A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.
You would think that with all of the diverse music last week I’d have reached saturation point. Of course, that never happens. My fingers may get tired, but the need to participate never dies. So, when Laura said she wanted to have some “girl time” to go shopping, I took the opportunity to head up to Asheville to play in the Irish session at Jack of the Wood.
had my list of regional Irish pubs and I had my list of criteria. It was now time to visit some pubs. Some of the pubs I’d already visited, so I’d just rely on impressions I got from those visits. Others would be new to me. Some I’d visited, but it had been awhile, so I went back. There were fifteen pubs on my list and I managed to visit a little over half, eight in all. That was enough to come to some conclusions.
I’ve played lots of Celtic music sessions lately, but only one of those has been in an “Irish” pub. This struck me as a bit…weird. So I started wondering. Our area seems to have lots of Irish Pubs. What’s happening with those pubs? Are they truly “Irish Pubs?” For that matter, what really makes a pub Irish? To answer these questions I decided to do a regional pub crawl and see what each of these has to offer.
This past Sunday the Upstate Minis held their 7th Annual Bulldog Fun Run. The event is a benefit for the Greenville County Animal Care Center, and consists of somewhat British-related events taking place all over the county. Laura and I participated in our first one in 2016, and we put this one on our calendar so that we’d be sure to participate this year. It was our first outing with the Upstate Minis since returning from Washington.
We’ve had some absolutely beautiful days over the last few weeks, and it’s been tempting to just abandon everything at the house and head out with a camera. I was able to do that a couple of times. These were places I’d visited many, many times, but I got a few good photos on separate trips to Pearson Falls and Poinsett Bridge to share.
On North Pleasantburg Drive near Worley Road there once was a local dive called the Radio Room. It was either a din of iniquity or a cool place to hear up and coming bands, depending on with whom you spoke. The Radio Room has relocated into more respectable digs in the Auld Hardware building on Poinsett Drive and the old building has been demolished, revealing a once-hidden cemetery. Of course I had to explore it. In the process I found a collection of fascinating people that had been part of the Turpin/Raines Family that were early settlers of Greenville.
It had been awhile since I’d visited the Pickens Flea Market. I had visited once since returning from the west coast, and at that time I didn’t play with the musicians circle. I figured Halloween would be as good a day as any to pay another visit, and this time I was loaded with guitar, banjo, melodica, and tin whistles.
I’ve been wanting to get back on track with our “Water Wednesday” outings. This past Wednesday was inundated with Hurricane/Tropical Storm Michael, which dumped tons of water and brought winds to our area Wednesday into Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, though, skies had cleared, so we were good to go for an outing on Friday. This time Jeff Holland and I headed down to Laurens county to the Boyd’s Mill Pond on the Reedy River. While any day on the water is a good day, this one presented some unique challenges.
When I was in middle school (or Junior High, as they called it back then), occasionally one of my classmates would show up with some cool contraband object that they would show off at recess. It might be a toy, a knife, or some thing they weren’t supposed to have at school. When asked where they got it, the answer was invariably the Anderson Jockey Lot.