Atlanta City Guide

The Atlanta City Guide is an insider’s tour of Atlanta from the team at Creative Loafing, the local alt-weekly. We’ve been in business since 1972, so you know we know ATL. Creative Loafing’s writers are experts on local news, music, culture, dining, nightlife, and shopping. With the Atlanta City Guide, we’re going beyond our monthly magazine and daily website to create an Atlanta handbook that is equally useful to visitors and locals.

We had a difficult time choosing a cover photo for the Atlanta City Guide. What’s the image that captures both the look and the feel of the city? Something that’s both timeless and current. Do we go with a photo that shows Atlan-tans dancing after hours? Or a snapshot of some of the city’s best dim sum? Should we focus on architecture or street life? An unsettling art performance or a candy-colored carnival? Fami-lies on a hike or a group of strangers partying together at an outdoor concert? Friends drinking at a bar? What about a hamburger? Hamburgers are delicious. People love hamburgers.

The photo was so difficult to choose because here’s the thing: Atlanta is dancing and dim sum, live music and families and local beer. It’s Piedmont Park and the skyline, kooky old carnivals and outdoor festivals and, yes, hamburgers. Ultimately, we selected a photo of three people holding up an image of the skyline where the skyline would be. It’s a fun visual trick but also an apt metaphor for Atlanta at this particular moment in time.

Atlanta is undergo-ing a lot of change. A lot of new development is underway. A lot of people have a lot of ideas about how to improve the city, from revitalizing South Downtown to repurposing Turner Field to rethinking long-overlooked sections of west and south Atlanta.Our cover photo kind of says, “Imagine this here,” which you might say is also the shared refrain of the local artists, musicians, philan-thropists, and entrepreneurs pushing the city forward.

The Atlanta City Guide is a road map for navi-gating the city, even as it experiences so much change. Created by the editorial crew at Creative Loafing, the city’s 43-year-old alt-weekly, the Atlanta City Guide offers an insider’s tour of At-lanta from locals who love this town.

The City Guide contains hundreds of recommendations for dining, nightlife, culture, shopping, lodging, attractions, and events.

I love the custom map illustration Atlanta-based artist Yoyo Ferro made for us this year. It shows how jam-packed and busy the city is — and not only with our notorious traffic. It’s bright, bustling, wild, and a little tricky to define, just like Atlanta.

- Debbie Michaud