Best of Atlanta 2015 Fun
Cheap Date: Legos and Local Brew at MODA
Everything is awesome at the design museum’s brick-building nights.
New Adult Playground: Topgolf Midtown
Don’t be put off by the name. The new intown outpost of this behemoth indoor fairway is less country club and more upscale sports bar/party space.
New Festival: Fire in the Fourth
A devastating fire seems like an unlikely catalyst for celebration, but this past May, Old Fourth Ward residents debuted Fire in the Fourth, designed to honor the neighborhood’s resilience and celebrate its more recent revitalization from 20th-century blight.
Spooky Sightseeing: Roswell Ghost Tour
In this two-and-a-half-hour walking tour, paranormal investigators lead you through Historic Roswell’s most haunted locales after dark.
Indie film institution: Videodrome
With 18,000 titles, it’s the only place where the city’s cinephiles can nab obscure flicks—like local music documentary Benjamin Smoke—alongside the latest mainstream releases.
Green Expansion: Atlanta Botanical Garden
The garden spread its tendrils this spring with two new spaces totaling nearly 200 acres. In Midtown, the previously undeveloped Gardens in Storza Woods, one of Atlanta’s last remaining mature hardwood forests, opened in May, the first new addition since 2010’s Canopy Walk.
Winter Pool Party: Bethesda Park Aquatic Center
There’s nothing like a little hydro-therapy to combat the cold-weather doldrums, and guess what: Not all of our public pools close after Labor Day.
New Tour: Tom Houck’s Civil Rights Tour
Civil Rights Tour Atlanta, a new three-hour tour organized by Houck, the former aide and driver to Martin Luther King Jr., offers an insider’s perspective into the daily lives of Atlanta’s heralded activists.
Urban Scavenger Hunt: Free Art Friday
Every week, local creators hide small pieces of art on windowsills, inside phone booths, and on MARTA train platforms—all in the spirit of Free Art Friday, an international movement to bring art to the masses.
Indoor Playspace: Catch Air
If you’ve got a wound-up kid on a rainy day, this is the place to set them loose. At its six metro Atlanta locations, Catch Air caters to the elementary-school-and-under set, with a special area for toddlers.
Literary Geek Gathering: Write Club Atlanta
You wouldn’t necessarily expect a “battle royale” theme at a literary event. But it’s what makes Write Club Atlanta—a spirited competition in which two of the city’s best wordsmiths go head-to-head—so exciting.
Place to Get Over Your Fear of Heights: Stone Summit Climbing & Fitness Center
From the top of the 60-foot main wall at Stone Summit in northeast Atlanta, you can almost see . . . Russia? Or maybe that’s just the high of accomplishment talking.
Gallery for Emerging and Established Artists: Mason Fine Art
For more than a decade, Mason Fine Art has been a place where artists whose works are exhibited at major museums like the Whitney are displayed right alongside those who set up shop on Moreland Avenue.
New Children’s Museum: Worlds of Puppetry
At this new 7,500-square-foot addition to the Center for Puppetry Arts, kids can glimpse beloved Jim Henson characters, hear a story in the Sesame Street reading nook, and get inspired in the creature workshop.
Way to Play Tourist: Unseen Underground Walking Tour
Think you know everything there is to know about Atlanta? You might be surprised if you join local architect Jeff Morrison on his whenever-he-feels-like-it trek into downtown’s Gulch.
Place to See Experimental Dance: Tanz Farm
Since launching in 2012, Tanz Farm—the brainchild of Goat Farm coowner Anthony Harper and Glo founding artist Lauri Stallings—has fulfilled its mission of becoming a destination for cutting-edge contemporary dance.
Personal Endorsement: Classic Hip-Hop Radio
Gen X has been associated so closely with grunge, it’s easy to forget that we also came of age during the golden era of hip-hop.