Writing

1. Local skatepark gets demolished

   Early Monday morning, a lone bulldozer crushed the curves and edges of a local skatepark known as Wasteland. Born from the rubble of a paper recycling center, the six month old concrete park was largely the result of efforts by local skaters and generous donations from a local concrete contractor.

2. H.R. slows the pace for Bad Brains return

   Expectations were high for the return of legendary punk band Bad Brains to the Music Farm and all eyes were on lead singer H.R. He has a history of erratic stage performances and there's no doubt that he's an eccentric guy. He didn't blow it, but his energy level wavered at times.

3. The Shaniqua Brown erupts at the Pour House

   The Shaniqua Brown's show at the Pour House Friday night was nothing short of volcanic. Lead singer Rachel Kate Gillon anchored the energetic show by three bands fronted by three powerful and vibrant women.

4. Paolo Ventura's photographs document a world created for Winter Stories

   A giant fireball leaps from the mouth of a heavily cloaked firebreather. His back is to the camera. Snow covers the ground. In another image, a man dressed as a clown rests peacefully on his bed in an empty room. The funeral crowd has come and gone.

5. Joe Buck snarls and stomps his way through Charleston

   One-man band Joe Buck headlined an intense show at the Mill on April 21. Currently stomping up and down the East Coast, he's in the middle of a whopping 170-gig tour this year.

6. Last call for Vickery's downtown

   It seemed unreal — could Vickery's really be closing? — until we heard Jason Stalker's last call speech for ourselves on Sunday night.

7. Charleston Riverdogs to give away Alvin Greene bobblehead doll

   The first 1,000 fans to attend Saturday nights Charleston Riverdogs game against the Augusta Green Jackets will get a homemade Alvin Greene bobblehead doll. The original plan was to let fans decide whose picture got pasted on the golden statues formerly called "Mr. Lady Liberty".

8. PHOTO: Pizza guy delivers despite the flood

   At the peak of flooding on Sunday evening, Caleb Hartsell headed out from the East Bay Domino's pizza with 4 orders while the clock was ticking. After driving through plenty of flooded streets and getting the first two to the door within minutes, he turned onto Smith St. and saw half a block under about a foot and a half of water.

9. Tech geeks go back to school for BarCampCHS 2

   BarCampCHS relies on attendees to pitch sessions the day of the event. Potential presenters line up in the morning and give brief pitches on topics they'd like to present, which can include programming, social media, or even brewing your own beer. The sessions get voted on, and the conference is then determined on a large paper grid with squares indicating what sessions go on in which room.

10. Rosie Hellfire rescues West Ashley from the flood

    Not even the flood of the year could stop rockabilly fans from showing up for Friday night’s One Man Show/Rebelettes get-together at the Tin Roof.

11. Aziz Ansari anchored an impromptu gigglefest at UDT

    Columbian laugh lord Aziz Ansari sent out a tweet on Monday afternoon about dropping in on the stand-up night at the Upper Deck Tavern. Within a few hours, word spread and fans made plans to mob the place.
    

12. Charleston-based Water Missions International fights cholera and corruption in Haiti

    For people living in certain villages and small towns in Haiti, few things are more reassuring than the bitter, gripping taste of chlorine in a glass of water. Indeed, the more their drinking water tastes like a swimming pool, the better.

13. A thank-you letter to Steve Jobs

    The tech world and beyond has been reeling from the death of Apple Computer visionary Steve Jobs. He passed away on Wednesday after struggles with pancreatic cancer. Eloquent testimonies about his contributions to consumer culture and business acumen are all over the net now. Mine is a more personal story.

14. Canadian company recreates Fort Moultrie in 3D

    The battlements of Fort Moultrie have been raised to their former glory recently. This time it was done with pixels instead of bricks and mortar.

15. Former Governor Mark Sanford to marry Argentinean girlfriend, Maria Belen Chapur

16. Traces performer visits MUSC Children's Hospital

17. A photographic look at some of the Holy City’s master craftsmen

    Born from flame-belching furnaces and hammered into shape, Charleston's architectural future is being forged from the past. A new generation is carrying on the ancient arts of blacksmithing, wood carving, and glassmaking.

18. Park Circle gets a new coffee shop

    Ever since Park Circle Coffee n' More closed back in 2009, Park Circle locals have been without a proper coffee shop. Now, Richard Campbell is back with a new shop aptly dubbed Richard's Coffee n' More.

19. Michelin's big tires will bring big money and 500 jobs to South Carolina

    Greenville based Michelin North America will be dumping a wad of cash into its Lexington and Anderson plants to beef up capacity to manufacture giant Earthmover tires. The $750 million infusion is expected to yield 500 jobs.

20. Multimedia: Murals in Charleston

    Charleston isn't widely known for its public art. Occasionally a few murals pop up around town, but our visual identity is inexorably tied to traditional architecture and Rainbow Row. Even signage is tightly controlled, and public projects usually have a raft of red tape to confront.

21. Earshot expands with new record store in West Ashley

    Greenville based Earshot has opened a new record store across the street from Early Bird Cafe. Amazingly, they opened it in just three weeks after grabbing the space.

22. The Shaniqua Brown played fast, died young

    The Shaniqua Brown played their final show on Friday night at the Pour House, after just a few years of stomping around Charleston and beyond. They went out in the best way possible, in mid-orgasm, snarling and spitting in the face of the end.

23. Best Way to Explore Park Circle

    Park Circle has seen some incredible growth in the past few years and has received a lot of national praise for it. Back in September, PC zealot Thea Anderson organized a bike scavenger hunt that sent teams of locals from the Mixson barn into the neighborhoods.

24. Barcampchs reveals that local tech community is thriving

    Around 200 BBQ munching digerati invaded the Lowcountry Innovation Center for the first annual Barcampchs "un-conference" on Saturday. Billed as an "ad-hoc un-conference," the event was a gathering of mostly techy types who wanted to share ideas and solidify what's normally a virtual community.

25. Video: Joe Buck invades the Pour House

    The weren't any sandals at the Pour House on Tuesday night. The normally laid-back venue was invaded by rowdy Joe Buck fans, intent on summoning the feral spirit of his brand of hellbilly rock. It was a small crowd, but made up of die-hards.

26. The Highrollers demolish the Derby Dames

    The Lowcountry Highrollers owned the Greenville Derby Dames on Saturday night, dominating them with a 123-47 victory. The Dames just couldn't climb back from an early round of bruising jams that left them flat.
    

27. Non-lethal ramen recipes that won't send you to the restroom

    Ramen sucks. But at 17 cents a package — that is if you buy in bulk — the price can't be beat, and those pasty white noodles of joy can actually get you high if you stick your face in the MSG-laden steam. Okay, maybe that was just a flashback.

28. Champion sprinter switches teams in online filter glitch

    "Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has," the filtered story read. "His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn't count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here's what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he's certainly someone to watch in Beijing.

29. Apple's iTurd

    Around 10 a.m. Friday, I got an anxious call from my editor saying her iPhone wouldn't update and was now stuck in iTunes trying to contact the iTunes store. Her phone was seized with an ominous message to "slide for emergency." System updates, restarts, and resets accomplished nothing. At the same time, her failing laptop power connector quit charging and began the countdown to shutdown. A look came across her face, and I knew she had gotten The Fear — in 26 minutes she would be off the grid

30. Access Denied

    The truth is out there, and it's a detailed log of what you've been up to. Buried in the digital noise of internet packet traffic, cell network requests, and VIC card grocery lists is a record of what you do while on the grid. Dark rooms with racks of whirring fans cooling hard drives silently record each connection.

31. g.ho.st IS the machine

    It's the same old routine: Make coffee, get kids ready for school, check news for any traffic jams. Hmm, what's this? Overnight rocket attacks have caused the government to close the bridge into town until further notice? Damn, and I had a great joke from Leno to tell the guys in the break room. I'll just have to tell them over the video link.

32. Personal devices get hardcore

    The next time you're waiting in line at the DMV and see someone furiously clicking on his cell phone while rooting in his pocket, there may be more going on than you think. Recent improvements in WAP bandwidth have given us a perfect storm for video porn on your phone.

33. BOOK REVIEWS: Pretty Vacant: A History of UK Punk & Punk 365

    The MC5 didn't birth punk rock. Neither did the Velvet Underground or Television. Actually, it was never born. It was an N.Y.C. art-rock abortion that was rescued by thousands of pissed-off kids who raised it from the gutter and threw it onstage to be a bloody antidote to vapid pop culture.

34. Tech advice for dissident bloggers

    Blogging is free speech's last frontier against government suppression. It's cheap (free), accessible (easy), and worldwide in seconds (bitchin!). Governments in need of control over information know this — and they're pissed. So how do you get the word out?

35. Best Reaction to the YouTube Video of Cop Harassing Skateboarders

    Pour It Now

36. LIVE REVIEW: Agnostic Front

    Halloween night at Cumberland's

37. An underground scouting report on Lowcountry wi-fi hotspots

    If you're tired of the über-hip hegemony of wi-fi camping down at your local Starbucks, you've got plenty of options for exploring the airborne bandwidth that Chucktown has to offer. But you wouldn't know it from the standard hotspot directories, which at most list 50 or so. We're connected in a way that goes largely undocumented. Thousands of Wireless Access Points are quietly beaming their calls for connection across the region. A few are advertised, many have little signs in the window, but most are unknown.

38. Secure browsing flaw reveals a nasty exploit

    Fruit is lame. Cookies are the way to go. When I saw the big blue fur dude yell cookeeez! and stuff his face with crumbly goodness, I knew me and Cookie Monster would get along fine. But I was crushed to see he's been dabbling in "grey hat" SSL exploit hacking. The gleefully delusional crumb muncher is the mascot of a new cookie-snatching hack that can collect your login info on Gmail, Netflix, or even your bank. Well, he's not real, but the danger is.

39. Facebook is hurting and Twitter is under attack, here's where to take an early lunch

    Yeah, so Twitter has been down most of the morning due to a sustained DDoS attack. Facebook is having problems of its own and is delivering pages sporadically.

40. Unknown Hinson: the king of hillbilly vampires

    Unknown Hinson helps the Lowcountry Highrollers raise some dough at the Music Farm.

41. Local online community reacts to robbery of videographer

    The Charleston online community is rallying to support local videographer/blogger Geoff Marshall of thedigitel.com, who was robbed on Sunday night in Greensboro, N.C.

42. Zach Deputy's tour truck is stolen in New Jersey

43. Pour House changes under-21 policy

44. Best New Store to Buy a Set of Trucks

    Continuum Skateshop

45. Best Barbershop with a Batch of Bunnies Hanging Out in the Parking Lot

    Bushwhacker's

46. Feedkill

    Like many of you, I was glued to the information stream coming out of election night coverage. When you open all the faucets, it's amazing how much data you can assault your psyche with.

47. Math and money on Wall Street

    Before the recent Wall Street crisis took hold, my knowledge of the stock market came from Trading Places. Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy stick it to the man by gaming frozen concentrated orange juice futures using pit traders on the stock exchange floor.

48. Google's latest browser steals the best and ignores the rest

    I guess Google founders, Larry and Sergey, have had their propellers spinning lately. They've taken time off cruising around their Lego castles on Segweys long enough to contemplate their next move towards global domination, web browsing.

49. PREVIEW ‌ The Lovell Sisters

    Sister Sister: The Lovells return with their band for a third Piccolo