In December of 1989 or possibly 1990, I was told that there was this band that I had to see playing a free show one night on the steps of City Hall in Athens. It was the Labrea Stompers, led by Jim Stacy, and it was unbelievably cold. I saw them a couple of times after that, in more traditional settings, but I’ll always remember that very long, below-freezing walk back to my dorm against a harsh, knock-you-down wind, and also their terrific performance of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” When Dr. Seuss died in 1991, Stacy wrote an obituary for one of the local papers. Class act. Continue reading “Pallookaville Fine Foods, Avondale Estates GA”
Tag: soda
The General Muir, Atlanta GA
I said the other day that neither celebrity chefs nor advance-opening hype really interest us as much as either longevity or reports of great food from people we trust. The “pre-release” hype is just the worst. I don’t know whether anything kills my desire to visit a restaurant as much as constant “advance looks” at its interior. Let me guess: it’s going to look more like a restaurant than a greenhouse, and might possibly serve cocktails in mason jars. Continue reading “The General Muir, Atlanta GA”
I Dream of Weenie, Nashville TN
As always, we enjoyed some terrific conversation, shopping, and eating in the Music City, but we saved the best meal for last this time. Over in the East Nashville neighborhood, where half the folk are kicking back and having fun and the other half are grumbling “blankety-blank hipsters” under their breath, there’s a beat-up old VW bus parked in a grass lot, and the good folk there are serving up some of the tastiest hot dogs that we’ve ever had. Continue reading “I Dream of Weenie, Nashville TN”
Drinking in Nashville
Nashville looks very much like a town in which a man can go a-drinkin’. The bars open early and don’t seem to close until late, and there appear to be more hospitals per resident than any other place this side of Miami to take care of what you do to your liver. But if you’re a family like ours, where three of us don’t drink alcohol and the one that does maybe has a single beer a month, it’s also a terrific place to drink all sorts of other wonderful things. When my daughter and I first got to the Music City on this trip, we skirted around the south side of the metro area via I-440 and started things off with a great milkshake at Bobbie’s Dairy Dip. Continue reading “Drinking in Nashville”
Pure Sodaworks in Bottles
The second best move that the good people at Pure Sodaworks have made lately has been the employment of a young fellow whom our girlchild finds radiant and dreamy. I’m not sure what the fellow’s name is, but he sure does keep the girlchild excited to go to Tennessee. Continue reading “Pure Sodaworks in Bottles”
Kutztown Soda Works of Pennsylvania
One of the highlights of our trip to Ohio in December was our visit to Jungle Jim’s, the gigantic grocery store – slash – tourist mecca in the Cincinnati suburbs. There, we spent a good deal of vacation money in their soda aisle – sorry, their “pop” aisle – bringing back a few old favorites and getting several new things to sample. Continue reading “Kutztown Soda Works of Pennsylvania”
City Barbeque, Lexington KY
It’s not accurate to say that our dining out on this trip went off without a hitch. We hit every restaurant that we hoped to visit but one: the Tolly-Ho in Lexington. The plan had been to visit the Explorium Children’s Museum in that city on the way home, but first, we got a later start than we thought, since our visit to Jungle Jim’s was such an adventure. Then, as we crawled down the street in that city we were directed down, through bumper-to-bumper traffic, we saw that the Explorium didn’t have a dedicated parking lot, and all the surface lots were a steep $15-20 to park! Hideous traffic, very high parking charges, and twenty thousand people walking around in blue and gray… yes, that’s right, I forgot to check the sports schedules of the cities we’d be visiting. Continue reading “City Barbeque, Lexington KY”
Marie, Let's Eat! 