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.

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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead

Address
3030 Peachtree Road Northwest
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Let’s pretend this Restoration Hardware—the biggest RH in the goddamned world—is not a gigantic retail scam but a rambling six-story boutique hotel made for us, because that’s exactly what it looks like. Let’s enter off Peachtree and carry our fake Gucci bags through the high lobby and gawk at the well-mannered furniture and avoid eye contact with the “hotel employees” and go room to room, trying out the couches and beds made just for us, climbing the stairs to the next floor, and the next, thumbing through the incredibly thick RH catalogs and dreaming of a richer life where one would actually buy their child a bed like that, nodding hello to other “hotel guests,” until we step out on the top-floor balcony with its cool lounge furniture and unimpeded views of Atlanta progress, the milky sky coloring to deep orange as the sun sets, sipping from our whiskey flask, sipping more, deciding it’s time to recite aloud a little Dickey: “First in the heart
Of my blind spot are
The Buckhead Boys.
If I can find them, even one,
I’m home.
And if I can find him
catch him in or around
Buckhead, I’ll never die” Until we are asked to please leave the store.

RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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RH Atlanta, The Gallery at The Estate in Buckhead
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Richards Variety Store

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