March 2025
Features
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Must-Do South: The Original Gullah Festival
Every year over Memorial Day weekend, against the backdrop of the bucolic Beaufort River and under the shade of swaying palmetto trees, the Beaufort waterfront comes alive with the colors, sounds, and tastes of West Africa. You can almost feel the music before you hear it—the pounding percussion of complex African American beats as history comes to life with The Original Gullah Festival at the Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park.
Must-Do South: The Kentucky Bourbon Trail
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail is a group of 56 northern Kentucky distilleries that offers tours, tastings, and other educational opportunities and exhibits. But since you can’t see them all in one day or even one weekend, we’ve plotted an itinerary of highlights.
Must-Do South: Asheville, North Carolina
When Hurricane Helene carved a path across the Southeast last September, it left what may be its deepest marks in western North Carolina. Here, tourism is king, pouring billions into the region’s economy, and Asheville’s unrealized fall season saw an estimated $584 million washed away. But today, six months removed from the devastation, Asheville and western North Carolina are welcoming visitors.
Must-Do South: New Orleans, Louisiana
Five years ago, New Orleans was turned upside down by Covid. Last year, however, confirmed a postpandemic renaissance and a tourism boom—a return for New Orleans as a prime destination location. The city had record or near-record attendance for Mardi Gras and the Jazz Fest, among other events, as if the entire world were crawling out of a dark cave and sought New Orleans as a place to bask in the glow of sunshine again.
Must-Do South: Montgomery, Alabama
As a destination, Montgomery is a journey in contrasts. The Alabama capital is both a proud epicenter of the mid-20th-century civil rights movement and a landscape curiously steeped in Confederate memory. Here, history isn’t merely preserved; it is powerfully experienced.
Must-Do South: Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, the unofficial capital city of the Mississippi Delta, is widely renowned for two things: blues and barbecue. The two Memphis institutions are tightly connected—each a result of the Great Migration of the early 20th century.
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The Connector
Lawrenceville native Isaac Robinson is the underdog winning disc golf world championships
Isaac Robinson, 23, a Lawrenceville native, won his second consecutive Professional Disc Golf Association’s pro world championship last August. As he was about to clinch his second win, a fan yelled to Robinson, “Two time, baby!” He’s riding the disc golf boom that’s sweeping the United States.
Hold a real human brain at the bigger-than-ever Atlanta Science Festival
The Atlanta Science Festival is all about transformative experiences that spark curiosity and even inspire careers. Since its debut in 2014, the two-week springtime festival has become a family favorite, with citywide celebrations of science featuring more than 80 partner organizations, 300 volunteers, and hundreds of events that turn Atlanta into a science playground. The fair routinely draws nearly 50,000 adults and curious kids.
Paint Atlanta Green: The 141-year history of the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade
For one weekend this month, Atlanta, like Chicago, will flood with green. But lacking a river as we do, it’s Peachtree Street that will run emerald when the Irish and their friends march in celebration of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. This year marks the 141st St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Atlanta, making it one of the longest continuously running parades in the city.
The Children’s Museum of Atlanta is teaching kids about women’s history, one daredevil at a time
Every March for nearly a decade, Children’s Museum of Atlanta has built a suite of programming celebrating Women’s History Month, all designed for young people who may not yet know the meaning of women, history, or even months. This year, the theme of the exhibit is “daredevils,” featuring women who broke the mold in their respective fields.
Tara Roberts searches the deep sea for clues of U.S. slavery’s past
Tara Roberts, who lives in Atlanta, has spent much of the past six years below the sea, exploring shipwrecks that date back to the transatlantic slave trade. Her new book, Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home and Belonging, is a reflective quest through history, equal parts memoir and narrative reporting, which explores the ocean and the way it bears silent witness to the atrocities of our colonial past.
The Bite
The owners of Minhwa Spirits want to reshape the narrative around Korean alcohol
A few years ago, Kim and his business partner, Ming Han Chung—a former Duluth High School classmate—began to kick around ideas for a start-up. Chung suggested they make alcohol. Kim remembered his uncle’s homemade makgeolli and asked his dad to get the family recipe, and a new business was born. Last fall, Kim and Chung opened Minhwa Spirits in the corner unit of a recently renovated retail development on Van Fleet Circle in Doraville.
Mothers Best Fried Chicken rules the roost in Decatur
Soon after co-owners Ean Camperlengo and Ross Winecoff opened Mothers Best Fried Chicken last December, they were slammed, with lines out the door to Church Street. In a struggling restaurant world full of misses, they’d managed to score a hit.
Review: Il Premio brings a winning combination of steaks and classic Italian pasta to Old Fourth Ward
Atlanta is a steakhouse town. As a result, such restaurants find differentiating themselves challenging, and newcomer Il Premio faces that obstacle head-on. The restaurant offers a distinct twist from the American or French-leaning steakhouses we’ve come to know and love. It’s a prize, indeed.
The Goods
Coworking spaces are going beyond traditional with spa services, therapy, private warehouses, and more
Coworking spaces haven’t looked the same since the pandemic. The shared office model has largely survived by heading in two directions. The first, a go-wide approach, offers remote tech workers and laptop-wielding entrepreneurs flexible use of individual desks and office space. The other direction is to go deep, in a bid to attract workers who aren’t seduced by the traditional model.
Atlanta’s The Neon Company, one of few surviving fabricators of neon signs in the U.S., is still going strong
Inside The Neon Company studio on DeKalb Avenue, a guild of craftspeople spends their days hand-fabricating neon signs in much the same way their progenitors did a century ago. The company, which launched in 1983, is one of the last remaining neon signage outfits in the country, having survived the many booms and busts of the industry.
How Atlanta and Japan influence each other’s hip-hop scenes
Today, Japan boasts the second-largest music market in the world, valued at more than $2 billion. Even in a booming industry crowded with competitors from K-pop to J-pop, Atlanta artists continue to cultivate loyal fans in Japan, while Japan’s own cultural exports have inspired artists here in the rap capital of the United States.
Miscellaneous
Editor’s Journal: A visit to a sacred site of rock ‘n’ roll history in Memphis
“Graceland or Sun?” my friend asked. I had to ponder that one for a moment. “Sun,” I finally replied. We drove a few blocks and reached one of the most hallowed addresses of my life: 706 Union Avenue, Sun Studio. I could almost see a youthful Elvis Presley nervously hanging around outside, trying to get the courage to go in and record a ballad to give to his mother.
