Athens in review
Editor’s note: There are only 11 months until the apocalypse — so we might as well take advantage of the time we have left. In that spirit, variety editor Adam Carlson drew up a list of solutions to those resolutions you may have made for yourself, to make 2012 the very best it can be. Before we die. (Photos by Evan Stichler and Kristy Densmore/STAFF.)
| For when you want to be skinny but not be ogled on Milledge: I don’t know how the sorority girls do it, always jogging up and down Milledge Avenue, with their constant movement and thinness. All that watching from all of those bored drivers and bored walkers and bored boarders! It’s practically a spectator sport. But for those of us without the desire to be felt all over by everyone’s eyes with a 10-block radius, a solution: try your apartment gym — y’know, that squat little room in the basement of the management office. It’s miraculous, really. One, because no one ever uses them, leaving you endless hours on the elliptical. And two, because no one ever uses them, leaving you complete control of that one dingy flat-screen. Endless “Maury” re-runs to get you through the calorie burning? All of your fat friends will just hate you. |
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| For when you really really really really really need to wake up: Athens does a few things really well. One of them is date-rape. The other is coffee. But the Jittery Joe’s at the SLC is so crowded, thronged with freshmen who still aren’t really sure where they are or what they’re doing. But there’s help for the caffeine addict in all of us. And much as I love Joe’s joe, it’s worth the complete laziness to just boot up your laptop and order some of its coffee online. (I’m a a particular fan of the vintage winter blend, which tastes like Starbucks … minus that chain’s tastebud-crippling sourness.) If you refuse to be a shut-in, another solution: try Walkers or Thousand Faces downtown. Go during the day: freshmen tend to avoid the sun. |
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| For when you want to see a lot of movies but are secretly freaked out by the elderly and the hip at Ciné: I love me some art cinema. But I sort of hate our local art house — wonderful, non-profit place that it is. The selection is frustratingly rangy, vollying between late-in-the-run indie fare and revivals of films that should have stayed dead. It doesn’t help that half of the employees look like they’ve been forced, at gunpoint, to work the cash register. And yet: the movies must go on. So my advice is to go somewhere else. The dollar theater is a great choice, and not just for the price. It’s also marvelously low on old people who like to shop at L.L. Bean, and who like to spend the whole time whispering through an arty Ryan Gosling movie. |
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| For when you promised your parents you’d stop drinking and now have nothing to do on the weekend: The most surprising thing about our city is that there are more than bars downtown and around. There’s also the Botanical Gardens, which are beautiful and full of oxygen. Also the Founders Garden, which is beautiful and full of no one. Try either when you aren’t trying to drown your liver, and you might just discover that the first month of this new year looks a whole lot prettier completely sober. |
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