News from the Classic City

To round out my whirlwind 3 week trip, I decided to stop in Athens to visit one of my journalism professors and see what was new at UGA...
There are some new buildings around the campus and many new shops in the downtown area. One surprise I had was that my favorite restaurant had recently changed. When I was at school, I started eating a lot (& drinking) at the Mellow Mushroom. At that time, there were about 4-5 of those restaurants total- most in Atlanta. The restaurant had been around for almost 20 years in Atlanta, but opened up in Athens at the University when I was in school. Shortly after that, their business exploded and they started putting them everywhere. In fact, I had a joke that when I would move to a city to work there wouldn't be a Mellow Mushroom, but as soon as I left they would open one (this happened in Birmingham, Kennesaw and Greenville).
Anyways, now it is called Tavern at the Arch. Apparently, Mellow Mushroom corporate wants to move away from being a restaurant/bar and be a little more "family friendly". So they are going to open a new restaurant in the city that will be like that, but the owners kept the Tavern and will have the same pizza, but cater more to the college students and drinking crowd.

On a side note (and just as tragic), they took down the plaque that had my name on it.