Travel

It’s great to be a tourist in a city you love and call home. It’s also great to check items off the bucket list and never have to worry about doing them again. If you want to skip ahead to the good stuff without the random experimentation, here’s a quick list of Atlanta Bucket List Dos and Don’ts from September and early October.

Brandi Carlile performs at Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre at Encore Park - September 18, 2011

DO see a concert at Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre at Encore Park. A friend and I saw the Secret Sisters, Brandi Carlile and Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs there on September 18. It was a perfect fall night for this outdoor venue. Prepaid parking in Lot A was $12, but they had hundreds of people directing traffic. We were in and out with no problems. The folding chairs in the ampitheatre could have been bigger, but I know they’re trying to pack in a lot of concertgoers. The sound was amazing. And it’s located in the burbs of Alpharetta, so it was close enough to some nice restaurants where we could spend our money wisely on dinner and not overspend on food and drinks at the venue.

DO enjoy a wine tasting at the Wine Shoe in Castleberry Hills. Zach and I found this husband and wife-owned wine shop – one of only seven in Atlanta with a tasting license – thanks to Groupon. After purchasing a discounted class for two, we attended the Wine 101 class. Instructor Theresa led us on a two-hour tour and tasting of white, blush and red wines. Wines were organized in progression to eliminate the need for rinsing our glasses between pourings.

Instructor Theresa leads the Wine 101 class at Atlanta's Wine Shoe.

Most of the wines carried at the Wine Shoe come from small producers in Europe. At the beginning of the class, owner Nora extolled her “Campbell’s Soup” theory on wine: the ingredients found in Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and homemade chicken noodle soup are essentially the same, but the soups taste completely different. Why? Greater care and production make the difference between the hand-crafted wines that she carries at her shop and the mass-produced wines found at any local package store.

Zach and I enjoyed two of the reds that we tasted, so we left with four bottles. We learned a lot about proper chilling and storage of wine. I can see us returning here for another class, and the Wine Shoe offers a lot of different loyalty programs for the serious wine drinker or student.

Zach and his red buckeye tree-in-training from the Trees Atlanta tree sale. We've named him "Twiggy."

DO take advantage of the annual Trees Atlanta tree sale. When Zach and I moved into our new home a year and a half ago, he sweetly suggested that we plant a tree to commemorate our first year in the house. The problem (if you want to call it that) was that we already had so many trees in our front and back yard, we didn’t know quite where to put a new one. When I found out about the Trees Atlanta tree sale, I revived the idea of planting a tree, except it would commemorate our upcoming wedding anniversary.

My mother joined Zach and me on this tree-buying adventure. The sale touted more than 1,000 different trees and shrubs so we were out of our league. Our yard doesn’t get a lot of sun and won’t accommodate a 100-foot behemoth, so the knowledgeable experts from Trees Atlanta pointed us in the direction of the silver bells, buckeyes and maples. Much like Linus gravitated to that tiny spruce in the Peanuts Christmas special, Zach became emotionally attached to a red buckeye tree that looks pretty much like a twig sticking out of a bowl of dirt. Hopefully, you’re seeing the before picture. I also took home a Japanese maple. We also felt good about the purchases because the proceeds benefit Trees Atlanta.

DON’T watch the Stone Mountain laser show. We live about 20 minutes away from Stone Mountain, which is a beautiful park with so many great activities and amenities for families. The laser show is outdated and disappointing. Skip it.

Zach and I are woefully behind on our Atlanta Bucket List blog posts. I gladly devoted my Lawthenticity blog to Girls Rock Camp ATL for a while, but it’s time to get back to work on sharing some of Atlanta’s best sights. Or, in the case of this blog post, experiencing one of Atlanta’s longest-running cult rendezvous.

On Friday, the husband and I joined three of my intrepid friends for a late dinner, drinks and a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show at Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre. According to the Plaza’s website, they’ve been showing Rocky every Friday night for the last ten years. None of us had seen Rocky at the Plaza and had no idea what to expect. All I knew is that I needed a nap in order to START my evening at 9:30 p.m. after a long week.

After dinner at the new Wrecking Bar Brewpub, we arrived at the Plaza around 11. Zach writes:

About 50 people were milling about outside the theatre. We thought we had a 50/50 chance of the movie being sparsely attended. Not so much. We went into the Righteous Room next door and had a couple of reinforcement beverages. While there, I encountered a long wait for the men’s room. One of the patrons encouraged me to go to the women’s room. Talk about a harbinger of things to come.

We exited the smoky bar about 15 minutes before midnight and the line had swollen to at least 100 people, most of them in costumes. A tall woman wearing only a black corset, panties, garters, stockings and heels (the outfit that Tim Curry wears throughout most of Rocky Horror) greeted me in line. She was asking me and the other people entering the theatre if they were Rocky Horror virgins. Since this was my first time, the corseted woman drew a “V” on my forehead with bright red lipstick, before giving me a matching kiss on the cheek. My only thought was “I wonder if that cheap lipstick is phthalate-free?” Zach smartly passed on the makeup application.

When planning this midnight outing, we knew to expect costumes. We’d heard that there would be singalongs and audience participation. We heard there would be some raunchy pre-show festivities thanks to the local cast of Lips Down on Dixie. All were true. The guy who insisted on us taking pages from a Creative Loafing newspaper into the theatre did so because he knew we were going to be sprayed with water during every rain scene in the movie.

Live, costumed actors performed on stage in front of the screen,  lip-synching and dancing to each scene of the movie. The audience, seemingly filled with people who had witnessed this event a hundred times, yelled throughout the movie. They knew all the lines, catcalls and responses. During the Time Warp song, most of the audience got in the aisles and danced. If you want to hear the original dialogue or songs, you should stay home and watch the movie on VH1.

Zach writes his final thoughts on this Atlanta Bucket List experience:

There were quality trailers, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Power Rangers.

I give credit to the Atlanta actor playing Tim Curry’s role; he wore the fishnets well, even if he had a bad case of bacne. We were sworn in as non-virgins midway through the flick. I would say that the percentage of straight males was on par with the average Lady Gaga concert. For lovers of eye candy, the evening was like Halloween. For every scantily-clad woman, there was a guy wearing just a pair of gold underwear.

I thought the experience was a lot of fun, although at about the hour mark of the film the audience’s energy dropped and so did my eyelids. I could use less of the audience trying to out-Mystery Science Theatre 3000 each other. The wife and I want to know how this of all movies made it into the midnight movie inventory.

I would add that before the show started, the cast members called on a couple in the audience who were there with their wedding party. She in a white, sequined dress with army boots, and he in a white button-down shirt and green plaid kilt, stood and accepted the audience’s applause. Apparently, one year before, the groom had proposed to his bride at the Plaza Theatre’s Rocky Horror Show. They had returned on their wedding night. I told Zach that if he had asked me to marry him at that venue, my answer might have been different.

We left the theatre at 2:30 a.m., feeling like we had sufficiently made good on a dare. We’d checked off another Atlanta experience on our bucket list and didn’t feel the need to repeat it anytime soon. Just like any boring old married couple, we won’t accept an invitation to any event with the word “Midnight” in it for a long, long time.

Zach tries a Flemish sour ale at Leon's Full Service in Decatur, Ga.

Anyone who’s ever visited Atlanta knows that native Atlantans are an endangered species. When you encounter one in the wild, you must capture it and ply it with alcohol or Chick-fil-A until it gives intel on all the wonderful things that the city has to offer.

My husband, Zach, and I are working on becoming natives. He moved to Atlanta in 1996 after graduating from college, and I’ve been here since 2000, when I graduated from TV news. Still, Atlanta is like a city made up of little cities, and we both feel like we have a lot of ground to cover.

Unquenched curiosity about our adopted hometown coupled with limited vacation funds have inspired us to try a co-blogging experiment. Over the course of the summer, we’re going to check off some items on our “Atlanta Bucket List” and write about them here on Lawthenticity and over at Zach’s blog, Zachrilege.

Like the U.S. Constitution, the Atlanta Bucket List is a living document. If you have suggestions for must-experience Atlanta sights or adventures, please leave them in the Comments below. Restaurant and food suggestions are always welcome. Yes, you’ll start to see more content about beer now that Zach is visiting. That’s it for the intro. Now here’s Zach with a post on our first Atlanta Bucket List experience in Decatur.

Dinner at Leon’s Full Service

The evening began at Leon’s, a restaurant I had wanted to try because it is owned by the proprietor of Brickstore, which has my favorite beer list in town. The restaurant occupies a space that used to be a gas station. We sat down at a booth and read the two chalkboard menus on the wall. One listed the local farms that provided most of the food on the menu and the other had the late night offerings.

Peppadews at Leon's

We started with peppadews, small red peppers stuffed with goat cheese and topped with basil confetti. My goat cheese history has been neutral, but these little pockets of flavor tasted lemony and delicious. I ordered a Fat Tire Abbey Grand Cru but Leon’s was out, so I went with a Flemish Sour. Our server told us it was sour, unusual for a beer. I didn’t get the wood taste that I expected. As for my entrée, I got the gyro. The wrapping was great but I needed more of the cucumber-yogurt sauce. The wife ordered the steak sandwich and enjoyed it. The key item was the French fries, cooked to the crispy golden brown style that I like.

Open Mic Shootout at Eddie’s Attic

Banner pointing people to Eddie's Attic

We walked across the Decatur Square to Eddie’s Attic for the Bi-Annual Open Mic Shootout. Eddie’s Attic has a weekly Open Mic showdown and the weekly winners all appear in a bracket-style tournament. The winner gets $1000. The event was sold out, so we watched the show via closed circuit TV on the deck with a crowd that was half performers and half fans. Each individual or band performed one song, and nine judges picked a winner from each competing pair. The winner moved on and the loser joined us on the deck. During the performances I tried a Magic Hat Wacko Summer red ale, the reddest beer I’ve ever consumed. It was more summer-ready than my first beer at Eddie’s, the Fat Tire Amber Ale.

Watching Open Mic Shootout performances via closed circuit TV at Eddie's Attic

If you want bang for your buck, go to the next Open Mic Shootout. You’ll get to meet 22 emerging artists or bands hailing from all parts of the country and you’ll hear 62 songs over the course of one long evening. We stayed long enough to see each artist play once. The sound isn’t fantastic on the porch. The performances compete with side conversations, clinking glasses and second-hand smoke. Make a reservation if you want to enjoy the listening room atmosphere. Still, there was a lot of talent on that stage. Sitting on a porch with a brew and my best gal and listening to a lot of people trying to pursue their dreams sure felt like summer. Note that former winners of this competition include John Mayer and a woman who’s in Sugarland. I’ve only seen Sugarland on my Diet Dr. Pepper boxes so feel free to enlighten me on their musical style.

We left around 10 and walked to our car in the steamy heat of the summer. We have a ways to go before we’re through with you, Atlanta. Get ready to see more of the Laws.