The murder which involved Ray Lewis (and his entourage) was the most high profile. The closing of the Buckhead bar scene (that centered around what is now The Shops at Buckhead Atlanta) was caused by several factors, primarily the nine murders that occurred in a two year period in the late 1990's. They were both huge boosters of Atlanta and its nightlife. That, along with speaking engagements, accounted for a lot of their wealth. They were also published authors in Grizzard's case, his books made the NYT bestseller list many times. Lewis Grizzard had a similar role but delved more into local politics and human interest stories.īoth were indeed well paid, as they were huge reader draws for the paper. He informed us of the hot clubs and restaurants as well as local gossip. He knew and interviewed the local players like Dante Stephenson, Johnny Esposito, Bob Penrod, Jack Loersch, Alez Cooley, and Warren Bruno. Ron Hudspeth was Atlanta's version of Mike Royko, a boulevardier that helped Atlantans negotiate the (at that time, white-dominated) social landscape. Did the media used to pay a lot more than it does now? I thought newspapers were always pretty scant with their salaries. Reading about these guys' lifestyles, I'm pretty curious how AJC columnists afforded golfing, Gucci loafers, and bungalows in Costa Rica. What did these guys have to do with the bar scene in Buckhead? Did they just write about their experiences out and about, or did they have strong opinions about how it should develop? What did they think about the frat boy invasion of Buckhead in the 1990s (was that happening in the 1980s, too?)
I don't fully understand all this.can you explain a few things? I am pretty much a homebody.’’Ītlanta Braves legend Dale Murphy opens restaurant near SunTrust Park What he does now: Rollins said he is semiretired and at his age, “There is not a lot of clubbing anymore. Where he lives: Rollins, now 60, lives in Orlando with his wife Michelle.
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Fifteen years later, the free monthly is still circulating, but Hudspeth now files his copy from his bungalow in Costa Rica. The scruffier Hudspeth was a Buckhead barfly who was canned in 1987 - prompting a resignation bluff by compatriot Lewis Grizzard - for starting his own restaurant rag, The Hudspeth Report. In the '80s, the AJC had two hard-drinking, good-ol'-boy local columnists. Lewis Grizzard (1946-1994) | New Georgia Encyclopedia Ironically, Moreland now boasts museums honoring both him and native son Erskine Caldwell, whose darkly critical vision of the South helped to bring on the changes that Grizzard and his generation of white southerners both embraced and bemoaned.
He chronicled this decline and his various heart surgeries in I Took a Lickin' and Kept on Tickin', and Now I Believe in Miracles (1993), published just before his final, fatal heart failure.
In the end, which came in 1994, when he was only forty-seven, the lonely, insecure, oft-divorced, hard-drinking Grizzard proved to be the archetypal comic who could make everyone laugh but himself. Norwood was in her early 30s when all this was going on and was still 15 years away from entering the political arena.ġ985 was the era of Grizzard and Hudspeth, Tree Rollins, the Murph, etc. You're off by a couple of decades there, jsvh.