April 2024
Features
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Ronald Acuña Jr. takes flight
Former Braves coaches Ron Washington and Eric Young Sr. mentored Acuña to an MVP season in 2023. Can the young outfielder thrive without them?
Where to eat and drink at the Battery and Truist Park
Consider this your guide to having the best Braves game day meal ever. Here’s where to eat at the Battery before the game (whether you have a lot or very little time), what to get inside Truist Park, and where to keep the party going after the game, plus tips for parking and pregame entertainment.
Fans ate 550,000 hot dogs at Truist Park last year—and 8 other interesting facts about the Braves ballpark
Truist Park: The home of the Braves is an enigma. It’s an artificial mecca of baseball that displaced Turner Field to the chagrin of many, but now draws some of the best crowds in baseball. The stadium itself is a beauty, with faux red brick that creates an old-school ballpark feel in a sea of corporate office parks. Let’s leave behind its contradictions for a moment to focus on Truist Park and the great baseball played there since 2017.
In 1974, Hank Aaron broke the most hallowed record in baseball. I can still hear the echo.
It was 50 years ago this month—April 8, 1974—that Henry Aaron hit his 715th career home run off pitcher Al Downing in Atlanta, breaking Ruth’s 39-year record. When he finally reached that summit, it seemed less a cause for celebration for Aaron than reason for a long sigh of relief: The chase was finally over.
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The Connector
A couple of serial entrepreneurs just bought up a bunch of historic South Downtown. Now what?
What Newport had toiled for seven years to accumulate took David Cummings less than two months to purchase, through deals with seven different lenders. As of this writing, Atlanta Ventures’ new LLC, SoDo Atlanta, now owns all of Newport’s former holdings, save one. Cummings isn’t disclosing yet what he paid for such a hefty chunk of downtown, but says he’s pleased with the sale price: “You never know what something’s worth, [but] it feels good right now.”
How the Fox Theatre restored its crowning glory
Rachel Bomeli stood on the roof of the Fox Theatre and knew something was off. Renovations for the “Onion Dome” that crowns the building were almost underway, and Bomeli, the vice president of facility operations, compared the current dome to a photograph of the original. Somewhere in the Fox’s 95-year history, someone had taken creative liberties.
GVG Events helps Atlanta artists shine
At heart, Mike Huddleston and C.C. Indivero are just thrift store kids with a knack for arts and crafts. The pair met in 2013 when Indivero, a professional hairdresser, cut Huddleston’s hair; they hit it off over a shared love of all things secondhand. From there, a beautiful friendship—and business venture—was born.
The innovative way the Georgia Aquarium manages millions of gallons of tank water
With around 500 species living in 60 different habitats, the Georgia Aquarium the biggest aquarium in the United States and the fourth largest in the world. Keeping the aquarium’s creatures healthy and happy is John Masson’s primary job responsibility, along with hundreds of other animal care specialists, from veterinarians to microbiologists. And because all those creatures are aquatic, whether partially or completely, a big part of Masson’s job involves water—a lot of water.
An Atlanta entrepreneur developed an app to empower people with disabilities
When Angad Sahgal was born with Down syndrome 23 years ago, doctors told his parents that he’d never be able to walk or talk. Assumptions like these vastly underestimate the abilities of those with Down syndrome. People with this genetic condition are congressional lobbyists, triathletes, actors, and much more. Sahgal himself is a college student and an entrepreneur: With his father, Amit Sahgal, he developed an app called Let Me Do It, named for the phrase he repeated often as a child.
The Bite
The verdict on 3 new Atlanta restaurants: The Bronx Bagel Buggy, El Santo Gallo, and Owens and Hull BBQ
The Bronx Bagel Buggy Rolls into Chamblee, plus a new traditional taqueria on the Westside and an exciting barbecue collaboration in Smyrna.
Meet James “Mr. V” Virgil, the disco legend who sells kitchen gear to chefs and designers
Commonly known as “Mr. V,” James Virgil operates a restaurant supply store, dealing in mostly used commercial appliances, that attracts a cult following of designers and chefs to his facility in the shadow of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. I have spent hours squeezing myself down the tightly packed aisles of Mr. V’s Restaurant Equipment and Store Fixtures, where bar coolers, margarita machines, fridges with glass doors, and fryers rotate on an almost daily basis.
Rodgers Greens and Roots expands with a pivot to pigs
In 2022, it was time for Ashley Rodgers of Rodgers Greens and Roots to make a change. She realized that the veggie side of the farming business would take her only so far—diversifying was a necessary next step. “I was just trying to figure out how to keep my business alive,” she says.
The Goods
The Atlanta Opera tackles “the Mount Olympus of opera”
Of all works in the operatic canon, few engender such reverence as the four operas that comprise Richard Wagner’s epic masterwork Der Ring des Nibelungen, or, as it’s commonly called, the Ring. Wagner’s magnum opus is lauded as one of the great artistic achievements of Western civilization—and the ultimate challenge for any opera company. The Ring has never been mounted in the American Southeast, let alone Atlanta. But that’s about to change.
Redefining movement at Full Radius Dance, Georgia’s only pro dance company for people with and without disabilities
Full Radius Dance is the only physically integrated professional dance company in Georgia, bringing together dancers with and without disabilities. How Douglas Scott created the company and what it means to its dancers.
Room Envy: A serene home office meant to be seen
When a home office is visible from the front door, it gets special treatment, says interior designer Michelle Doughtie of Schilling & Co.
Miscellaneous
A love letter to CHaRM
Here’s what I packed in my car on a recent Saturday morning: 17 cans of paint, 8 propane canisters, 2 old iPads, a Medusa tangle of electrical cords, and a bag stuffed so full with bags it had to sit buckled into the passenger’s seat. “Can you take this too?” my wife asked, thrusting some kind of enormous Geiger counter into my arms, another technological casualty of her rainy field season in Costa Rica. I took it, and so did CHaRM.
