Pullman Yards will host its first SweetWater 420 Fest this weekend, April 20 and 21, 2024. The venue has been buzzing with excitement as it prepares to host the homegrown Atlanta event by SweetWater Brewery.
Emily Blejwas is the Director of the Alabama Folklife Association. She has delved deep into the essence of her state, embracing its arts and history as catalysts for community development and a chance to celebrate Alabama folk history.
These four southern-made pressents stood out as the perfect high-end—but still down home—gift ideas for the holidays.
Dips Kitchen is a new mobile eatery roaming Atlanta offering a delicious curated selection of gourmet dips.
Micki Kimberly grew up in Warner Robins, Georgia. She’s the Executive Pastry Chef for Slater Hospitality. She’s a rising Atlanta pastry chef on the culinary scene of our city.
“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion,” is one of the best lines from “Steel Magnolias.” Like “The Hot Wing King,” it too started out as a beloved play with quick wit, memorable lines and wholly focused on a group of Southern friends and their quirks.
“The Hot Wing King,” a Pulitzer-Prize winning play by Katori Hall, is about to wrap at The Alliance Theatre. The performance had me laughing through tears so many times, I couldn’t help but recite Dolly Parton’s famous line in my head. Only instead of white ladies, “The Hot Wing King” is an all black cast. Oh, and it’s all male. And instead of them talking about their hetero marital problems, four of the six cast members are gay.
Ok, so it’s really nothing like “Steel Magnolias” on first glance. But stay with me. Hall writes hilarity into a plethora of scenes, captures Southern characters beautifully and takes the audience on a roller coaster of emotions that the comparisons to the 1989 movie kept coming to me. And I know “The Hot Wing King” would make an incredible movie. I cried, laughed, felt wildly uncomfortable, angry, cried some more, laughed some more and actually yelled “No!” out loud in pure anxiety at the character Isom who was about to unknowingly ruin all Cordell’s dreams. (You’ll have to go see it to see what I mean.)
I was so engaged and enthralled, that I was fully in my feelings. And isn’t that what great art does for the audience? I forgot my life for a couple of hours and entered into the world of a black gay man in Memphis who left his wife and children to follow his true heart. He took me along while he chatted up his funny, loyal friends all there to help him win Memphis’ chicken wing contest.
In that span of time, they confront issues of infidelity, hiding your true identity, crime, poverty, hope, joy, finding love, relying on family, losing family, creating family out of friends, turning bad luck into good and redefining stereotypes. It was one of the best original pieces I’ve seen performed in a long time. Hats off to Hall. Kudos to the remarkable cast. And whoever built that set deserves some kind of award.
“The Hot Wing King” closes this weekend. On March 5, 2023, the curtain will fall in Atlanta. And I’m sad, because the beautiful set needs to be memorialized. Or at least passed on. It’s so good! But I hope that “The Hot Wing King” and its spicy characters pop up again in another city somewhere else soon. And then, fingers crossed, on the big screen.
Chef and cookbook author Alex Hitz is a Southern gentleman who lives in New York City, Palm Beach and Atlanta. He’s a Southern treasure and a delightful storyteller.
As I finish my second year writing Two-Sided Southern, I am still having such an incredible time. I adore telling stories about the South and its people. The kind of people who embrace being both high-brow and down home as shown in these top 10 blogs of 2022.
This Sausage Cream Cheese Rotel Dip Recipe is the perfect appetizer to serve for football game day or at a tailgate. It’s a big crowd pleaser.
I took my young family to Memphis on a road trip. Find out why Memphis is one of the Best Family Getaways in the South.
