Conversation w/ Doug in Columbia about Charleston

00:00 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 00:27 For spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties. 00:59 share his grace on thee. 01:21 America is back. Yes, sir. Let's go to the WRD talk line. We'll talk to Doug in Columbus about Charleston. disagrees with me. Doug, what's on your mind? Hey, good afternoon. Yes, sir. I lived in the Mount Pleasant area north of the city of Charleston for 33 years. Recently moved 01:41 Columbus retired, by the way. um And I disagree with your comment about there must be something that's gone wrong in people's lives for them to want to move to Charleston. Now, I know that you lived there for a while and you like six, eight years ago, whatever it is, but people don't flood into an area unless there's opportunity and jobs. And so I'm going to name a couple that I'm sure you're familiar with. 02:10 Yep. Boeing, Volvo, NewCorp Steel, Mercedes-Benz, the medical university. Every hospital chain down there is expanding and it's all based on population coming in. Now that's not to say that there aren't problems, but my biggest problem and the biggest reason I left Mount Pleasant is that my lifestyle changed, the traffic was heavy and I retired. 02:37 Yeah, and they weren't able to keep up with that. when you look at it now, I understand all of those industries you're talking about, and that's a lot of people. A lot of those are over in Somerville, North Charleston area, the nicer places, places like that. But if you get downtown, and that is just that is from my 10 years of experience of living in Charleston, that those people, by and large, that went to Charleston not for a job, 03:07 not because they had a job but the people that that i met that were there they were running away from something it's a great place to run away to but unfortunately they took their problems with them well i i didn't meet a lot of people downtown i built houses for thirty seven almost thirty three years more like twenty seven construction so i met people that moved there from all over the united states right 03:34 um Now, I will say that the volume of high-rise buildings in the downtown area has gotten absolutely ridiculous. Yeah. And I disagree with it. I'm not inclined to stand in the way of progress, but it's just like any other um popular place, whether it's a restaurant, a college uh that is 04:03 popular for a lot of reasons and people are drawn to it. Now, I'd like to add that it's been my experience just through watching the local news that the crime rate in the Greenville-Spartanburg area is, in my opinion, potentially twice what it was in the Charleston area. I don't know how many people live in the Greenville-Spartanburg area. I can guess that in the Metro Charleston area, there's at least a half a million now. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe over. 04:32 I'm pretty shocked at the amount of shootings and carjackings that hit the news here every single day. Well, see, that's ... I'll tell you why, Doug, because those things make news here. How many shootings do they have down in North Charleston? That's just a daily occurrence down there. That doesn't even make the news. Well, yeah, it does. No, it doesn't. 04:59 if you listen to talk radio down there or or if you're what's all we would want to radio down there it's been a while since i've uh... paid attention to it but there is none up night well used to be when i left three years ago there was three years ago what station did you listen to down there i think it was uh... i mean i can't remember that letters but it was there was ninety four point something or not three points they don't have a local talk show anymore 05:28 Well, okay. Neither does the other one. They've got nothing down there. But let's get back to what you talked about, about the skyline, about t ...