It’s almost that time of the year for Bulldog Nation when all roads lead to Athens.
And as the college sports seasons crank up, it’s worth noting that there’s a lot that Dawgs fans can enjoy in the Classic City in the fall besides UGA athletics.
Maybe you plan on arriving in town on the Friday before a football game or perhaps you want to stay over afterward and spend Sunday there. What should you put on your things-to-do-and-see list?
Well, the campus itself has a lot to offer, of course, including the State Botanical Garden, the Founders Memorial Garden, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Georgia Museum of Natural History and the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries — in addition to just enjoying the tremendous autumn beauty of North Campus, particularly historic Herty Field (where UGA football was born). As Athens native and UGA grad Ginger Adams put it: “North Campus is a jewel.”
Many people, including my old college classmate Steve Oney, are fond of viewing both the visiting exhibits and the permanent collection at the Georgia Museum of Art, and also the collections at the Hargrett and other UGA libraries. “There’s always something interesting on display,” Steve said, “and the archives are full of fascinating material.”
Off campus, you’ll find those wildly decorated Georgia bulldog statues all over town, but if you’re looking for the more traditional attractions, the Athens tourism bureau has some suggestions, you can check out Historic Athens for notable houses and sites see, and the Guide to Athens and Athens Favorites pages provided by the local weekly Flagpole can fill you in on where to eat and drink, as well as upcoming festivals you might want to catch.
Speaking of historic Athens, retired Atlanta sportscaster Bill Hartman, a native Athenian who now lives nearby in Statham, said he really has enjoyed “getting to know the history of my hometown. … I now visit historical sites like aviator Ben Epps’ bicycle shop on Washington Street. He built his first plane there and became the first Georgian to fly in 1907.”
And, he said, “I had always known about the grand old houses in Athens. Now I ride by them and know the history. The SAE house on Pulaski was built by Ross Crane in 1842 and has served as a residence, funeral home, Elks Club and fraternity house since 1929.”
But what about those areas of town and local activities that you otherwise might not know about?
I asked a few folks who still live in Athens, or who visit it regularly, to provide some insider’s tips on enjoying my hometown.
One thing I recommend, having done it recently, is just taking a drive around the various areas of Athens, including downtown, Five Points and Normaltown.
“Athens is such a charming town in so many ways,” Joel Provano said, “from the downtown restaurants, bars and shops to the lovely neighborhoods with beautiful homes, large and small. I just enjoy driving around and taking it all in.”
If you haven’t been in Athens in a while, you’ll find some areas have changed a lot (like Lumpkin Street, from Five Points to the university). Other areas (including much of Milledge Avenue, home to fraternity and sorority row) have changed hardly at all.
If you like to bicycle, Bill Berryman said his favorite thing about Athens “is its amazing trails system that is growing every day. The Firefly Trail and the North Oconee Greenway in and near downtown are spectacular! The new bridge over Trail Creek at Dudley Park (aka the R.E.M. ‘Murmur’ trestle) is the highlight.”
Bill added that there is a new section of the North Oconee Greenway that begins on Oconee Street at the bridge and then runs past Easley’s Mill and the old mill dam and then through Oconee Hill Cemetery with a bridge across the river that intersects with River Road at the UGA art museum and performing arts center.
When my son Bill came in to Athens a day early from Raleigh to attend a game with friends last season, he rented a bike in Five Points and rode the entire Greenway.
As for dining out, when I was at UGA, that was pretty much limited to fast-food joints, one good Italian restaurant, a couple of Chinese and Mexican places and some steakhouses and hotel restaurants that provided what passed for “fine dining” in Athens.
Nowadays, the Classic City is quite the place for foodies. The Last Resort Grill downtown (in what used to be a folkie nightclub when I was a student) is a particular favorite of my daughter Olivia and me (try the crabcakes and white chocolate cheesecake!).
Owen Scott, a friend since kindergarten, said that when he’s in town “breakfast at Big City Bread or Mama’s Boy are two favorites.” And Clocked downtown is his “go-to hamburger joint.”
Other reliable dining spots include Pulaski Heights Barbecue, the National, the World Famous, Trappeze Pub, Five and Ten, the Royal Peasant, Porterhouse Grill, Cali & Tito’s and the Globe.
My niece Caroline Billman also loves Ted’s Most Best and Five Bar, and Jason Hasty, the UGA athletics history specialist at the Hargrett Library, said “Tacos Los Plebes on Danielsville Road (just across the bridge over the loop as one is heading north on North Avenue) has maybe my favorite Mexican food in town — and the carnitas sopes is probably my single favorite dish at any restaurant in Athens. Tamez Barbecue on Broad Street is also at the top of the list of my favorite restaurants in town.”
Justin Kau of the Athens Regional Library Heritage Room recommends “Taqueria Juaritos and Daily Groceries Co-Op, plus a couple westside eateries, Donderos’ and Em’s Kitchen, where I can have breakfast or lunch with coffee and sit for a while reading a book.”
My son is a fan of the Globe and the National downtown, the Old Pal in Normaltown and the Royal Peasant and Independent Bakery in Five Points.
Just don’t expect to visit the Varsity while you’re in Athens; there isn’t one there any longer. You’ll have to go out into the surrounding counties for that.
Of course, thanks to the large student population, Athens has more bars than you can count, ranging from fancy cocktail lounges to dives. Native Tom Hodgson recommends hanging out at one of the city’s rooftop bars — atop the Georgia Theatre and Hybar at the Hyatt Place hotel — for views of the city and cocktails under the stars. “What could be better than that?”
Well, for Steve Oney, it’s “sitting in the window at Creature Comforts while drinking a beer and watching the world go by.” He also recommends the bar at Hotel Indigo. “At night, it’s a good place to talk with friends over a drink.”
When it comes to favorite areas of Athens for hanging out, Hasty enjoys Normaltown, where the UGA Health Sciences Campus (future home of the new school of medicine) is located. Said Jason: “The crowd is older and more subdued than the younger and wilder crowds downtown, and there are good places to eat and socialize.”
Meanwhile, Alan Cason, who runs the Dawg Bites group on Facebook, is a fan of the downtown scene, where, he said, “there is always activity.”
Athens native Helen Castronis, whose dad was UGA’s beloved “Coach Mike,” also likes downtown Athens for “the shops, bars, restaurants.” (She’s another fan of downtown’s rooftop bars.)
I like Normaltown, too (last year, we celebrated my birthday with a rooftop dinner at Agua Linda in that area). I also like downtown, especially College Square, but the crowds can be a bit much.
Without a doubt, my favorite area of Athens is the Five Points shopping district and neighborhood, where I spent the first 15 years of my life before my family moved across town. It has lots of restaurants, interesting (my daughter says “bougie”) shops and lovely homes, and retains a sort of small-town charm. You still can get an ice cream cone at the Hodgson’s Pharmacy soda fountain or dine at the ADD Drug lunch counter.
Doug Vinson, who grew up near where we lived in Five Points, remembers “it was about as close to Mayberry as you can get — a blessing from the Lord in my formative years.”
Speaking of formative years, I recently drove down Hope Avenue, the one-block residential street in the Five Points area where my family lived, and was shocked to see four or five giant new houses that had replaced the old ones in teardowns. That made me sad. But our old house still was there, and amid the overgrowth in the backyard, I just could make out the roof outline of the clubhouse that Dad built for my sixth birthday!
Dave Williams, who is retiring this year from the UGA Athletic Association and whose aunts Helen and Peggy both ran beauty shops in Five Points back in the day, said he has grown especially fond of the district over the past 10 years, because it now has “lots of good restaurants and casual hangouts.”
Jeff Dantzler of the UGA football radio network also enjoys Five Points, where he lives. He said it’s an “easy walk” to Marker 7 Coastal Grill or to campus “to enjoy the day and broadcast for the Bulldogs! Of course, the music scene is still great … and in the summer we can faintly hear the Redcoats when they start practicing. Heaven.”
As for Brenda Poss, an Athens native, she loves Five Points “because it has retained the vibrancy it has had for so many years.”
The only problem with Five Points, as Jason Hasty pointed out, is “how difficult it can be to park.” Of course, that’s a problem in most commercial zones of Athens.
But, even so, Jason said, “eating dinner at Cali & Tito’s or Marker 7 and then walking up to Jeni’s for an ice cream has to be one of the best ways to pass an evening in Athens.”
Owen Scott also is “very partial to Five Points” and he and Betz Tillitski both have fond memories of Memorial Park, which is in the greater Five Points area.
Among the attractions at the sprawling park are the Bear Hollow Zoo and the Birchmore Trail, a 1.25 mile natural-surface hiking area that winds through a mature hardwood ravine, over bridges, near creeks and along a massive stone wall built by Athens legend Fred Birchmore while he was in his 70s.
As a boy, I spent many happy hours exploring what then was known colloquially as “Birchmore’s woods,” feeling like Daniel Boone (even though you occasionally could hear the honking of a car horn on nearby South Lumpkin Street).
Quite a few of the people who shared Athens favorites with me also cited the city’s various performance venues, including Hodgson Hall, the Morton Theatre (a restored Black vaudeville hall) and the Georgia Theatre, which was a movie house when I was a boy but first started being used as a concert hall in January 1978.
My brothers Jon and Tim joined me there for that very first show, featuring the band Sea Level, as I recount in my new book, “LARGE TIME: On the Southern Music Beat, 1976-1986.”
The old theater went back and forth between being a music venue and operating as a movies-and-beer screening room for a few years before settling into being a concert hall. The Georgia was gutted by fire in 2009, but was restored and improved. As Sravanthi Meka said, “They made a great venue into a spectacular one.”
Lynn Hardman said he loves Athens’ music venues. “The Georgia Theatre and 40 Watt Club are still great places to go and the Rialto Room [at Hotel Indigo] is a new sit-down venue with excellent acoustics.”
Bill Hartman, meanwhile, has been impressed by the touring Broadway shows that now play the Classic Center downtown. “Who would have thought my hometown would have such a venue!” he said.
The Classic Center also will open a new 6,500-seat arena Dec. 14 with an inaugural concert by one of Athens’ favorite bands, The B-52s, who got their start in the Classic City.
And that brings up a final point: If you really want to experience Athens, you should do one of the city’s self-guided walking or driving music history tours.
As I detail in my book, when my son was in high school, he and I did just that, and among the sites we visited was the student pad where The B-52s first performed. I also pointed out the vegetarian restaurant where I first interviewed the band’s members in 1978, before they had a record deal.
Young Bill is a big R.E.M. fan, so we also visited the steeple that was the only remaining part of the old church where the band played its first gig on April 5, 1980 (nearby was the old railroad trestle featured on the cover of the group’s “Murmur” album).
We also saw the original location of the famed 40 Watt Club, as well as Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods, the soul food restaurant whose slogan provided the title for the “Automatic for the People” album.
And I showed my son the house on Barber Street (one street over from where I attended seventh grade), in which some of the members of R.E.M. were living when I first interviewed them, which was before they had a record deal, too.
We saw where members of the band (and other musicians) wrote their names in the newly poured cement of a nearby sidewalk.
One thing I especially like about R.E.M. was that, even after making it big, the band members never forgot the university town where they got their start.
In 2011, the members of R.E.M., who never had allowed their music to be used in commercials, licensed the song “Oh My Heart” for use in a TV spot promoting their alma mater that aired that season during UGA football telecasts. “This place is the beat of my heart,” Michael Stipe sang in the spot, which showed scenes of Athens and the campus, and had the theme, “You may leave ... but it never leaves you.”
I think that does a good job of summing up Athens, too.
