Tag: Atlanta BeltLine

Sometimes restaurants have a lot going for them—just not all going at the same speed. Last Word, in the Old Fourth Ward, is one of them. It’s trying to do a lot: bring craft cocktails to a level of housemade everything, build a menu reminiscent of the co-owner’s native Lebanon and also the Maghreb countries of Morocco and Tunisia, and include late-night plates to complement the ambitious drinks.

When I graduated from college in 1991, it felt like half of the guys I knew growing up were moving to Atlanta. We were from a small town in upstate New York, and back then, before Al Gore invented the Internet, reports of life in Atlanta trickled up through limited filters: from newspaper stories about the mad preparations for the Olympics, from the ubiquitous Braves games on TBS, but mostly from friends themselves, who would visit home at Christmas, like evangelizers anointed by the Chamber of Commerce.

Disco. Hipster. Kosher. Murder. Atlantans have a penchant for nicknaming their Kroger stores. That last moniker was bestowed on the Ponce de Leon Avenue location after a deadly 1991 shooting in its parking lot. The name has stuck; there’s even a Twitter handle.

We asked Eric Champlin, editor and founder of AtlantaTrails.com, to recommend three of his favorite routes around metro Atlanta. Here’s what he had to say.

There’s more to cellphone snaps than selfies and documentation of everyone’s dinner. In 2012, photographers Brandon Barr, Aaron Coury, and Tim Moxley created the hashtag #weloveATL to curate Instagram shots for a gallery show. The label has become a badge of civic pride, with Atlantans tagging more than 100,000 photos.

Explore the BeltLine Eastside Trail by way of its bars—seven spots worth a stop, plus what to order at each one.

Now in its fifth year, Art on the Atlanta BeltLine is the largest temporary public art exhibition in the Southeast, according to Elan Buchen, the BeltLine’s coordinator for art and design. This year, visual arts installations stretch not only along the Eastside Trail but also along six more miles of future BeltLine trails along the southeast and westside corridors.

On September 20 from 9 a.m. to noon, neighborhoods in Southwest Atlanta will host iSWAT Development Day, a collection of speeches and bus tours through the area that highlight redevelopment initiatives in an effort to attract chefs, restaurateurs, and grocers. Participants will meet at 884 Murphy Avenue.

Despite a late afternoon storm, huge crowds turned out. Cheering spectators watched from parks, parking lots, overpasses, underpasses, balconies, rooftops, and restaurant patios. Even more people seemed to be taking part in the parade itself, many carrying handmade lanterns.

Hardy souls who attended early Art on the Atlanta BeltLine events clambered over abandoned rail lines and industrial right-of-ways. Back then, the idea of a twenty-two-mile transit loop through town seemed as fanciful as the kinetic sculptures on display.