AT HOME IN ATLANTA
WITH COLE ALEXANDER
Photos by Joanna Pasiecnik
The perfect Atlanta day
I’d probably start by going down to Buford highway,
which is one of the most ethnically diverse [places]
so there are a lot of good restaurants; I like to eat, I
like ethnic hole-in-the-walls and you can find a holein-the-wall Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant.
There’s a lot of thrift stores there so I’d
probably go to a thrift store or flea market or
Favorite Landmark
antique store.
There’s a fast food place called
I might go to the drive-in movie theater.
the Varsity where you can get
We have one of the last drive-in movie theaters.
chili dogs and stuff. It has like
See like a B-movie or something. Starlight Drive-In
a big lit up sign and it says “V.”
Theater, 2000 Moreland Avenue Southeast
I just like that building; it’s an
Then I might go to my favorite trucker bar,
old establishment. I like old
Southern Comfort which is down the road. It’s
establishments. They become
open until four in the morning, which is later than
institutions. The Varsity, 61 North
most bars in Atlanta, and a lot of the truck drivers go
Avenue Northwest
there. One time I went on Thanksgiving and truck
drivers who can’t be home with their families stay
Best record store in town
there and sleep in their cabs, and shower and eat
In the neighborhood Little Five Points there’s Wax
turkey there, but there’s a very urban-cowboy vibe.
n Facts which is good for records. They originally
You’re not far from the city but it’s real country.
started this label called DB records and they put out
Southern Comfort, 1383 Cedar Grove Road
Pylon and the B52’s. There’s Criminal Records
I like Atlanta because it’s the South but
which is good for new re-issues and they’ll have live
it’s a little different. It’s metropolitian but it’s a
performances there.
metropolitan Southern state, so we get a little bit
There’s another record store called Full Moon,
of the good side of both things. Atlanta was actually
which I think is closing unfortunately. It’s a nice,
the original country music recording capital before
small store with a good cassette collection. Wax n
Nashville in the 1920s. That’s where people came to
Facts, 432 Moreland Avenue Northeast; Criminal
record. You can drive 45 minutes out of Atlanta and
Records, 1154 Euclid Avenue Northeast; Full Moon
you’re in the country, so you get a feel for that.
Records, 1653 McLendon Avenue Northeast
Undiscovered Gems
Best Coffee
In Jonesboro they have a big antiques market once a month.
There’s a place called Octane right
I don’t know if that’s a secret, but out in the parking lot they
up the street from my house where
have thrifty, flea market deals, and you can find some hidden
I get coffee. Through traveling I
gems there. We have a lot of strip clubs in Atlanta, too.
kind of became a coffee snob. I
There used to be these Goodwills in Atlanta where
can’t do pot coffee anymore like I
everything was 99 cents and things were just in piles. They
used to. After going to Europe and
were clothes that didn’t seem nice enough to hang on the
having espresso shots, I got really
racks. Sometimes I’d pull a dirty diaper out of these piles,
into that. Octane, 1009-B Marietta
but I’d also pull out a 1989 Guns N’ Roses tour t-shirt that
St.; 437 Memorial Drive Suite A5;
goes for like $150 in New York or LA. I’d find a lot of band
3423 Piedmont Road NE Suite 100
shirts and old vintage clothes; that was my jam. But then
they closed. One of my friends got scabies from digging
through the stuff.
CULTURE COLLIDE . 73