Now that I’ve racked up a year-and-some-odd-months worth of living on the Grand Strand of South Carolina, I’d like to report that I’ve nearly checked off every entry on my list of favored goods which are typically impossible to locate outside of small-business specialty shops (and most of which are foods).

My wife and I have located decent thin-sliced Italian salami, although we still haven’t found the proper bread to share it with. We’re told that this has something to do with the water in “these here parts”. We’ve also discovered a pretty impressive Chinese food place close by; however, the only Indian cuisine to be had requires us to drive 35 miles - though this is something we’ve proven willing to do surprisingly often. Suitable pizza, on the other hand, has to be most challenging to obtain. Again, this is (allegedly) to be blamed on the available water source. There are a lot of people from New York and New Jersey in the area who claim to take pizza fairly serious, so I’m a little shocked that they haven’t worked this out yet - especially since they are frequently asking each other if a source of a "proper slice" (always to be eaten folded in half, for some strange reason) has yet been found. But I digress. There are a handful of Mexican restaurants at hand, but none are as good as those back home in California - I guess this is the West-Coaster's equivalent of the NY/NJ pizza dilemma. Excitingly, however, we did finally pinpoint a sound supply of linguica, a Portuguese sausage enjoyed during the holidays (at least in my house), at a butcher’s shop, after making nearly a dozen phone calls. Though, this too required a lengthy trek, and I can now honestly say that I’ve driven a round trip of two hours simply to purchase meat. It was delicious meat, however and completely worth it. It saved Christmas, for me; it was Christmas-savingly-good meat. Also checked off the list is Zaya rum, a spiced beverage I prefer to Ron Zaccapa, as long as it’s the stuff made in Trinidad (and not that Guatemalan junk). And this New Year’s Eve I was so pleased to sip Plymouth gin once again. I had almost given up hope. On the down side, I haven’t had an apple or an orange in a great long while that could wow me. We sorely miss Trader Joe’s. We haven't found any good, local coffee shops, unless you count the Starbucks with a drive-thru next to a busy highway, which I do not. Additionally, no record stores, either. That’s unless you count BestBuy, which, also, I do not.

Yet in the end I've traded up. Because more than all the aforementioned articles (and many more that I didn’t cite), I aspired to be close to beautiful pipes, rare pipes, expensive pipes, old pipes, and plenty of good pipe tobacco. And that’s exactly what I found in Little River. And I'm far freer to enjoy them here than I would have been in California.

At that, we’re offering tonight a rather splendid, varied assortment of exciting new works from Maigurs Knets and Chris Askwith, along with fresh pipes from Ardor, Ascorti, Brebbia, Savinelli, Neerup, Nording, Stanwell and Peterson. And don’t forget to check out the 60 estates pipes now available as well. All this, and more, you can find right here in South Carolina.

Ted Swearingen: Vice President, General Manager