Buckhead

“Buckhead isn’t what it used to be.” That could be the tagline for Atlanta’s best-known neighborhood, where politicians, rappers, blue-bloods, and the nouveau riche (and oh yeah, the governor) mingle with apartment dwellers, the cash-poor, and the entirely normal people; where fine international dining meets light-beer pub crawls; where Atlanta’s whitebread history of private schools and gated mansions are inextricably linked to (and incredibly removed from) the city’s African-American and urban fabric. In the mid-20th century, Buckhead was a rustic, white, middle-class bastion of high-school hoo-rahs and church Sundays. By the turn of the millennium, it was known internationally as the site of a double murder outside of a nightclub after the Super Bowl. Locally, it has long served as a derisive moniker for anyone who seemed too materialistic or entitled: “She’s very Buckhead, yes?” Today, the old commercial center—the Buckhead Triangle at Peachtree, Paces Ferry, and Roswell—is a redesigned, high-end shopping district. But some of the best places of Buckhead’s history still remain the same.