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Stay in Palmetto Dunes Help and hints from a long time host and homeowner.

The Dove Street Lights Festival is back on Hilton Head Island after a decade-long break, and it seems as though the most common response is “Wow!” then “Why?” “Pretty much everybody that comes through asks that question, ‘Why did you stop and why did you start again?’ said Kristi Beckler. She and her husband, Paul Beckler, along with their neighbors, friends and family members, staged the Christmas light show on the island’s south end for 20 years before deciding to call it quits in 2010. The end of the attraction was so widely mourned that it got a mention in USA Today at the time. “It is a gigantic amount of work,” Kristi Beckler said. “We were just kind of tired. ... We decided to go out on top. A lot of people thought the town made us stop, but nothing could be further from the truth.” At its peak, the event was attracting around 1,000 vehicles a night driving through the alley of lights hung on the canopy of giant branches above Dove Street.

Visitors planning to drive through the display should note that Dove Street is one way. Drivers on North Forest Beach Drive should take Curlew Road to Dune Lane, then turn left onto Dove Street to find the entrance. This year’s Dove Street Festival of Lights is benefiting the Island Recreation Center and the Deep Well Project, but donations are not being collected at the event. Instead, visitors are asked to go online to make a donation to one of the charities via https://culturehhi.org/portfolio/dove-street-holiday-lights. Postcards handed out at the event have a QR code to help direct folks to the donation website. “All we’re paid with is smiles,” Paul Becker said.

Read more at: https://www.islandpacket.com/entertainment/holidays/article256485521.html =cpy

Farwell, Old Fort Pub....by David Lauderdale, Island Packet

The Old Fort Pub turned out to be a pile of mere wood and glass when it was demolished over the past two weeks on Hilton Head Island. But the restaurant on the banks of Skull Creek was so much more at its inception in 1973. It was more like a heart that could give a strange place soul. The Old Fort Pub was a tool to spread the gospel of Sea Pines founder Charles Fraser into the hinterlands. David Ames, who was a Sea Pines officer at the time, explains that gospel. “The restaurant was quintessential Charles and therefore, was ladened with historical overtones and was nature-blending, understated but upscale with white table cloths, and unique outside and in — all this intended to make the experience of eating or just visiting memorable.”
The Old Fort Pub was to give the small flock of Sea Pines residents a reason to drive way out into the boondocks of the company’s new venture called Hilton Head Plantation. At the time, it was mostly tomato fields and thick forests. At the Old Fort Pub, newcomers were brought together at Friday night oyster roasts — with the local delicacies hissing under hosed-down burlap bags on sheets of metal sizzling from oak embers below. And the widow’s walk atop the restaurant — high above the front porch where people in rocking chairs sipped bloody Marys or oohed at the sunsets — was a de facto Realtors office because so many potential property buyers were taken there. “It was a wonderful destination that brought people to a beautiful place that would show the water and the historical significance of the land,” said Andy Twisdale, who was the restaurant manager when it opened. And, yes, the people came.
Today, that stretch along Skull Creek is lined with multi-story condominium complexes. The tomato fields are filled with homes and golf courses. And the Old Fort Pub will be replaced by a six-story, 22-unit luxury condominium complex called The Charles. Its developers say that’s a tip of the hat to Charles Fraser, and the 17th century English king who sent explorer William Hilton this way in search of a place that would attract settlers. HARBOUR TOWN The Old Fort Pub was Hilton Head to the bone. The late Ralph Ballantine designed the building, next to Fort Mitchel of the Civil War. He was not an architect, but an artist in the group that in the 1960s and 1970s gave Hilton Head the panache Fraser sought.
As an illustrator for the top ad agencies of Chicago, Ballantine gave the world the Schlitz Malt Liquor bull, and fashioned the Jolly Green Giant into a friendlier sort. He sculpted a bust of his friend and fellow illustrator Coby Whitmore that they said made them both cry. He did the bust of Fraser that is on his grave beneath the Liberty Oak in Harbour Town. And he helped bring Harbour Town to life when he designed the building that now houses CQ’s restaurant, after studying Lowcountry rice barns. Ballantine also gave the island his son Todd, whose “Tideland Treasures” book has helped generations of islanders appreciate its nature. When Ballantine shucked the dog-eat-dog world of Chicago for Hilton Head, Fraser hired him without knowing what he would do. “He was willing to gamble on me without a thought,” Ballantine told me.

He asked Ballantine to design the Old Fort Pub, but told him not to tell anyone else in the company he was doing it. “He said he wanted something that looked like it belonged there,” Ballantine said. GEORGE WASHINGTON Opening night was explosive. Twisdale recalls the cadets from The Citadel were to do a reenactment of a battle that never happened at the fort next door.

“They were setting off black powder charges that kept getting louder and louder,” he said. Island native Annie Mae Holmes was running the tiny kitchen. She is credited with the early mainstays of okra gumbo and cornbread. And, at about 5-foot-3, she ruled with an iron fist — or, more accurately, a broom she’d use on anyone who cussed in her kitchen. Twisdale said other early hits at the restaurant included she-crab soup and Daufuskie Baked Fish. That recipe came over from the Burn family on Daufuskie. The Flaming Irish Coffee, with flaming liquor poured into cups at tableside, was a big hit until some flames got poured on a table. The operation was supported by many members of the Aiken family, Twisdale recalls.

And he can laugh now at the night they had a George Washington Slept Here Party for a Sea Pines man who shared our first president’s birthday. It featured the “first-ever Hilton Head Island snowball fight” with marshmallows. The furniture was moved out and brass beds were used as a buffet. Guests in period costumes did a number on the heart of pine floors with the mixture of alcohol and marshmallows. And there was the memorable night that island icon Benny Hudson showed up in his tank-top shirt and white shrimper boots. The native islander had come downshore by boat from his docks on Squire Pope Road, mad as a hornet that Hilton Head Plantation had placed a metal fence across its rear entrance on Squire Pope Road. “He said he was going to shut the place down, and we were just starting dinner,” Twisdale recalled.

They called Charles Fraser’s brother Joe, who came up and had a long and sometimes heated discussion with Benny Hudson at the bar. As usual, Joe never showed any emotions. Whatever was said, Benny left peacefully. AAA FOUR-DIAMOND The Old Fort Pub’s heyday came later. Under the ownership of successful restaurateurs Bonnie and the late Pierce Lowrey, it was Beaufort County’s only restaurant to hold a four-diamond honor from AAA. When it closed in May, it was still known for its top chefs, menu, distinctive service — and great setting.

The waterfront porch had long been closed in. The deck outside the bar had been expanded. There were no community oyster roasts, but it still pulled the community in on special occasions, like anniversaries. But the restaurant business has been hit hard in recent years. And in 2016, Bonnie Lowrey told a town commission as she was exploring redevelopment possibilities that her children were not interested in running the restaurant. It is fitting that Fraser Construction, owned by the family of Charles’ brother Joe, will build The Charles for Charleston-based Hancock Development Corp. Units are selling fast, priced originally from $999,000 to $1.6 million. “Welcome each day overlooking a magnificent setting!” its website says. “Relax and luxuriate in the modern comforts of a subtropical lifestyle that abounds in natural beauty.”
That’s a lot like the report to the world from that early explorer, William Hilton. And it matches Charles Fraser’s siren call as well. It’s just not as subtle as the sweet song of the Old Fort Pub.

David Lauderdale may be reached at [email protected].

Read more at: https://www.islandpacket.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/david-lauderdale/article255039657.html =cpy

Shark Week in Hilton Head

Shark Week features great whites in feeding frenzy off Hilton Head.
https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/untamed-lowcountry/article252730198.html

Hilton Head charter boat captain Chip Michalove will be part of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week this week.

Footage shot by a film crew off Hilton Head Island with the locally known “great white shark whisperer” will be part of two episodes, a spokesperson for the cable TV network confirmed.

“I don’t remember Shark Week ever being in South Carolina,” Michalove said. “It seems like every Shark Week episode is South Africa, Australia, Cape Cod.”

T
The network’s Shark Week programming, which is in its 33rd year, will cover 45 hours from Sunday, July 11, through Sunday, July 18. A news release from the network promises to “take viewers to new locations to study and record new shark behaviors that have never been seen on camera before.”

The film crew shot footage with Michalove, of Outcast Sport Fishing, and shark researchers earlier this year.

“I was a nervous wreck. It was like running my first charter all over again,” the veteran captain said. Fishermen know it’s impossible to predict whether fish will be biting on any particular day.

“These guys spent a lot of money and invested a lot of time to film us tagging a great white shark. ... The first day we went out, we didn’t get one,” he said. “It was a good punch in the gut.”

Then, reports of a dead whale floating along the South Carolina coast surfaced right before the film crew was scheduled to make their second trip out on the water.

“It’s not very often that something works out the way it did,” Michalove said. “They came in town, and I just said, ‘You guys are gonna have one helluva day tomorrow.’”

And a helluva day it was.

THE WHALE
A rare North Atlantic right whale, an 11-year-old male named Cottontail by scientists studying it, had become trapped in fishing gear in October, and unsuccessful attempts had been made to free it.

It died off the coast of Myrtle Beach in February, and the carcass began floating south as sharks feasted on it.

While the Discovery crew filmed in the vicinity of the whale for one day, Michalove made several trips, ultimately catching, tagging and releasing eight great whites from among the dozens that had been attracted to the “60-foot chum dispenser” along with tiger sharks and other ocean carnivores.

“We watched a lot. We learned a lot,” Michalove said. “Every time we thought we saw something amazing, 20 minutes later it would happen again.”

The sharks circled Michalove’s boat, nudging it to see whether it was a second whale.

The price to pay for the rare interaction was enduring the nauseating smell of the whale carcass. Michalove said multiple washes still haven’t removed the scent from his jacket, which he keeps in the garage nearly five months later.

“This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I really wanted to watch them devour it more than catch them,” he told an Island Packet reporter at the time.

Until Michalove started catching great whites in 2014, there wasn’t even proof they came close to Hilton Head.

Meanwhile, with the Discovery film crew’s drone “that looked like something from NASA” flying overhead, there was yet another worry in the back of Michalove’s mind.

“Not only did we need to catch one, but we needed to catch one without harming the fish,” he said. “You never know where the hook is going to go. Crazy things happen on the water. Even though these sharks are circling the boat, the No. 1 concern is this fish swims away healthy.”

Michalove said he’s not sure what footage will end up being used in the shows. He will be watching at the same time the rest of the world gets a look at a different side of Hilton Head, one removed from pristine golf courses and beachside time shares.

“I think it’s positive,” he said. “I think it’s great.”

ON TV
Tune in to the following on the Discovery Channel or stream the next day on Discovery+ online.

Tuesday, July 13, 10 p.m. or the next day on Discovery+ online: “The Spawn of El Diablo”

In 2012, Michelle Jewell documented one of the largest great white mating scars ever recorded. Recently similar marks have appeared, leading her to believe this is a possible mating ground and that mega-shark El Diablo has returned to South Africa.

Thursday, July 15, 9 p.m. or the same day on Discovery+ online: “Sharkadelic Summer 2”

Sharkadelic is back to find out if this summer will be the sharkiest on record. Snoop Dogg breaks down the craziest encounters, the wildest and most unpredictable reactions to discover if America is once again ground zero for the shark superstorm.

Shark Week features great whites in feeding frenzy off Hilton Head. Here’s when to watch Boat captain Chip Michalove will be in Discovery Channel segments on two nights.

Hilton Head Island leaders voted Tuesday to allow the island’s face mask requirement for businesses to expire on May 16.

Citing a decrease in COVID-19 cases and an increase in vaccination rates, the Town Council voted to end the mandate.

“It’s time we give the personal responsibility back to our residents with the caveat that we request and strongly suggest that they continue to do what they think is best: Get vaccinated, wear their masks, (and) let businesses provide services in their stores by masked employees,” Ward 4 representative Tamara Becker said.
Jeremy Clark, the CEO of Hilton Head Regional Healthcare, spoke at the Tuesday evening meeting in support of extending the mask requirement.

Hilton Head has had a mask requirement in place since July 1 for businesses, including bars and restaurants, stores, pharmacies, grocery stores and hotel lobbies.
The mandate was extended four times throughout the pandemic.

Hilton Head Town Hall is still closed to the public, and the council is meeting virtually, although council members have hinted they are anticipating a return to in-person meetings in June.

Hilton Head was the last remaining municipality in Beaufort County with a mask mandate. The Town of Bluffton and Beaufort County’s mask requirements ended April 15. The Town of Port Royal and City of Beaufort’s mask requirements ended April 30.

Have you heard this story?
What's up with the runway graves at the Savannah/Hilton Head airport?
Gazing out of the window of your plane as you close-in for a landing at Savannah/Hilton Head airport, you may notice two oddly placed rectangles lying at a skewed angle in the runway. Most people assume that they are some sort of repair patch on the tarmac, but the truth is actually much more surprising.

The parallel markers are actually the graves of Catherine and Richard Dotson, two of the original owners of the land that the airport is built on.
Both of the Dotsons were born in 1779. The couple farmed the land — which at the time was known as Cherokee Hills — and were married for 50 years. Catherine died in 1877 and Richard followed seven years later. They were laid to rest next to each other in the family cemetery which held about 100 graves, including those of slaves. The couple rested peacefully there for decades until Uncle Sam came calling and needed the land for an airport.
World War II was on the horizon and the military needed a place to land its B-24 “Liberators” and B-17 “Flying Fortresses,” that place being right on top of the cemetery. Almost all of the graves were moved to Bonaventure Cemetery, but the Dotson’s descendants wouldn’t consent to the matriarch and patriarch of the family being touched— they felt that it would have been Catherine and Richard’s wish to remain in the soil that they cultivated for most of their lives.
The airport may have paved over the their graves, but they respectfully placed markers in their honor. And this being Savannah, you better believe pilots have a number of ghost stories to tell about to the Dotson couple buried under the runway.

Lucky Rooster Restaurant:
Lucky Rooster Kitchen and Bar, a fixture on Hilton Head’s fine dining scene, is officially reopening with new owners this week.

The restaurant closed last year amid S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster’s orders related to COVID-19 and social distancing for businesses.

David Leffew and his wife Carrie Leffew of Hilton Head, along with family member Tom O’Brien, purchased the restaurant from founder Clayton Rollison.

The new owners say the concept of the restaurant, which first opened in 2013 as “an American bistro with a Southern soul,” will stay the same.

“We want to continue to make food that is elevated and provide a dining experience that people will remember,” David Leffew said.
Still, customers can expect new executive chef David Landrigan, formerly of Circa 1875 and La Scala Ristorante in Savannah, to put his own spin on things.

“We really want to take advantage of the ingredients and the items that made this area famous,” David Leffew said of the new menu, which he says was designed with a Southern metropolitan vibe in mind.

“It’s not going to be things you’ve never had before or that you’ve never heard of before, but it’s going to be done in a way that everything is authentic and everything is from scratch,” he said.
ollison had completed a top-to-bottom renovation on Lucky Rooster Kitchen and Bar in December 2019 with new slate blue paint throughout, new flooring, improved lighting and more comfortable booths. The patio had been updated earlier that same year.
“The Lucky Rooster that people remember will be the Lucky Rooster that people see,” David Leffew said.

Leffew most recently worked as food and beverage director at Sonesta for six years but he has spent a 20-year career in hospitality.

In a call on Tuesday, Rollison, who is working as a consultant and lining up “a few new projects,” endorsed the changes the new owners are making to the restaurant.

”Lucky Rooster was a thing that I had in my brain, and it was cool to see it come to fruition and materialize,” Rollison said. “It’s pretty awesome that they want to continue.”

Rollison also closed his second restaurant, Lucky Rooster Market Street at Coligny Plaza, last year during the pandemic. That space is now home to Nood Good Mood Food ramen shop.
see more at https://www.islandpacket.com/news/business/article250502579.html?

Lucky Rooster reopening with new owners, chef on Hilton Head. What you can expect Executive Chef David Landrigan previously worked at Circa 1875 in Savannah and will be putting his own spin on the “Southern metropolitan” menu.

A new and updated Quarterdeck restaurant:
Watch as classic Hilton Head restaurant is demolished, rebuilt next to lighthouse
BY KATHERINE KOKAL
MARCH 26, 2021 11:24 AM
Play VideoDuration 0:42The wind rocks the boats and stirs up the waves at Harbour Town

There was a wind advisory out for Beaufort County on Wednesday, March 21, 2018, and its effects were much in evidence at Hilton Head Island's Harbour Town as a stiff breeze blew across Calibogue Sound and into the yacht basin. BY JAY KARR

You can now keep an eye on the progress at Sea Pines’ Quarterdeck restaurant.

Sea Pines Resort has launched a livestream on Youtube to track the progress and rebuilding of the new Quarterdeck, located next to the Harbour Town Lighthouse on Hilton Head Island.

On Thursday, the livestream showed a newly cleared construction site.

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The Quarterdeck restaurant will be rebuilt to reflect a new Harbour Town experience, according to an announcement from Sea Pines Resort in December.

The restaurant, which used to have a large patio for outdoor seating, will be rebuilt to offer panoramic views of the 18th green on the Harbour Town Golf Links course, the yacht basin and Calibogue Sound.

Quarterdeck’s redevelopment will also include the construction of a rooftop oyster bar with flexible glass walls to open to the outdoors.

The bar will open to a 270-degree view of Harbour Town.

A casual, walk-up market on the ground level will serve as a place to grab a quick bite to go or to stock up on local shrimp, seafood and ice cream for the day. It will open toward the entrance to the Harbour Town Pier, which was rebuilt after being destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

“We’re going to be reorienting how it sits on the site and focusing on those primary views of the marina, the 18th hole and the sunsets over Calibogue Sound,” Director of Resort Development Cliff McMackin said in December “That was a critical point in the design process.”

It's official, another easy way to get to Hilton Head. Southwest starts operating direct flights to Savannah beginning March 11, 2011.
The airline will offer nonstop flights between these cities, and are running specials right now:

Baltimore/Washington
Chicago (Midway)
Dallas (Love Field)
Houston (Hobby)
Nashville

“We look forward to offering Savannah/Hilton Head customers a new travel option when we launch Southwest service on March 11,” said Steve Goldberg, Senior Vice President Operations and Hospitality, Southwest Airlines. “We’re known for our low fares and Southwest Hospitality, and we’re eager to demonstrate our friendly style and value to the residents of Coastal Georgia and South Carolina’s Low Country. Once we inaugurate service, we’ll be ready to welcome you onboard our daily, non-stop flights.”

For Savannah/Hilton Head International Travelers, it means more options and competitive prices.

“It’s great to see that Southwest has made the decision to connect Savannah/Hilton Head International to five of its busiest markets,” said Greg Kelly, Executive Director Savannah Airport Commission. “We will be working with our air service partners at Visit Savannah, the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, SEDA and the Savannah Chamber of Commerce to help ensure the success of Southwest and the routes they are bringing us. We greatly appreciate the confidence Southwest has shown in our market and look forward to a mutually beneficial and long-lasting partnership.”

Savannah Airport Commission Chairman Steve Green expressed the Commission’s excitement in the addition of six new daily nonstop flights with the airline. “This is great news for coastal Georgia and the Low Country of South Carolina and the surrounding region. Having flights to five of Southwest’s top markets will certainly position us for significant future growth as we work our way out of the pandemic. This will enable us to continue to strengthen our position as the premier airport for our entire region.