Happy Friday morning, Charleston! How’d you like to be paid for perfect attendance in school? Charleston County School District started a pilot program last month where it pays $25 per week to all students who show up bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed—OK, that’s my subjective assessment. If you simply show up, on time and every day, you get paid.

Congrats to Jason D. of Summerville, who was the 1st to guess correctly in our “Where Are We” segment last week! Our photo was St. Andrews Church in the Old Village.

In today’s newsletter:

• Restaurants have had a rough go of it the past 18 months. Things may get easier with liquor liability reform in the works.

• North Charleston restaurant described as “weird and wonderful” is opening a new spot. Their wine club is so popular the owners decided to open a wine bar.

• ICYMI. The ‘70s are back (maybe), siblings get along and a new retail landmark.

Friday 76° / 64° ☀️ 💧5%

Saturday 77° / 65° ☀️ 💧6%

Sunday 78° / 66° ☁️ 💧6%

Friday, April 18

• Spring Camp | 9 AM - 3 PM | Crush Yard, 3365 S Morgans Point Rd, Mount Pleasant | Join us from March 31 to April 18 for Crush Yard Spring Kids Camp! Enjoy complimentary lunch, fountain drinks, and cotton candy while making new friends and having a blast on our pickleball courts. Don’t miss the fun—sign up today!  https://crushyard.com/camps/

• April Adopt and Shop Vendor Market & Happy Hour | 4 - 8 PM | Firefly Distillery, 4201 Spruill Avenue, North Charleston | Live music, cocktails, a local vendor market, adoptable dogs & more! Don't miss it, we can't wait to sip, celebrate, and make more memories with you!

• Le Freak- A tribute to the golden years of Studio 53 | 5 - 9 PM I Islander 71, 80 41st Ave, Isle of Palms | Get ready to dust off your sequins, peel out the vinyl and relive the magic of Studio 54! In honor of the legendary nightclub's anniversary, Me & Mr. Jones is bringing the glitz, glam, and iconic disco soundback to the stage for a one-night-only 9 piece LIVE BAND.

• Party at The Point | 6 - 9 PM I Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina, 24 Patriots Point Road, Mount Pleasant | Event Details Party At The Point is back this April to celebrate 25 years as Charleston's premiere Happy Hour concert series. Takes place Friday evenings from April 18th - July 18th.

Saturday, April 19

• Easter at The Charleston Place | 11 AM - 2 PM | The Charleston Place Hotel | Easter at The Charleston Place will be filled with activities for all ages, chocolate eggs, and a special appearance by the Easter Bunny. Bring your family and friends to create timeless memories that you will cherish for a lifetime.

• Firefly Distillery 20 Year Anniversary | 12 - 4 PM | Firefly Distillery, 4201 Spruill Avenue, North Charleston | Raise your glasses to 20 years of Firefly! The grand celebration is from 12-4 pm on Saturday, April 19th! Open to all ages and event admission is free! Enjoy live music from Derek Cribb! (2-5 pm) and bites from Kees Kitchen food truck and Kitchen & Desserts.

• Harlem Globetrotters 2025 World Tour Presented by Jersey Mike's Subs I 6 PM | North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center I You love the dunks, alley-oops, looooong shots, magic, history and laughs! Don’t miss your chance to see what fans love about the Harlem Globetrotters plus more as the world-famous Globetrotters level-up every game with all-new, exciting challenges in 2025!

Sunday, April 20

• Easter Brunch and Egg Hunt | 9:45 - 10:45 AM | Circular Congregational Church, 150 Meeting Street, Charleston | Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life's journey, you are welcome here! Please come to our annual Easter brunch and children's egg hunt between services, 9:45-10:45 a.m. The children’s egg hunt will begin at 10:15 a.m. Please bring a basket for each child participating!

• Charleston Stage’s “Legally Blonde” I 2 PM | The Historic Dock Street Theatre, 135 Church St, Charleston | An adaptation of the hit film starring Reese Witherspoon, three-time Olivier Award-winning musical “Legally Blonde” is the story of Elle Woods, a seemingly superficial sorority girl who defies expectations and becomes a successful Harvard Law School student while discovering her strengths and intelligence.

  Charleston Riverdogs vs. Hickory Crawdads I 5:05 PM | The Joe, 360 Fishburne St, Charleston I It’s gonna be a beautiful day, why not come out to The Joe and enjoy the languid pace of a spring baseball game?

We’ve changed the URL for our events calendar! For a COMPLETE list of events in the Charleston area, bookmark the site below!

RESTAURANTS

Legislation To Curb Liquor Insurance Costs Looks Set For Passage

There’s been much written lately, including here, about restaurants struggling and closing in the Charleston area. Some is due to the natural ebb and flow of the restaurant business.

Concepts run their course, owners retire, owners move on to something else…

But it surely hasn’t gotten easier to run a restaurant, especially in the past several years. And the cost of liquor license liability insurance is a prime culprit.

We’ve heard from numerous restaurant operators, both anecdotally and in the media, about the astronomical increase in insurance premiums. This type of insurance was mandated by a bill passed by the SC legislature in 2017.

The bill required restaurants and bars that serve liquor to carry at least $1 million in liquor liability insurance. Designed to protect victims of alcohol-related incidents, another legal concept on the books has made insurers either flee the state or increase premiums past the unsustainable.

A Quaint Legal Statute, This

Stay with me here, and force your eyes from glazing over.

Something called the “joint and several liability” statute means a business can be fully responsible for damages even if it is only partially at fault​​.

Consider an example: let’s say a patron visits multiple bars in one evening and becomes excessively intoxicated. If that patron later causes a car accident, under joint and several liability, any of the bars that served the patron could be held liable for the entire amount of the damages awarded to the victims of the accident, even if one bar only served a single drink.

Combine the 2—the requirement to carry liquor liability insurance and this bizarre legal statute—and the result is an imperfect storm for restaurant owners.

Real Life Consequences

The 2017 bill was designed to address something that’s been a problem for years: South Carolina consistently ranks among the top states for drunk driving deaths. In 2023, the state had 8.82 drunken driving deaths per 100,000 residents, and 11.55 drunken drivers involved in fatal crashes per 100,000 licensed drivers—both figures are well above the national averages.

In this case, the law of unintended consequences was the result. Some of our favorite restaurants and bars have closed because insurance companies have decided the situation is “too risky”.

Dwyane Mitchell, owner of Local 616, cited rising insurance rates as a key reason for closing his downtown Charleston bar after 12 years, noting that the cost to conduct business, including insurance, had become too high

Others have also identified the problem.

Relief Is On The Way

In a prime example of “burying the lede”, I’ve made you read this far to tell you legislation is making its way through the SC legislature that may offer relief for restaurant and bar owners. The required minimum insurance amount is being lowered to $500,000.

In addition, all bar staff and management will be required to undergo regular server training approved by the state. This training will help them recognize the signs of inebriation and understand their legal responsibility to make sure they don’t keep serving people who have been drinking too much.

While some think this waters down the obligation of owners to be responsible, I think it’s a timely balancing of the scales.

Interested in being a sponsor?

CHS Happenings has a fast-growing and super-engaged subscriber base. We’re going to start offering local Charleston businesses the opportunity to reach this audience soon.

If you’re interested, click below and we’ll reach out in the next 30 days.

WHERE ARE WE?

Each week, watch this space for a random snap from somewhere in Charleston. Where are we? Only true locals will know. DM your guess on Instagram, or email me here. The first person to guess correctly will get a shout-out at the top of our issue next week!

SPONSORED BY TOPLINE

Charleston is known for its vibrant culinary scene, ever-expanding tourism and relaxed lifestyle. And it’s increasingly gaining attention from the technology sector as a great place to start and grow a tech-based company.

No wonder, then, the 1st Charleston Tech Week is in town April 24 through May 5.

Topline, the fast-growing local startup helping top independent professionals and service firms grow smarter with all-in-one AI revenue tools, is rolling out its premium Topline Gold Membership just in time.

This Gold membership is built to help top pros stand out, book more business, and skip the middlemen—with innovative tools like Topline Inferred Rates and a guaranteed-response booking system that flips the script on how business gets done.

To celebrate, they’re offering a limited-time Tech Week special, open now to our subscribers:

👉 Get Topline Gold for just $24 (75% off forever) plus enjoy open bar access at the CTW GeekOut Finale Party on May 2.

If you're a professional, consultant, freelancer, or anyone using tech to grow your career or firm, you’ll want to check this out. The Topline team will also be hosting Gold members at the DigSouth Topline Lounge May 1-2 as well as sponsoring the GeekOut Tech Week Finale party—come say hi, grab a drink, and see what they’re building.

OUR 1ST GIVEAWAY!

We said we’d throw a party at 1,000 followers… and here we are. It’s time for CHS Happenings’ very first-ever giveaway — and we’re serving it up with sauce 🍖

We’re giving $50 to one of Charleston’s top BBQ joints — your pick. As long as you participate in the poll below, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win the $50. Let’s go!! 👇🏼👇🏼

RESTAURANTS

Dashi Wine Bar and Emporium Opening This Summer

Since opening in 2019, Dashi has developed quite the following in North Charleston. Their impressive Yelp rating of 4.6 stars and numerous positive reviews speak to the community they’ve built, and the quality of the food and dining experience.

What’s impressive is this success has come in a location that’s not a quintessential A+. There’s no retail or restaurant “drivers” nearby—other similar businesses that collectively bring more traffic to a location. And the building isn’t at a traffic light, making access sometimes challenging.

Before Dashi opened, the building was previously home to a restaurant called El Chapin. Prior to that, the space had a long history as a convenience store dating back to the 1970s. Dashi’s founders, Stephen Thompson and Oscar Hines, embraced the building’s retro roots by incorporating a purposeful 1970s disco-era aesthetic into Dashi’s design. Notably, some features from its convenience store days, such as the large walk-in freezer (formerly the beer cave), remain part of the space’s character today.

Dashi, which operated as a food truck before its bricks-and-mortar days, is opening Dashi Wine Bar & Emporium a few miles away at 5660 Rivers Avenue. Spanish, Portuguese, Central and South American wines by the glass and by the bottle at retail with smaller Spanish-style pintxo snacks from the nearby Dashi kitchen.

It should be open by summer.

ICYMI

🫕 What is this, the ‘70s? A fondue restaurant is eyeing CHS for a new opening. Bell bottoms and platform shoes incoming.

🍗 Michelin-trained chef launches a small food stand in a parking lot in East Hollywood. Now heading east, Dave’s Hot Chicken is looking at opening in Charleston.

🍽️ Siblings can get along. Top CHS restaurants doing well by adding paired bars.

🛍️ Building in heart of tourist district downtown to get ground-floor makeover. 200 Meeting Street team is calling it “Charleston’s Next Retail Landmark”.

🏭 Navy Yard Charleston continues its impressive creative makeover. Next up may be the re-imagining of the “Three Sisters” historic warehouse buildings.

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FEEDBACK

Got 15 seconds? Let us know what you thought about today’s newsletter by voting in the poll below (you’ll be done MUCH faster than cars on Johnnie Dodds at 4:00 PM on a Friday). 👇