Our Kind of Place

We came for the grouper sandwiches and stayed to play at Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack

Seventy-five years of warm memories at one nutty little Alabama store

The author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe found her voice thanks to one little Birmingham theater

Soaking up life from a barstool at an Oxford, Mississippi, holdout

A Mississippi professor and poet wanders through the seasons of Oxford’s Whirlpool Trails

Bring cash (no credit cards!), conversation, and a sense of adventure to the Original Pinkie Masters

A love letter to the quintessential
beach-town hangout

Reflecting on a Mark Twain–worthy adventure on Arkansas’s White River

The front man of the Grammy-nominated Hiss Golden Messenger on finding a stage—and a whole lot more—at NorthStar Church of the Arts

On being the forest for the tree

A gardener finds peace at the back-roads haven where a South Carolina topiary artist shapes his own story

A veteran music writer and Threadgill’s regular pens an ode to the Austin institution that launched Janis Joplin—but is now closing its doors for good

A North Carolina college-town landmark serves up perfect fries and three generations of family lore

If you want to see some of the finest shotguns in the country, first you have to ask

A country outpost gives a poet an education no book could provide

Conjuring the ghosts of summers past at the storied Grand Hotel

How a New Orleans icon became a local’s unlikely training partner

The decades dissolve in a flicker at Kathryn’s, an old-school Italian joint in the Mississippi Delta

A Southern Maryland native revisits a barbecue shack that serves up a slab of memories

A North Carolina novelist reflects on summer nights at the ballpark