Tag: Athens

Comprised of archive footage from the MTV Vaults, this film follows Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe from playing in an abandoned Athens church to the breakthrough of their 1983 record Murmur to their breakup in 2011, with plenty of performances in between.

Little-known fact: Italian aristocrat and fashion designer Emilio Pucci, famous for his kaleidoscopic patterns, studied agriculture at the University of Georgia in 1935. This month, a costume exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art, Emilio Pucci in America, brings his work back to Athens. According to curator Mary Koon, Pucci long maintained his Georgia ties, even instating his American headquarters in Atlanta during the eighties.

Known for its music, football, and vibrant culture, Athens in northeast Georgia is both sophisticated and sweet. The Victorian-era downtown is filled with galleries and boutiques, while its concert venues lure international acts and its restaurants earn raves from Food & Wine.

When prospective students tour UGA’s campus, they are paraded past Sanford Stadium and told, “This is the largest classroom on campus; other schools come here and we teach them how to play football.”

Now, just as then, Athens is a product of the unique symbiosis between town and college. It sits at the intersection of its own history and the vibrant indie-rock grittiness that gives the modern city much of its flavor. Students and locals alike never run out of interesting things to do in this lively college town.

As the band flies into Buenos Aires for a tour stop this week, B-52s fans across the globe are absorbing the news that the Athens-birthed band is bringing its 36-year bounds-impaired party to an end. Over the weekend, frontman Fred Schneider announced on Facebook that he will no longer tour with the act after the band’s Nov. 13 show in Westbury, NY.

I have cried only once at a culinary event: the 2007 James Beard Foundation Awards, when a towering man in a tuxedo and a ruffled shirt bounded onstage, collected the medal that honored his restaurant as an America’s Classic, and opened his mouth. “I want to thank God, R.E.M., and the University of Georgia,” Dexter Weaver said with the booming voice of a preacher. The crowd went wild. All that love for Athens, Georgia, and Weaver’s place overcame me.

The name of Hugh Acheson’s new restaurant—his first in Atlanta—sounds retro and progressive at the same time, winking at the city’s history of preening boosterism: Empire State South.