’s very nearly summer, which means my 80s baby playlist is on heavy rotation—give me all of the INXS, Billy Idol, and Bryan Adams. Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” Icehouse’s “Great Southern Land” (there’s a great modern mix of this song by Cassian), and all Van Halen has been playing very loudly in my car. My knowledge of 80s music is encyclopedic at this point and it’s useless knowledge I am very proud to possess.
I loved all of Chris Stussy’s recorded sets at Coachella this year and I’m always coming back to Disclosure and Kaytranada’s Boiler Room sets; studying or working while listening to a set helps me lock focus for a set period of time (before I have to edit my work in dead silence).
Heading into June, the usual suspects start getting more airtime: Playlists like Kravitz for playing with friends, jam band playlists with Lotus and Phish for mindless errands and starting to think about packing up my room, and my moved down South collection of relevant picks.
The Blackbird app. I’ve been following Blackbird’s newsletter,
, for a few years, but I didn’t download their app until I moved to Charleston, which is one of their current city hubs. The app rewards loyalty at certain restaurants by tracking how often you visit and tap in to their unassuming pucks at the host stand. Blackbird is built onchain, but how much you engage with the crypto is pretty optional; a lot of establishments, at least in Charleston, aren’t set up with their embedded wallet, yet. This very in-depth explanation (which is worth reading in its entirety) is fascinating and I love what Blackbird is doing to improve the stakes for restaurants and their diners.Moon Pies. Despite being born in the South, I did not grow up here and have therefore never experienced the joy of stopping at a gas station on a road trip and picking up a Moon Pie by the register. Of course, there are plenty of ways to turn the humble moon pie into a bougie version (G&G has done it, of course), but eating one straight out of the crinkly plastic was nothing short of fun.
This trailer for A24’s The Materialists. A24, one of my favorite production houses, has been working overtime to promote their upcoming movie with Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans. They recently released a new trailer that I think is a bit of marketing genius. Riffing on Mastercard’s most popular campaign from 2006 and the classic early 2000s trailer voice, they hit a hugely nostalgic pressure point, creating something pretty charming and smart. I can’t wait to see this in theaters.
An evening meander through a quietly bustling neighborhood.
A bracing ocean swim; friends who are willing to share their pools.
Ice cream sandwiches.
Texting your friends to meet you for a sandwich and sunset-watching.
A romance novel. Bonus points if it involves time travel.
Having something sweet for breakfast, like a blueberry latte or an airy cruller.
Linen pants, linen shirts, linen tablecloths…
Time spent pickling things—there is currently a jar of jalapenos, a jar of preserved lemon, and a jar of red onion in my fridge.
Watching Sex and the City in bed, but in the morning when you wake up instead of before you go to sleep.
Checking out the dive bar you’ve only heard about through dubious word-of-mouth reviews.
Thank you all for reading this month! I’m still trying to distract my heart from breaking a little over leaving this lifestyle in one short month, but there are still plenty of bucket list items I have yet to check off. I hope everyone has a lovely June—for those of you in the Northeast, it’s my favorite summer month there. Sip a good G&T, buy yourself a bouquet of peonies, or dive into a new novel. Have a great month, y’all.
I sometimes post on Instagram @gracerobrts!
My Goodreads is here and I am always looking for reading recommendations.
My Apple Music is @gracecroberts, where my playlists are regularly updated and cared for.
Just want to say hi? My email is gracecroberts@gmail.com.
See you next month!
Sincerely yours,
Grace
Your time there may be coming to an end but I don't think anyone would say you haven't made the most of it!
Whole heartedly a believer of the company makes the dining experience!! Love this, as always, and best of luck the rest of the summer. Currently reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue! The Ministry of Time is on my list :)