When James and I first moved to Atlanta, it was in June of 2020 - at the height of the pandemic, and at the height of fear. Our poor movers were miserable, panting behind their masks as they heaved our furniture onto their shoulders with triple layers of rubber gloves. No one wanted to breathe around each other and a stray cough would send alarmed ears perking up around the room like a ripple of terror through a field of deer. This was when everyone was still hosing down their snail mail with Lysol, and even that was after a three-day aging process in the mailbox.
So as you might imagine, we didn't get out much in those first few days.
Whenever friends and family checked in on us, they'd ask (tinnily from their box on the Zoom screen), "How's Atlanta? How'd you like it there so far?" Our answers would range anywhere from non-committal shrugs to 'We like the forehead temperature checks at this Publix instead of the Kroger" or"Our living room sure is nice."
But now, as masks are lowered and hopes are cautiously ignited, we're heading out a little more into the home we've lived in for nearly two years but never really known.
Our favorite thing to do in any new city is to find a place to park our cars and hoof it around aimlessly, wandering in and out of all kinds of little shops that catch our fancy. Decatur is our new favorite place to do that.
My dearest friend and colleague, Natalie, lives here. Underneath a petite frame and a soft-spoken voice lies the brain of one of the most powerful thinkers and educators I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. She's become such an ally and a fixture in my life lately that I'll introduce you to her properly later.
But one of many things I love about her is that along with razor sharp pedagogy and piles of curriculum frameworks, her cavernous mind contains all kinds of other treasures, like the most perfect quotes (pages of texts are just us swooning over Adam Grant tweets. "How can one person be so brilliant?!" we'll ask each other), and where to get the best whiskey slushies in town.
If that last picture makes you salivate, come to Victory. It wasn't until I looked at their site to create this hyperlink that I realized they actually self-identify as a sandwich shop. Of course, this means we'll have to make a return visit (you know, for scientific research). Inside, it feels like a spruced up garage, but the outdoor cover space is where it's at.
On this particular day, spring was unfurling her teaser of a red carpet with a balmy seventy-two degrees and a bewitching breeze. Lazily lingering at a covered picnic table with these frosty blitzers in our hand felt spitting-distance close to heaven.
Since our first trip, we've enjoyed a few more boozy brunches in this charming square. Twain's was certainly the largest, with a full restaurant-sized bar area, billiard tables, a charmingly decrepit shuffleboard alley, and a surprisingly airy and bright outdoor space (considering the raw bar grittiness within).
As far as our go-to bar orders go, James tends toward IPAs while I head straight toward the porters and stouts. In full disclosure, I've only just discovered that I don't, in fact, hate beers.
"There's a beer for everyone in the world!" my friend John once claimed when I turned down every beer at his bar with a not-so-subtle wrinkle of the nose. And he was absolutely right. As soon as I had my first taste of gateway Guiness, I realized not all beers have to taste like bread and stale water run through a blender.
Sometimes they can be like rich, alcoholic chocolate sliding viscously toward your happy place, like the BC AD barrel-aged glass I had at Twain's.
It's taken me decades to come around to beer.
Growing up, I used to sneak sips of my grandfather's mugs of Budweiser. I wasn't a prepubescent alcoholic; it's just that he seemed to enjoy it so very much that I was curious. As a child, I'd watch with eyes big with fascination as he closed his eyes and gulp down an entire glass without breathing. As the last foamy suds emptied into his mouth, he'd set his glass down with a clunk on the laminate table and belch with a satisfied sigh.
If you're imagining Homer Simpson, you're actually not far off. He had the same sparse band of hair hanging around his head like a clumsy halo and a generous belly that required the top button of his shorts to hang loose, and even then, the top part of his pants zipper needed to lend some help once in awhile. It's only as an adult that I've come to appreciate what a funny man he was, with all his quirks and eccentricities so I'm sure he'll appear in many more stories down the road. But for now, all you should know is that Hallabuhji adored his Budweisers.
Since the thing I loved more than life at the time was soda - a forbidden pleasure by order of the parental unit - for me, watching Hallabuhji so thoroughly enjoy a beer made me instantly think of how much I loved soda. And we never had cans of my favorite Welch's or Sunkist in the house (my mom refrained from buying them because I'd go through them with alarming speed), but we always had beers in the fridge for Hallabuhji. So on rare occasion, when I'd get an unsquelchable craving for something carbonated, I'd pop open a cold Budweiser in a quiet corner.
I'd always be incredibly disappointed at how terrible it tasted.
My ten-year-old face would contort to make a terrible expression and I'd stick an offended tongue out, waving a hand to try and air out the repulsive taste. The first sip would usually be enough to convince me to pour the rest of the can down the toilet (where I felt it belonged). But sometimes, I'd be haunted by a picture reel of Hallabuhji taking a rhapsodic sip and venture another cautious sip, only to repeat the process.
Looking back, I don't think I really hated the taste of beer; it's just a nasty surprise when what you're expecting is the sticky-sweet carbonated tar that is Coca Cola. The shock and trauma of getting beer when I wanted grape soda kept me sober well into my mid-twenties, when I finally and voluntarily ordered my first bottle of Corona at a happy hour with colleagues from a Brooklyn independent school where I worked. (Incidentally, these happy hours were how James and I first got to know each other.) As a non-drinker, I'd routinely turn down invitations to happy hours, not wanting to be the outlier with a grape soda. It took some aggressive dragging on the part of my friend Yvette before I finally came and reluctantly ordered a Corona because I didn't want to look like a prude. But I was such a novice drinker that I didn't even know what beer to order so I just read the name off a wall poster.
Yep. I'm sharing some dark, embarrassing secrets with you, friends.
My friend Coy still barks with riotous laughter when he retells the story (for the thousandth time) about me fanning my flushed face after five sips of that first Corona.
"So Jane puts her glass down on the table," Coy starts, already wiping away a humor-saturated tear. "After just a sip, she was like, 'Whoo! I think I feel something!'" he finishes, clutching his stomach with loud guffaws.
Years later, I've come far. Like with so many other things, I feel like I've been making up for lost time, which is what I try to tell James when he's cautioning me against that third glass. Enjoying beers took awhile. I'd order one if there was nothing else, but I just didn't get why people seemed to love sipping something that tasted like soap.
Until I met stouts and porters.
I first ordered a stout as I looked down a beer list trying to locate the one with the highest ABV percentage. I was at a terrible party with acquaintances and just wanted to find a drink to escape into. All I remember was that it was a coffee stout (not the one pictured here), and that it came with an alluring head of foam that the bartender lobbed off the glass with a flourished sweep of a knife. I'm pretty sure my eyes nearly popped out of my mouth after that first sip. It was so deep and rich, saturating my mouth with something that tasted like a buzzy version of the chocolate milk that's left after a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.
Since then, my go-to beer order at a bar has always been a stout or a porter, which always seems to surprise friends, especially men. I'm surprised by their surprise. What's not to like? They're not only delicious; they're also, more often than not, the ones with the highest ABVs on most beer lists, which, in my eyes, also makes them the most practical drinks. While others are still shaving the edge off after two or three glasses, I'm melting with loquacious relief after a single glass of chocolatey beer.
Nowadays, James and I create our own tasting parties, scribbling down our amateur tasting notes onto charts we find and print after Googling 'note template for rating beers'.
I've never met a stout or a porter I didn't like, but the ones here at Twain's were good. At least, I think they were. Or maybe I was just enjoying the collective experience. We'd enjoyed a FDOF in Decatur (James' way of labeling a "Full Day of Fun!"). It was sunny and we were having the first fair weather after a surprisingly bitter and seemingly eternal winter. I was having a beer that was somewhere in between decent to wildly delicious. (Aw shucks. Weeks later, I can't recall it well. Maybe all the more evidence for how strong it was? )
After a long winter, it felt like the promise of sweet relief that spring was - after all - coming.
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