@j_carlson taking the final shots for #walltowallsav | Thank you @converse & @juxtapozmag | #savannah #109mlk
Not that cruise ship passengers worry too much about the impact their vacations have on local communities. Battles over local or federal legislation, like the Clean Cruise Ship Act, which died in Congress in 2010, are not as interesting as which name-brand chef is going to open a restaurant on board.
“Our audience doesn’t really respond to the municipal-level battles or the environmental stuff,” said Dan Askin, senior editor at cruisecritic.com, a consumer Web site dedicated to cruise ships.
So. Numbers 5 and 4 are on River Street. I generally steer people away from River Street but perhaps these are worthwhile?
5. The Warehouse: 18 E. River St. 912-234-6003
4. Chuck’s Bar: 305 W. River St., 912-232-1005
I’m more interested in #3, Long Branch, which is news to me:
Chances are you aren’t going to find Long Branch unless you’re looking for it.
Off the beaten bar path on Skidaway Road, Long Branch is an old postal service station turned bar, which means there’s lots of space. Space enough for pool, darts and poker leagues, karaoke nights, a DJ on Friday nights, a full kitchen and more.
Owner Joey Ruiz frequented the 15-year-old bar long before taking it over seven months ago, says his top priority was to keep the same grungy “neighborhood bar that makes everyone feel welcome.” One thing he did change, though, was the menu. It now includes burgers, chicken fingers and, according to Ruiz, “the best steaks in town.”
Best value drink: Happy hour is 10 a.m.-7 p.m., with $2 domestic bottles and $3 wells
Long Branch, 2411 Skidaway Road, 912-232-6175
No 2 is The Rail Pub, 405 W. Congress St., which we’ve walked past but never entered. Seems a bit frat-y, but can’t really say for sure.
No 1 is Pinkie Master’s, which is fine.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — The cautionary tales came Thursday from our neighboring port city, but they were shared by others from Alaska and British Columbia and from Norway, Cozumel and Venice.
Once big cruise ships come to a city, they can overwhelm a community’s resources — crowding streets, jamming sidewalks and attractions, contributing to pollution and generating far less in spending and tax dollars than is usually anticipated.
For several Savannah residents, the message was coming through loud and clear at a conference called Harboring Tourism, an international symposium on cruise ships in historic port communities.
The full allegation:
Pinkie’s is in a class by itself, but establishments like Doc’s Bar and The Quarter (both on Tybee), The Crow Bar and Cheers (both on Wilmington) and the Dew Drop Inn (Southside) are great dives. Doc’s is quite possibly the most fun dive on earth, although it lost a sliver of its charm since the 2010 death of the fabulous Miss Sylvia. The Quarter has that come-as-you-are ambience that is so desirable. The Crow Bar can be intimidating but is rather welcoming once you get past first impressions. Cheers’ hidden spot on Turner Creek (behind Publix) and its water view make it unique. And the Dew Drop Inn is a place you must experience for yourself.
Total crime decreased by 12.1 percent in 2012, which included a 1.2 percent drop in violent crime and a 13.1 percent reduction in property crimes, said Julian Miller, police spokesman. The number of crimes reported in the metro jurisdiction also bettered 2010, which was the previous lowest since the city annexed the southside areas south of Derenne Avenue in 1980. The jurisdiction includes the city of Savannah, the unincorporated areas of Chatham County and the town of Vernonburg. Lovett credited a bevy of causes for the decrease in crime – proactive patrols, surveillance details, heightened responses to calls and building better relationships with the community his department serves. It was the latter that he said brought the best results. Criminal reports fell in 15 of the 16 categories of crime composing Part 1 crimes. Only an increase in commercial robberies exceeded the number of calls in 2011 for that category.
View crime stats comparison by years and total jurisdiction crime stats for 2012 (pdfs).
The Savannah College of Art and Design opened a campus in September 2010 in Sham Shui Po, a district of Hong Kong, after extensive research on opportunities in Asia. The school spent 250 million Hong Kong dollars, or $32 million, of its own capital to revitalize the former North Kowloon Magistracy building, which it received from the Hong Kong government in 2009 amid some controversy that the heritage site was given to a foreign school instead of a local group.
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SCAD Hong Kong had trouble with recruitment in the beginning. According to The South China Morning Post, it opened in 2010 with only 141 students, or less than half its initial target of 300. At full capacity, the school could hold up to 800 students.
Last autumn, it got its total student enrollment up to 330. About 60 percent are from Hong Kong, and 40 percent from 15 other countries and territories.
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Tuition at SCAD’s Hong Kong campus is set at the same level as that of its U.S. campuses, which may be daunting to many students in the greater Southeast Asian region. Providing an internationally recognized design education at locally competitive tuition rates, however, could prove to be a challenge that prevents more Western schools from expanding into Asia.
Mr. Preisser said that as of September, the university had awarded nearly 31 million Hong Kong dollars in financial aid to students at the Hong Kong campus.
AIKEN, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s former nuclear weapons complex is again offering the public an opportunity to tour the facility.
Starting Monday, members of the public can sign up for the Savannah River Site tours that begin in January. Organizers say they’re offering 22 free driving tours in 2013, with about 1,100 openings.
Guests will be given an overview and safety briefing before the four-hour tour. Savannah River officials say visitors can learn about how the U.S. Department of Energy has used the site and what happens there now.
The 310-square-mile site once produced plutonium and tritium for atomic bombs. Work there is now focused mostly on research and cleaning up areas of the site contaminated during weapons production and sealing off former reactor sites with concrete.
That trend, both Harley and Ehsanipoor said, is largely the product of a relatively new manufacturing technique called the “one pot” or “shake ‘n’ bake” method.
Meth cooks using the new procedure need only one sealed container — typically a two-liter soda bottle — to make methamphetamine, Harley said.
All the ingredients are placed in the vessel and flipped or shaken to produce the chemical reaction necessary to make the drugs.
Aside from the “one pot” technique’s instability that can cause an explosion, Harley said, it produces meth dangerously and quickly.
“It’s so portable, in fact, that it is most common to find people using this method to make meth in their car, house and hotel rooms,” Harley said. “A person making meth in their car can drive around while the meth is being made to release the fumes, and when the process is over, they simply chuck the used container filled with toxic chemical residue out of the window.
