News & Opinion

The weather may be cooling off, but events season is heating up again, with new museum exhibits, kid-friendly stage shows, festivals, and more.

If you don’t get the Sportsman Channel (and even if your cable carries it, you still may not get it), you probably don’t know that onetime Braves star Chipper Jones has traded his bat and uniform for a compound bow and camo as star of outdoors show Major League Bowhunter. We immediately wondered how No. 10 would fare against two famous, if fictional, archers who shoot (arrows and film) in Georgia.

In 2012 Atlanta's SweetWater Brewery celebrates fifteen years of barreling up some of the south's best-selling craft beer. As fans prep for the eighth annual SweetWater 420 Music Festival in Candler Park, April 20–22, cofounder Freddy Bensch reflects on his success.What can you reveal about the special SweetWater fifteenth anniversary beer you're creating with your former college roommate and SweetWater cofounder Kevin McNerney [who left the company in 2008]? The very first beer we ever brewed here was SweetWater ESB [Extra Special Bitter], and we ended up winning silver medals at three different beer festivals. But we stopped making it after three years. For the fifteenth anniversary, we took that recipe, dusted it off, and gave it an adrenaline shot: bumped up the hops and the alcohol and turned it into a high-gravity ESB. Kevin came back to work on the recipe and brewed it with us. We're actually bottling it today. To have Kevin, who was a huge, instrumental part of building this place and a great friend, come back and help out with the anniversary beer was personally, for me, just awesome.When guys on the brewery tour walk into your SweetWater Tasting Room, their jaws often go slack. It's like stumbling into the ultimate man cave, only you get paid to work there. Did you realize that when you were creating it? When you're around it all day, you take it for granted. But when you see someone walk in for the first time, and his eyes and tongue fall on the floor, you realize how great you have it. You're wearing flip-flops and shorts, and they're in a suit and tie. I have to remember that not everybody gets to drink beer for a living at three in the afternoon. It puts things into perspective about how lucky we are.Your wife has to be psyched that your man cave doubles as your office at work, right? You know, my wife just built me a man cave at our home in the basement. I have no idea about what she's trying to tell me with that. What does that mean? I'm completely perplexed with that one!I love that the SweetWater 420 Music Festival starts on April 20. How much do you have to pay someone off so that date always lands on a weekend? Actually, the date is sort of a moving target; but if you drink enough 420s, it all seems to work out.This year you've booked Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, former James Brown sax man Maceo Parker, Athens act Perpetual Groove, and Donna the Buffalo. How do you select the proper music to drink beer by? We pull from our roots. It's musicians who inspire us and bands that we know put on a show and are going to blow people away. We also love giving up-and-coming acts a shot. We try and introduce the crowd to local bands that maybe people haven't seen before. Bottom line? It's really a personal preference and bands that are going to contribute to an all-around good time.Each year people always come away from the festival talking about the great vibe SweetWater 420 creates. Are there any secrets to achieving that? For a beer-and-music fest, people are always surprised at how family oriented it is. That's something I'm really proud of. It's not Oktoberfest by any means. There's a ton of kids' activities. A lot of the folks who come down each year were with us fifteen years ago. They were twenty-one, twenty-two back then, and now they're thirty-six or thirty-seven, and they have families. They still show up to blow off the dust and shake it around a little bit. They just have a baby attached to them now.On your SweetWater business card, you have the job title of "Big Kahuna." What's the typical reaction you get when you hand it to someon

Experience “Atlanta’s biggest interactive science event,” catch Erykah Badu and Common at State Farm Arena, and see the LetterKenny crew perform live.

Taste of Atlanta returns for a 17th year, Broadway's School of Rock is coming to Fox Theatre, and get your art fix at Brookhaven Arts Festival. Shameless plug: Don't miss our own Best Burger Battle at Lenox Square on Saturday.

When the Braves announced their move to the burbs on Monday, there was plenty of vocal vitriol from ITPers. But there was surprisingly little celebrating, let alone gloating, from the people of Cobb County. That low grumble you heard instead was the angry muttering and collective unsettling of suburbanite stomachs of a tax base left to wonder where the hell Cobb’s share of the money for the new stadium was going to come from. And Cobb officials were saying nothing to salve the dyspepsia.

In August, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, lead by Edward Blum, filed a complaint against Atlanta-based Fearless Fund, claiming its Fearless Strivers Grant Contest—which offers grants to Black women-owned businesses—is a “racially-discriminatory program” that violates the law’s “guarantee of race neutrality.” The case will be heard in federal court later this month.

Looking for a fun place to take your pet? Here's a roundup of Atlanta's pet-friendly hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, bars and breweries, dog parks and trails, and shopping districts.

Acclaimed writer Anne Lamott makes her second trek to Decatur First Baptist Church this year Monday night at 7 with a happy "accident" of a book, "Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers." Back in June, the beloved author of "Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year" packed the house with its sequel, "Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son" with Sam Lamott, the now-grown subject of "Operating Instructions." During their national book tour together, Sam urged mom to "get with it" and created Facebook and Twitter accounts for her to chronicle their adventures. Her Facebook status updates/miniature essays now entertain more than 87,000 fans. Before hopping a flight to Atlanta, Lamott discussed her slim new 103-page essay on prayer during two days off tour relaxing at home in Northern California.