By LANIER LANEY
BEAUFORT TODAY

You know what’s truly great about Beaufort? It’s not the historic homes, it’s not the water, and it’s not the natural beauty. It's the people. I think Beaufort has the largest number of fun loving, flirty, quick to laugh, folks in North America. We are truly a blessed bunch of nuts.

I’ve been all over kingdom come these past few weeks and visited a lot of towns and cities. None of them had the Beaufort “magic” that people have here. Maybe it’s due to Beaufort’s size, still small enough where you can kind of actually get to know most of the people in town (Charleston has lost this quality in its growth). Or maybe someday scientists will discover that the combination of booze + pluff mud vapors = “a joyous people.”

Now if I can only figure out how to make a living here. I’d love to be able to afford to stay!

Supermodels on Bay St? You bet!

If you did a double take last weekend with an accompanying, “Was that ...?” It was. For those of us old enough to remember the Studio 54 days, THE Supermodel of the late 70’s and early 90’s was Lisa Taylor, whose blonde patrician good looks made her “the Face” of Calvin Klein ads and the pal of Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and that set. (Remember Lisa’s role in “The Eyes of Laura Mars” with Faye Dunaway?).

Turns out she’s the sister of our very own Barbara Cochran and was in town with her equally lovely 15-year-old daughter for a visit. They were visiting from L.A. where Lisa and her daughter are next-door neighbors to the Spellings on one side and the Playboy mansion on the other. Boy that would be an interesting street to live on. (I’d probably turn into a regular Gladys Kravits!).

As July approaches, the world's paparazi turn their attention to one place -- St. Tropez, France, a small town about exactly the size of Beaufort, except for the summer months when the big yachts of the international glitterati hit town.

Yachts at St. TropezI read an article that said how all kinds of businesses from restaurants to dry cleaners in St. Tropez get a huge cash infusion whenever a yacht comes to town. Many stay for six months. I ran into Shannon Erickson and happened to mention this valuable economic source to her and lo and behold she is already supporting a South Carolina bill to get rid of Beaufort’s property tax on boats. Seems that Beaufort is the only town in the Southeast that puts a property tax on yachts after 60 days, forcing them to move on and take their dollars further south to spend the rest of the warm winter six months elsewhere.

Beaufort, like Asheville is transforming itself into a “Tourist Destination-Based Ecomony.” The question is ... what kind of tourists? The cheaper hotels springing up are bringing in busloads of new tourists. But unfortunately most are of the “t-shirt-and-trinket-buying set, not high end tourists” lamented downtown real estate powerhouse Pat Dudley to me.

Beaufort is poised at a critical point. Will downtown shops start having to go the trinket route? Or will fine restaurants and more upscale boutiques like M Gallery start opening say in the Lipsitz department store strip?

Richard Wilson wanted to open his nationally renowned Bateaux restaurant first in downtown Beaufort, but was going to be forced to pay $80,000 in city impact fees.

Port Royal on the other hand, said to him, “come on over -- for nothing!” And that's where the well-heeled Hilton Head visitors are now heading to eat. Something is wrong with that picture and needs to be corrected fast!

Travel is great for appreciating what's great about your home and what’s in danger of being lost. It’s good to be home.

Overheard: “Remember the good ol’ days when gas was just $3.99 a gallon?”