Toasting 18 years
of tough research

by ron hudspeth

Yes, it’s research, research, research.

A dirty, nasty job to be sure, but someone’s gotta do it.

The nightlife ain’t no good life, but it’s my life (with compliments to Willie Nelson).

To have done it well over a quarter of century and gotten paid for it, is mindboggling. “I don’t know how you did it, but you managed to make a living writing about nothing but fun,” my late old friend Lewis Grizzard once mused.

Indeed, when and where others were playing, I was there working - well, sort of.

Most amazing is the hudspeth report begins its nineteenth year this month in a business where the average new publication hitting the streets lasts about two months -- or when the next printing bill is due. The .com world is the new frontier for today’s research, seemingly antiquating the old paper world. So, eighteen years later we find ourselves online as well as on Atlanta's streets. Who’d a thunk it?

Our August 2005 issue takes us on a journey from early LongHorn Steakhouse’s humble one-location beginnings to the recently opened, relocated, revamped ‘original’ location near where the infamous Gold Club once stood. In 2005 RARE Hospitality (LongHorn’s parent company) operates and franchises 281 restaurants internationally.

The very first hudspeth report in August of ‘87 was out just in time to break the story on the opening party at Ringo Starr’s downtown London Brasserie. Everyone from the Queen of England to Willard Scott was due to attend and it was the toughest ticket in town. When it actually happened, the celebs were somewhat less than billed, but Ringo, Jermaine Jackson, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman did make it. They did better than the Brasserie itself, which ultimately folded before the year passed and became the Atlanta Exchange.

Our first cover story was on Atlantan Vic Cauthen, the man who created Studebaker’s on Roswell Road, a beach music concept that spread across the globe all the way to Japan. “Everyone told me I was crazy,” recalled Cauthen. “They said it wouldn’t last two weeks.” Two-dozen Studebaker’s would go on to grace cities nationwide.

That first year we visited Wyche Fowler in Washington to talk politics and baseball; The $1.5 million dollar creation of Pano Karatassos and Paul Albrecht, The Buckhead Diner took roots on Piedmont Road; Bob and Carmine Marzuek opened their newly renovated Carbo’s, which looked like a giant pink palace, on Roswell Road; Banks Burgess and Paul Shane closed their Roswell Road Club for good, but signed to open a new club in the new Underground that opened in ‘89; Rupert’s (in the former Limelight) and Sneakers LIVE, both with bands fronted by half a dozen singers, open new concepts on the nightlife scene. Sports Rock Café is also newly opened in Sandy Springs with owner Jim Killeen (now a Chiropractor in Alpharetta) saying, “We’d like to do what Limelight did, but in an All-American way”; Hooter’s opened it third Atlanta location; Some of the town’s most exotic foods were featured including grilled goat, duck salad, black tip shark and a pig’s ear sandwich. The latter, in case you’re hungry, is boiled tender for two and half hours and seasoned with salt, Accent and Worchestershire sauce. Then it’s ideally served on wheat bread with onions and barbeque sauce; The Democrats came to town and the hudspeth report welcomed them with the “Peach of a City, Southern Fried” issue, telling them where to go for the best burgers (Carey’s, Alpharetta Drugs, Dirty Al’s, Brandywine Downs and Smiley’s Grille) and where not to get stuck with the tab (Ritz Carlton, Nikolai’s Roof, Pano’s & Paul’s and La Tour). We would later discover the Democrats had apparently forgotten their wallets.

Years two through eighteen have been a wild, wonderful, wacky blur in this ever-changing city. The truth is, the hudspeth report wouldn’t have lasted two weeks had it not been for my partner Cathy Miller, who has been my right arm in holding it all together. She has been an angel and a miracle worker with the entire business, doing everything from layout, the website and even the books, while I do the ‘glamorous’ research. The past eighteen years we have visited have truly been her brainchild.

I’d like to give a special thanks, too, to everyone else who has made this incredible ride possible - our dedicated advertisers, sales executives, columnists and contributors, old friends, new friends and, most sincerely, to those of you who pick up the hudspeth report monthly and read it.

A warm thanks again, Atlanta -- Ron