37 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasantPodcast.com Mount Pleasant looked drastically different 36 years ago. The population was 30,000, there was one zip code and no Isle of Palms Connector or city hall. This was years before Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, and Mount Pleasant Magazine was called East Cooper Magazine. It's well-known that other Charleston-area publications started publishing Best Of results beginning in 1997 and beyond. I’ve always felt tabulating and publishing the Best Of results in print was the first form of social media, similar to asking a friend or family member who is the best person to babysit the kids, best local restaurant for a good hamburger, best place in Mount Pleasant to watch a sunset – the list goes on and on. The answers come from people you know and someone you trust. Much like social media does today. The real challenge wasn’t tabulating the votes; it was gathering the votes. For 2024 and 2025’s Best Of, we tabulated a combined 113,343 votes. In 1990, I felt very lucky when we generated a little more than 1,000 paper Blast from the Past Inaugural Best of Charleston Awards (1990) BY BILL MACCHIO our town
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