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Author Charles Bethea

  • Charles Bethea

    Editorial Contributor

    Charles Bethea is, as his paternal grandmother boasts, a fifth-generation Atlantan. Raised in Ansley Park, he now lives in Buckhead, though he's always talking about moving somewhere cool, like Cabbagetown. He likes writing about lots of things, but especially sports, adventure, and death. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Wired, and Outside magazine, about subjects ranging from Barack Obama's e-mail address to whether or not humans can outrun pronghorn antelope. In 2011, he won the City and Regional Magazine Association award for reporting for his piece on Final Exit Network and was nominated for a James Beard Award.

Walk with Him

Posted on 4/30/2013 8:00:00 AM by Charles Bethea
He first appeared to me last November at a bar where I’d gone to watch the Falcons–Saints game. As usual, there were spirited drinkers with heavy beards milling around and grown-ups playing Golden Tee. Read More

The Apostle of Pizza

Posted on 12/18/2012 2:19:00 PM by Charles Bethea
The phone rang in Mike Virga’s office in Union, New Jersey, one morning three years ago: “I hear somebody going, ‘I want some of that good Lioni mozzarella. Come on, sell me some. It’s me, Giovanni.’" Read More

Solid Ground

Posted on 12/1/2011 8:00:00 AM by Charles Bethea
It’s late summer and Hurricane Irene is blowing, counterclockwise, toward the United States. Roovens Monchil is sitting in a hot, dingy Valley Place Apartments unit near Stone Mountain Highway. The door hangs open, but there’s no breeze. Read More

Mountain Men

Posted on 9/1/2011 8:00:00 AM by Charles Bethea
In an oral history that includes Dickey’s never-before-published correspondence, star Burt Reynolds and director John Boorman join more than a dozen others (including the creepy banjo player) in recalling the making of a movie that would forever change how the world sees Georgia. Read More

John Rocker

Posted on 5/1/2011 12:00:00 PM by Charles Bethea
Most days, a few strangers say something to him—usually positive, or at least neutral: “‘Hey, you’re John Rocker!’ Yeah, that’s me.” Read More

The Believer

Posted on 2/1/2011 8:00:00 AM by Charles Bethea
Evander Holyfield yawned once, twice, three times. Even a young boxer’s eyes look perpetually tired—the damage quickly accumulates around them—but at the Westin on Peachtree, at a cacophonous professional boxing event called the Big Rock Out, the forty-eight-year-old Holyfield slouched in his chair, eyelids drooping. Read More

The F Word

Posted on 8/1/2010 9:00:00 AM by Charles Bethea
Once upon a time, in the middle of the capital city of the South, there was a university without a football team. This is a fact, true as the field is a hundred yards long, almost too strange to believe. Read More

Q&A with Bobby Cox

Posted on 5/1/2010 8:00:00 AM by Charles Bethea
Bobby Cox has been to Europe only once and wasn’t terribly impressed. He says “Gah-dawgit” and pulls off his cap to muss his hair when a memory eludes him. He uses long silences to make a point about as often as he uses an obscenity that rhymes with the surname of former Phillies first baseman and familiar nemesis John Kruk. Read More

Final Exit

Posted on 3/1/2010 8:00:00 AM by Charles Bethea
It is still unclear whether a Georgia court will determine if advising someone and perhaps even holding his hand as he intentionally inhales a lethal quantity of helium is a criminal act. No court in Georgia has ever addressed this specific question, or the more philosophical one: What, exactly, does it mean to help someone die? And what, for that matter, does it mean to help someone live, to give them everything you have, and fail? Read More