More Sidewalks! More Saturdays! More Performance!

Have you checked out Sidewalk Saturdays in Decatur? Pop-up performances throughout downtown and in Oakhurst’s Harmony Park each Saturday through mid-June.

Saturday, May 18 is jam-packed with performances from noon until six o’clock.

 

Here are just a few of the acts that I want to see.

 

Keep an eye open for Dance Brasil performing samba accompanied by a drum ensemble. The costumes are brilliant–bring your camera.

 

 

I can’t wait to see how local artists and illustrator Janis Dunckel will involve the community in creating something original on the spot.

 

And The Skipperdees, twin sisters out of Athens, will perform with Troy Cono. The Skipperdees, according to their website, play “folk music for pop culture.” You can hear them here. 

There’s lots more: remember, performances begin at noon and again at three.

May is Music Month in Decatur

May is usually a great month everywhere but it’s particularly good for music lovers in Decatur.  And all the following events are free!

Every Saturday afternoon in May (and through June 8) it’s Sidewalk Saturdays from 3 to 6 PM.  Over 20 acts, ranging from artists to musicians, dancers and performers, have been booked to appear at various locations in downtown Decatur and in Harmony Park in Oakhurst.   You won’t want to miss a single Saturday!Sidewalk Saturdays

You can grab a lunch to go at any of the nearby restaurants and enjoy the Blue Sky Concerts every Wednesday in May from Noon to 1:00 PM on the Square in Decatur. Or grab a dinner to go or pack a picnic dinner and enjoy the Concerts on the Square every Saturday night starting at 7:00 PM. The Decatur Business Association presents both series of these free concerts, along with the help of our local sponsors who provide free prizes that are raffled off during the shows.

Saturday Concerts on the Square

Memorial Day weekend features the Decatur Arts Festival on Saturday and Sunday on the Square.  To celebrate our 25th year, Shawn Mullins will be headlining our Performing Arts Stage with a special 90 minute show on Saturday at 3:30 PM.  Don’t miss this opportunity to see a great singer and songwriter!

Shawn Mullins

During the Decatur Arts Festival, we’ll have continuous live music on the Square starting at 11:15 AM Saturday and Noon on Sunday, including the Jacob Jefferies Band, Bonaventure Quartet and many others.  Delta Moon closes out our musical program Sunday from 4:00 to 5:00 PM.  Go here to see the full lineup on the main stage on the Square.  There is also a separate Acoustic Palette Stage at the Arts Festival for an unplugged musical experience.

Thanks to the Decatur Arts Alliance for organizing Sidewalk Saturdays and the Decatur Arts Festival, the Decatur Business Association for organizing the Blue Sky and Saturday Concerts on the Square, the City of Decatur, and all the sponsors and volunteers who make these events possible.

Again, Decatur Recognized for its Great Restaurants

Decatur was just named #1 in a Top 10 List of Foodie Cities by Livibility.com. We beat out some pretty delicious competition such as Sante Fe, NM and Berkley, CA – home of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. This was not a popular competition, but a critical assessment by their staff after consulting with food experts, food critics, chefs, and editors of newspapers and magazines. They limited their destinations to cities under 250,000.

We were judged on the quality of our food traditions, whether our chefs had national recognition, as well as our residents having access to cooking schools, farmer’s markets, and food festivals. Also included in the consideration was whether our city had craft breweries and a good wine culture. And lastly, we were judged on whether our city offered a high quality of life in which restaurants are just one of the amenities that help residents thrive. Yes to all of the above.

In the article the writer said that Decatur looked like it had been planned by a foodie, with block after block of independent, chef/owned restaurants, pubs, and cafes. They mentioned Café Alsace, Café Lily, Cakes & Ale, No. 246, Parkers on Ponce, and the Iberian Pig as some outstanding examples of what Decatur has to offer.

Livibility.com is on online resource on more than 500 of America’s Best Places to live, work and play — in between big cities. Check this out:

http://livability.com/top-10/top-10-foodie-cities-2013-second-helping/decatur/ga

And it doesn’t stop there; a friend of mine who lives in DC sent me an article from the March 31, 2013 issue of The Washington Post entitled “Three Bold Restaurants Stirring up the South.” The article was a full page in the post and did detailed assessments of their three favorite restaurants. Our own, Cake & Ale was one of the three. The other two were The Optimist who is owned by Chef Ford Fry – owner of our No. 246; and the last one was General Muir, a deli at Emory Point – not far from Decatur.

Restaurants are such an interesting partnership between the owners, the customers, and the city government. They all have to be healthy and thriving for any one of them to work. Thanks to all of the hard working, creative restaurant chefs and owners, the city staff that make Decatur a good place to live and work, and you, the customers who support it all.

Naty’s Closet Now Open in Downtown Decatur

Naty’s Closet just opened up two weeks ago in the 335 building on West Ponce de Leon Ave. and I’m already smitten. Why? Well, check out these dresses in the photo below:

 None of them are more than $50! Can you believe it? They’re all perfect spring dresses and they won’t break the bank.

The same can be said for all of the colorful jewelry:

Naty’s Closet also carries Lindsay Phillips flip flops. Have you heard of these before? They’re ingenious. You can switch out the top straps for different color combinations so your flippies can match your dress, pedi or both.

The shop also has cute odds and ends like brightly-colored cell phone cases, make-up bags and cute, printed t-shirts. I’m sure I’ll be getting a lot of my summer wardrobe from Naty’s this year. I can just picture myself in that coral cut-out dress and matching flip flops, sipping on an iced coffee outside of Cakes & Ale Bakery.

Naty’s Closet 
335 W. Ponce de Leon Ave.
Decatur, GA 30030
404-378-4555
Facebook

Run for the Roses, and the juleps

Leon’s Full Service and the Decatur Arts Alliance: there’s a perfecta!

Join your friends at Leon’s Full Service, 131 E. Ponce de Leon Ave.  in Decatur, on Saturday, May 4, for a Derby Day celebration featuring a hat contest, mint juleps, horse betting and more, all to benefit the Decatur Arts Alliance. See you then!

Get out your big hats!

 

“Real Good for Free” Sidewalk Saturdays in Decatur

I was standing on a noisy corner

Waiting for the walking green

Across the street he stood

And he played real good

On his clarinet, for free.

Picture this: it’s Saturday evening and you are headed to Native for dinner (highly recommended, especially the porch) and you encounter Awalim Dance Company.

 

Or you are cutting across Harmony Park after picking up dinner fixings from Oakhurst Market and suddenly you get to enjoy a pop-up concert by Troy Cono. 

Or you are headed to Little Shop of Stories and suddenly there’s Elizabeth Dulemba illustrating the sidewalk. 

On your way home with a fresh mani-pedi at Natural Body and wait! Here’s a tuba concert by Larkin Taylor-Parker

.

Saturday afternoons from three til six o’clock in April, May and June all of downtown Decatur and Oakhurst’s Harmony Park become performance space. The City of Decatur will sponsor Sidewalk Saturdays, a street-side celebration of the arts. The pop-up art program will redefine your idea of diversity. Comedy, lots of music, dance, spoken word, acrobatics, chalk, and more.

Here are just a few of the performances scheduled for April which grabbed my attention.

•  Elizabeth Dulemba:  a noted children’s book illustrator, Elizabeth will turn her talents to sidewalk chalk art. She will mix serious illustration with interactive illustration where kids can pose in the art for fun pictures.
• Larkin Taylor-Parker:  plays an incredible variety of songs on her tuba
• Lew Lefton and Joel Byars:  will assemble an entourage of local comedic talent
• Luis Stefanell:  a conga drummer and singer whose repertoire includes cha-cha mambo, samba and afro-cuban funk
• Troy Cono:  singer, songwriter and acoustic guitarist
• Os Ossos: Brazilian Jazz
• Velero Flamenco. Flamenco! I love flamenco!

The title of this post, Real Good for Free, is a little misleading. I was thinking about public performances and remembered the Joni Mitchell Song. These performances are free to us (yay!) but are paid performances for the artists, thanks to grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgia Council of the Arts, and the support of Decatur Downtown Development, the Decatur Tourism Bureau, and of course, the Decatur Arts Alliance.

 

See you Saturday!

A postscript: If you are interested by the idea of surprise public performances, you will love this story by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post. It has nothing to do with Sidewalk Saturdays but it’s a terrific piece about violinist Joshua Bell performing in the D.C. Metro. Thought provoking. And Weingarten won a Pulitzer for it.

Restaurant Hopping with the Kids

Okra fries were a hit.

Going to three different restaurants for dinner was a fun adventure for our twin grandsons. We were planning an overnight with the boys recently and decided to take Saturday night dinner up a notch by restaurant hopping. We planned to order just a few dishes to share at each spot, giving us an opportunity to try some new tastes. Making our plans ahead of time turned out to be a wise idea. Planning the number of restaurants we would visit and the order in which we would visit them made it easier to pace our eating, and it let the boys know what is coming and when it was going to end. The last restaurant was one they were familiar with; the first two were new tastes. So they could plan what they wanted for the last stop and save room for that.

 Our first stop was Chai Pani, billed as an Indian street food restaurant. The vibe is exotic and warm with colorful posters and bright red walls. Many of the dishes offered are snacks to share. They also have sandwiches, salads, and a couple of full dinners each night. Many of the dishes are kid-friendly, with suggestions on the menu for kid’s plates.

 An order of puri 

Everything on the menu sounded so good that we might have over eaten at our first stop. In all, we ended up with five plates filling our table with food. We ordered papadum – large crispy lentil crackers served with tamarind and green chutney dipping sauces. This was a great beginning.  Next came the Sev Potato Dahi Puri which is a puffed flour crisp filled with potatoes, onions, cilantro and chick pea noodles, then drizzles with yogurt dressing. The five little bite size puffs were gone in a flash. The Okra Fries were the biggest hit, with every last paper-thin piece of okra devoured. The Chicken Pakoras (bite-size nuggets with a spiced curried chickpea batter) and the Kale Pakoras (kale fritters) come piled high on the plate with certainly enough to share — we ended up taking some home. These were all great tastes for our 10-year olds to have fun trying.

 Next stop – Farm Burger. We decided to forego the popular burgers and try a variety of side dishes. The deviled eggs are very tasty, but the mac and cheese and cheese grits were the favorite. I had to eat the kale salad all by myself  — too many other good gooey tastes available.

 Last stop, Ted’s Montana Grill. Our boys think the milkshakes are a huge treat. The servers always bring the milkshake in the big silver cup that the milkshakes are churned in along with a glass and straw. There is always a little more than a glassful in the silver cup, which is a tasty windfall. French fires, onion rings, and chili seemed to do the trick for our last stop. At one point I noticed the boys holding their stomachs in painful delight.