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If you’ve lived in Atlanta for any length of time, you may have heard of Eddie’s Attic. If you live here and can make an F-chord on a guitar, you most likely have heard of Eddie’s Attic. If you live here, can make an F-chord on a guitar, and have subjected your family to Johnny Cash and John Prine covers to the point of imminent violence, you not only have heard of Eddie’s Attic, but you’ve been there, you’ve drunk there, and you’ve gone to bed wondering what it would be like to play there. You’ve imagined achieving, on that tiny stage in that tiny room in Decatur, in front of those 150 rapt listeners, a moment of perfect musical transcendence, when audience and performer are linked by a bridge built of nothing more than sound waves, but no less strong than if it were of iron and steel. Truly, in concert.

Or is that just me?

This month’s issue features a profile of Eddie Owen, the guy behind Eddie’s Attic. I first stumbled on the place not long after moving to Atlanta in 2000. My wife and I had heard about Eddie’s and figured we’d check it out, without knowing anything about the headliner. Turned out it was Matthew Kahler, a Georgia boy who reminded me of what James Taylor would sound like if he lived in the real world and not Martha’s Vineyard. The set was fantastic—a mix of silliness, solemnity, and catchy pop songs. When we left a few hours later, Kahler’s CD in hand, I remarked how lucky we were to have come on such a good night for music.

What I came to realize is that hearing good music at Eddie’s isn’t a matter of luck, it’s a matter of fact. So many great local musicians have played there—and I don’t mean just superstars like John Mayer and Sugarland and the Indigo Girls, but lesser-knowns like Derek Webb and Tyler Lyle—that it’s become a sort of rite of passage for singer-songwriters in the hothouse of Atlanta’s music scene. And that’s not even accounting for the amazing national talent that graces its stage.

Last year I was invited to be a judge for the Attic’s biannual open-mic shootout, in which winners of the weekly contests face off for the top prize of $1,000. Eddie was the host. If you ever get the chance to be a judge for this event, I suggest you take it. Not only are the drinks and food on the house, but you also get a ringside seat for musicians who can’t believe their luck that they’re playing this stage. And you get to watch Eddie in action, and marvel how a little second-story room across from a Chick-fil-A could conjure so much magic, night after night after night.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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For far too many years of my early adolescence in upstate New York I was a paperboy. Do they have those anymore? I mean, the kind who stow papers in a bag slung over a shoulder, as opposed to the backseat of a car? Anyway, every week I’d knock on the doors of my customers so they could pay their bill, which was one dollar and ten cents. In the winter, the old widows would invite me in to stand on their plastic carpet runners while they vanished into the kitchen. I’d hear chairs move, jars clink, keys turn. I’d stand there, the slush on my boots melting, the ceramic cows on the shelf eyeing me suspiciously. Finally my customers would reemerge, clutching one dollar bill and one quarter (thank you for the tip), and explain that if it weren’t for the obituaries, they wouldn’t bother. “It’s just not what it used to be,” they’d say.

Thirty years later, these ladies have passed on, but their opinions are very much alive. There are, I’ve realized, certain inviolable laws of nature: Cats will land on their feet, Tom Cruise will not age, and Americans will hate their hometown newspapers. Still, the degree of loathing that Atlantans feel for the Journal-Constitution is in a category by itself. Too liberal, cries the right. Too cautious, complains the left. Too boring, yawns the middle. Readers have voted with their feet. The paper’s daily circulation last fall was averaging around 175,000, less than half what it was just a few years ago. Of course, big metro dailies have been imploding for the past decade. The AJC just has it worse than most.

But I have come to praise the AJC, not to bury it. The fact remains that even today, in the age of Patch and aggregators and bleeds-it-leads TV news, no other news outlet can marshal the resources that a daily newspaper can. And when those resources are directed strategically, they can make a difference that no bloviating politician ever can.

This month features a story by Justin Heckert about the three men who got to the bottom of the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal, in which a group of administrators and teachers conspired to change students’ test answers to ensure higher scores. “The Big Break” is a story that puts you behind the scenes of the investigation into an administration whose cynicism and lies not only tarnished the city’s reputation but, more tragically, irrevocably harmed the very children those teachers and administrators were supposed to be helping. It’s a remarkable story. But that investigation, it’s fair to say, would not have happened if not for the trail blazed by the AJC. The paper’s own diligent and unrelenting reporting grabbed us all by the lapels and shook us. It wouldn’t let us turn away. That’s what a good hometown paper does. And when that happens, our hometown grows a little stronger.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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Before my wife and I were married nine years ago, we met for an afternoon with the minister who would officiate at the wedding. My wife was raised Episcopalian, while I grew up Catholic—Irish Catholic, to be precise, which means I’m very stubborn about my guilt. At any rate, Christy and I had decided to get married in her hometown church, which is Episcopalian. If you’re Catholic and go to an Episcopal service for the first time, it feels very familiar, like running into an old friend who recently had a haircut. Of course, that’s just my opinion. To some stalwart Catholics, a more apt analogy is that an Episcopal service is like running into an old friend’s twin—they may look alike, but they’re fundamentally distinct.

Bob, our minister, wanted to know if we had agreed on whether we would raise our children Catholic or Episcopalian. I was expecting this. “Well,” I said, “I thought we’d expose them to both, and then, when they’re old enough, they could decide on their own.” Bob nodded, like he’d heard this before. “You’ll confuse your child,” he said. Christy nodded too. My wife is a very sensible person and had tried to sell me on the merits of her denomination. “It’s Catholic-lite!” she’d say. “The same, but with no guilt!” (If our debate got particularly animated, she’d trot out the Inquisition, the relegation of women, the abusive-priest scandals, the Vatican’s silence during the Holocaust, etc.)

This was getting difficult. For the several billion of us on Earth who consider ourselves “religious” to some degree or another, the traditions to which we subscribe and which are inculcated in us over time become hard to let go, even in the face of sensible persuasion. They become definitional. In my late twenties, I spent a few years working in Cairo, where I got to know several American men who proposed to Egyptian women. Islam dictates that Muslims marry only other Muslims, so invariably these men would convert before the wedding. Love trumped dogma. Now that’s a conversion. Comparatively speaking, our dilemma was hardly a dilemma at all.

I’ve been thinking about all this recently because our son just turned two, and by the time you read this, he’ll have a little brother. I wish I could say my wife and I have resolved all these questions, but we haven’t. So it was reassuring to me, when I read “Unorthodox,” that I’m not alone. The stories of three iconoclastic pastors were a timely reminder that much of religion isn’t about the destination, but the journey. And that the answers to our questions are sometimes found in the unlikeliest of places.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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In the eleven years I’ve been a resident of our great state, I’ve held the perception that Georgia is full of people like me—nonnatives. All you need to do is go to the Falcons-Saints game every year at the Georgia Dome, where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a New Orleans fan. I have to conclude that they didn’t all make the drive from Louisiana—that most of them probably live right here. This argument, that Georgia is full of people from somewhere else, is trotted out all the time when we try to explain the tepid support for our major sports teams. People may move here, but they don’t move their allegiances.

The numbers, however, don’t really back up that perception. According to the 2010 census, 59 percent of all Americans live in the state of their birth. And in Georgia? Fifty-five percent who live here were also born here. A nominal difference. Certainly nowhere near as significant as Florida (only 35 percent native), Colorado (43 percent), or Nevada (24 percent).

Okay, but that’s the whole state. What about metro Atlanta, with its huge populations of Latinos and Asians? Well, it turns out that even in the thirty-three counties surrounding Atlanta, there’s roughly a fifty-fifty chance that the guy in line behind you at the grocery store was born in Georgia. Maybe we’re not quite the state of transients we think we are.

These stats help put this month’s feature package into perspective. When we first considered asking famous Georgians to recall their childhoods here, we worried that many of the most recognizable faces were born elsewhere. And in some cases, that was true. (Tyler Perry? Louisiana. John Lewis? Alabama. Ted Turner? Ohio. John Smoltz? Michigan. Shirley Franklin? Pennsylvania.) But then, as our list grew, it became clear that even if we had a year to work on this, there was no way we could track down all the big names who grew up on a farm in middle Georgia, or in the foothills of the Appalachians, or in the suburbs around Atlanta. (Julia Roberts, come back!) Thankfully, most of them still call Georgia home. And they’ve been kind enough to make room for the rest of us. Even Saints fans.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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My son turns two this month and mealtime negotiations have begun. To his consternation, his parents have determined that “nackies”—otherwise known as fruit snacks—are not an amuse-bouche, nor are they an appetizer, nor should they in any way be construed as a meal unto themselves. Likewise, he’s been informed that his favorite glass (the four-ounce beer samplers we repurposed fit his hands best) is capable of holding liquids besides orange juice. This is all unwelcome news to Casey, who has abandoned all subtlety when it comes to expressing culinary disfavor. Kicking the plate off the table is a popular option. So is hurling his milk glass across the room. This is a sign that negotiations are breaking down.

Presumably Casey is not so demonstrative at daycare, where he eats lunch every day and which is run by the Decatur city schools. Each night when we pick him up, we get a sheet that outlines that day’s meal, and how much of it he ate. I myself never went to daycare and didn’t enjoy my first school lunch until fourth grade. I say “enjoy” because I don’t recall specifically dumping out any meals simply because they tasted bad. Not even the pizza that they slapped onto the trays each Friday. The rubbery, glistening, pus-colored pizza. No, we lined up down the hall for that stuff. Somebody once said that pizza is like sex—even when it’s bad, it’s good. If that person went to school with me, he’s celibate.

At any rate, since reading Deborah Geering’s article in this month’s issue on the effort to feed students more locally grown produce, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my son eats when he’s in the care of the institution that we pay to enrich his mind and body. The big picture is depressing. In early December, the New York Times ran an essay by investigative reporter Lucy Komisar, who reported that of the $1 billion in commodities that the Department of Agriculture distributes for free to school districts—chicken, potatoes, etc.—about half that amount is turned over by the districts to food processors, who transform it into chicken nuggets (yum!) and french fries, and then sell those back to the districts at ridiculous prices.

Last fall the companies that make much of the slop that is passed off as food in school cafeterias banded together to protest a Department of Agriculture proposal that would do such draconian things as require more fruits and vegetables and limit starchy vegetables to once a week. Even for an institution as cravenly cynical as Congress, our elected representatives’ cave-in was breathtaking in its fecklessness. So, as Komisar writes, a few tablespoons of tomato sauce on pizza will continue to count as a vegetable serving.

The news is not all bad, however. Thanks to motivated parents and school officials, there are nascent movements in Georgia to give kids healthier food, and what better food than the stuff grown locally, in a state whose number one industry is agriculture? Feeding our kids good food—and food grown within our borders—seems like common sense, no? They’ll be healthier, fitter, they’ll do better in school. I think we could all stand to use that, especially in a state that spends $2 billion a year on obesity-related health issues. So let’s hope that good work continues. My son is depending on it. Which means so am I.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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When I’m out at a restaurant or shop in Atlanta, I’ll often see a sign hanging in the window, boasting that the place has been named “Best of Atlanta” by one of the countless (it seems) websites or publications that claim to be the arbiters of taste in the city. The skeptical consumer in me always takes a closer look. How do they compile their list, I wonder? Is it objectively and independently determined by experts? Who are their experts, anyway?

We live in a time when not only is everyone a critic, but every opinion seems to get equal airtime. Just look at Yelp. Or at Twitter. The Internet might have allowed a thousand flowers to bloom, but the smell has become overpowering. How do you know whom to trust? How can you tell who is writing from experience and expertise, and who is writing because they’re trying simply to drum up advertising or get a free meal?

This issue you’re holding (or reading online) represents, by my count, the thirty-second year we’ve been compiling a “Best” list. The other day, I pulled out the 1980 edition to examine my predecessors’ approach from a generation ago. Heavy on snark, the collection included not just the best of everything, but the worst as well. For example, best owner was given to Ted Turner as owner of the Hawks. Worst owner went to . . . Ted Turner, this time as owner of the Braves. (If only he would buy them again.) Mary Mac’s Tea Room won best meal under $5. Not surprisingly, best neighborhood bar went to Manuel’s. Worst? A place on Collier Road called Honey for the Bears. I can only imagine the crowd that place drew.

Three decades ago, the concept of doing a “Best” list was pretty novel. This might explain the slapdash nature of our inaugural list, which feels like it came together over many pitchers of beer (at Manuel’s, no doubt). Today, planning for our annual Best of Atlanta issue starts six months out, as our team of editors, reporters, and contributing writers fans out across the city to determine the best. We go anonymously and we pay our own way. (I know, as I have to approve the expense reports from all these spas and restaurants.) It’s an expensive and time-consuming process, but the end result is as objective and comprehensive a listing as you’ll find. Which means when you see a bunch of “Best of Atlanta” signs in a restaurant’s window, there’s really only one you need to look for.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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As we head into November, we’re winding down our fiftieth anniversary year at the magazine. It’s been a busy one. In May we used the occasion to profile fifty of the people from the past half century who made this city what it is. A rap against Atlanta is that it’s a town that doesn’t properly honor or even know its past, so packed is it with people from other places. But judging from the response to that issue—letters to the editor, requests for extra copies, complaints about those we left out—Atlantans are hungry for history. It’s axiomatic that to know where you’re going, it helps to know where you’ve been. It was with that in mind that, in September, we hosted a unique event at the Atlanta History Center: a roundtable discussion with four of Atlanta’s mayors.

For two hours, the men (Shirley Franklin couldn’t make it) who led this city for so much of the past five decades talked about the chronic challenges that bedevil every administration, whether it’s traffic, education, or taxes. Andrew Young recalled tousling the hair of a young Kasim Reed decades ago. Sam Massell joked about going up in a helicopter with a bullhorn to remind drivers stuck in gridlock that there was a better way. Bill Campbell recalled the tragic moment he realized Atlanta’s public housing conditions had to change. And Reed, our incumbent mayor, spoke of the need to bridge the divide between the city and the rest of the state.

Here’s an excerpt from the evening. What we realized as soon as the event was over is that these types of discussions should occur more often, and they should go beyond just politics and policy. So as we look ahead to 2012, our plan is to host even more conversations with the people who are defining the city and region we live in today—musicians, scientists, writers, entrepreneurs, sports figures. Atlanta is a city as diverse and as vibrant as any in America, and our goal is to offer the curious among us (which, let’s face it, is every reader of Atlanta magazine) a way to better understand where Atlanta is going and who is taking us there. This series of conversations will come off best with suggestions from each of you, so if you have ideas about the topics or personalities you’d like to see, please drop me a line.

One more thought on the past: The magazine’s long legacy means our archives hold some of the most compelling writing that’s ever been done about Atlanta. In a few months, look for a special issue that captures some of the best of those stories.

We at the magazine have been honored to chronicle this city over the past fifty years, and we couldn’t be more excited about the next fifty.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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As I write this in early September, the National Weather Service has just confirmed that the swath of damage through Cherokee County on Labor Day was caused by a tornado. While it wasn’t a particularly powerful twister, as these things go, it stayed on the ground for a long time, cutting a twenty-four-mile path through the county, damaging 400 homes. Maybe you heard the tornado sirens. When my wife and I did, we turned on the television, where the local weathermen were all giddy at the notion.

Of course, the rains that came with the tornado didn’t do enough to lift us out of the drought that, once again, is bedeviling Georgia. The southern counties were parched by June. Agriculture, Georgia’s biggest business, is hurting. Consider pecan trees, which produce a crop every other year. This was supposed to be an “on” year for most of Georgia’s pecan trees, but the forecast, as of the summer, was grim: 80 million pounds, or what the state usually produces in an “off” year. Farther north, U.S. Geological Survey stream gauges are showing record daily low-flows in rivers—the Chattahoochee, the Oconee, the Chattooga. The list goes on. So far this year, 450,000 acres in the state have been struck by wildfire.

Oh yeah, the heat. This summer was the hottest on record in Georgia. We got off easy in Atlanta, where it was merely the third-hottest in the past 133 years. (Can you imagine a hotter one? There have been two—in 1980 and 1993.) The average—average—high was 92.5 degrees. At just over six inches, Atlanta’s rainfall was half what it usually is. It almost makes you forget that in January, the city was essentially shut down for a week because of an inch of ice that wouldn’t melt.

Anyone who denies the realities of climate change needs his head examined. If it seems like the weather has gotten crazier, it’s because it has. While you can debate the causes, the effects are indisputable, as Justin Heckert’s story shows us. The series of twisters this past April that tore apart Alabama and parts of Georgia hit a little town you probably never heard of called Vaughn. The other tornadoes that touched down in more populated areas got all the attention. But Vaughn . . . well, Vaughn is gone. Justin’s story is about one harrowing night, but more importantly, it’s about the days that followed, and what it means to come from a place that no longer exists.

Steve Fennessy is our editor.
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