Picnic in the Park Oct. 2009
The Annual Picnic in the Park at Forsyth Park
Backus traded the Savannah way
In hindsight, the September 30 closing of Backus Cadillac is hardly surprising. Known for generations as Backus Cadillac Pontiac, the auto dealership on East Victory Drive dropped part of its name earlier this year, when General Motors (GM) phased out the Pontiac brand during bankruptcy restructuring. Almost at once, the number of vehicles on Backus’s…
Three bites: A new way
This whole Three Bites thing is killin’ me. Since beginning this column in late April, I’ve given you a quick overview of meals at more than 60 Savannah restaurants. It’s intense, it’s a scramble. A couple of my clients (I’m a business and communications consultant by day) have even commented about my lifestyle and my…
A couple of great picks
“A bottle of red, a bottle of white…” Billy Joel And that’s what I have to share this week — a pair of great drinking wines for under $20 each. I thought I had picked up a bad bottle of 2008 Murphy’s Law when I noticed the traditional over-cap covering the cork was gone. I…
Decibel heaven
One night last week, all four members of the indie band Silversun Pickups were in Savannah. Driving between gigs in Tennessee and Florida, they had a free night and pulled off I–95 to check things out. “We just walked around, did a bunch of stuff and ended up at this club called the Jinx,” singer/guitarist…
No room at the inn
One afternoon last week, I sit with John Wilder on the porch of the rooming house he owns on Park Avenue. Only it’s not a rooming house anymore. The City of Savannah says the house’s 18 tenants aren’t safe remaining in the building because Wilder couldn’t get a sprinkler system installed on short notice, as…
What’s Next: Big movies, celebs at Savannah Film Festival
Actors Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster and Emmy Rossum are the celeb honorees who’ll turn up at the SCAD–sponsored 2009 Savannah Film Festival, Oct. 31–Nov. 7 That’s cool news, to be sure, but the Savannah Film Festival – a week–long blend of big–budget features (many of them before their national release dates), shorts, documentaries,…
Wal-Mart, cars, and Hitler
Death by Wal-Mart Editor, I live on the Southside, and for those of you who just pass through and wonder what is going on between the Saturn dealer and the Krystal across from Savannah Mall, it’s the arrival of another Wal-Mart. So far they have destroyed a salt marsh, closed a public road to facilitate…
Reviews: Capitalism, Zombieland, Big Fan
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY **1/2 It goes without saying that Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, hardly shows the United States of America at its best. The sobering afterthought is that it hardly shows Michael Moore at his best, either. Easily the controversial filmmaker’s weakest nonfiction piece to date, Capitalism contains many…
Harrelson, Clarkson to be honorees at Savannah Film Festival
Actors Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster and Emmy Rossum are the celeb honorees who’ll turn up at the SCAD-sponsored 2009 Savannah Film Festival, Oct. 31-Nov. 7 Clarkson is one of those character actors whose name you might not know, but whom you’ll immediately recognize. She was the cancer-afflected warden’s life in The Green…
There’s no business like ‘I Love a Piano’
Give Irving Berlin 88 keys and a half hour, and he’d come up with a song that would soon have America singing. He loved a piano, did our Irving: So you can keep your fiddle and your bow Give me a p–i–a–n–o, oh, oh I love to stop right beside an upright Or a high…
Noteworthy: The Heavy Pets
THE HEAVY PETS From the unlikely musical hub of Fort Lauderdale, where Spring Breakers cruise the beach like predatory sharks and tourists snap pics of inflatable alligators and other tacky Floridian ephemera, comes one of the South’s most precise and funky jam bands. Who’da thought? There’s reggae and dub grooves, stinging guitar, loose but harmony-rich…
Society’s grownup: A conversation with Janis Ian
Her lyrics to the contrary, Janis Ian didn’t learn the truth at 17. It took a lot longer than that. Ian, headlining the Savannah Folk Festival Sunday at Grayson Stadium, was already a big star by the time her 17th birthday rolled around. The New Jersey teen had written “Society’s Child,” about a doomed interracial…
Ladies and gentlemen — Mr. Marshall Tucker
First, a little history: Marshall Tucker was a real person, but he never played in the Marshall Tucker Band. Just like the young Jacksonville musicians who’d titled their group after their junior high gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, Spartanburg, S.C.’s Toy Caldwell and Doug Gray borrowed the name of a local piano tuner. For no other…
Bolivia’s cocaine lounge
Lead Story What is believed to be the world’s only commercial lounge openly serving cocaine operates in La Paz, Bolivia, though the owners of “Route 36” have to change locations from time to time, depending on the moods of the bribed authorities. An August dispatch in London’s The Guardian reported that a nearly pure gram…
Can dogs predict seizures?
I play poker with this guy on a fairly regular basis at the casino. He’s got this medical alert dog he brings with him everywhere. Apparently the dog will warn him 20 minutes prior to having a medical emergency that he needs to seek help. How does the dog know? -R.K. Fact is, there’s no…
