FC Friday
May 24 — Memorial Day weekend is here and we’ve got a roundup of five events, including the Atlanta Jazz Festival and MomoCon. And, don’t sleep on Decatur FC — Atlanta’s newest pro sports team debuts tonight with local owners, local coaches, and a host of local players.
☁️ Mostly cloudy with a high of 84° today. Expect temperatures around 89° and a smattering of thunderstorms this weekend.
🚙 AAA predicts this will be the busiest start-of-summer weekend in nearly 20 years, with 43.8 million people expected to travel at least 50 miles from home over the long holiday weekend.
➡ Atlanta-based Norfolk Southern will pay $310 million for the East Palestine, OH train derailment cleanup and fines, estimating total costs of $1.7 billion.
📹 The Atlanta Police Department has released body camera footage that shows the interactions between officers and pro-Palestine/Stop Cop City protesters on the Emory campus.
🌻 Trust for Public Land released its 2024 ParkScore index ranking with Atlanta advancing to 25th among the largest 100 U.S. cities nationwide.
⚖️ One of the two men arrested for the Oct. 19 hit-and-run death of Linda Powell near Buford Highway has been exonerated, while the other is awaiting trial.
💵 The Sandy Springs Society has begun hand-delivering checks to 42 nonprofits splitting $370,000 in grant money.
ELSEWHERE
💉 A new New England Journal of Medicine study found that weekly injections of semaglutide medications like Ozempic significantly reduce the risk of severe events in people with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
🌀 NOAA predicts warm ocean temperatures and La Nina conditions will bring an above-normal 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
🎟️ The Justice Department is seeking to break up Live Nation, alleging that the Ticketmaster parent has violated antitrust laws. The company says the suit “ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices,” including production costs and savvy scalpers.
🕖 Here’s what’s in today’s newsletter:
• 2024 vals and sals
• Film Review: ‘Furiosa’
• The Sports Section: Decatur FC
AND
• Top Stories of the Week
Enjoy the long weekend,
Collin & Sammie
👽 Embark on an out-of-this-world evening at the Museum After-Hours event on Fri., June 14, from 5:30-9 p.m. at Computer Museum of America. Dress as your favorite sci-fi character and explore artifacts that once seemed like fiction through a scavenger hunt. Tickets include full museum access, light bites, and live music.
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1. Class of ’24: This year’s valedictorians and salutatorians
🎓 Congratulations, graduates! Metro Atlanta families recently gathered to celebrate the graduating class of 2024.
We’d like to take a moment to recognize some local schools’ top students as well as give a shout-out to all of the graduates out there! Good luck on your next endeavors, whatever they may be.
🎊 Click here for a list of students honored as valedictorians and salutatorians at some local schools.
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We have 38 leading physicians, all of whom are fellowship-trained, with specialties in every body part. This ensures expert, focused care that is designed for a quicker recovery and the best results.
And now — with our UrgentORTHO clinic — we offer same-day, evening, and Saturday hours, so you can come by when it works for you. That means you can avoid the ER, get seen more quickly, and incur less cost.
Regardless of your age or orthopedic challenge, Peachtree Orthopedics is here to help you Get Better.
2. ‘Furiosa’ and hope in the time of the apocalypse
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW | BY SAMMIE PURCELL
🏍️ When it comes to action filmmaking, “Mad Max: Fury Road” upped the game in 2015. If anything can be universally agreed upon by critics and audiences alike, it has to be this. George Miller’s action opus is a thrill ride like no other, a nonstop chase movie of post-apocalyptic proportions that roars with a fury fitting of its name.
So, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” Miller’s follow-up to “Fury Road,” had a lot resting on its shoulders. And from the jump, it’s clear Miller has no interest in simply repeating what he achieved in 2015.
“Furiosa” operates on a much larger scale than “Fury Road,” not just following one woman’s mission via car chase, but attempting to unpack that woman’s history, her trauma, and her life over the span of roughly two and a half hours. As impressive as the scale of the film can be, sometimes the sheer colossal ambition of it all can overpower the film’s emotional core, particularly in the film’s midsection. But through the relationship between Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her biggest foe, a warlord named Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), Miller gets to the crux of our relationship to hope – why it disappears, why it perseveres, and what we’re willing to do to keep it.
🦾 Read Sammie’s full review here.
🍿 Stay in the picture with Scene by Rough Draft, our weekly newsletter about Georgia’s film industry. Subscribe for free.
3. NCAA schools can pay players; Decatur FC debuts
⚽ Rough Draft visited with Atlanta’s newest sports franchise, the locally-owned Decatur FC. The WPSL team debuts tonight at Decatur High School at 7 p.m. Read more in this piece from Madison Auchincloss.
💰 Starting in 2025, the NCAA and its five power conferences will allow schools to pay players directly.
⚽ Atlanta United looks for its first win in a long time when they host LAFC on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (Tickets). Things don’t get easier as the Five Stripes travel to face Lionel Messi and league-leading Inter Miami on Wed., May 29. (Apple TV+; 92.9 FM).
🏀 The Atlanta Dream hosts the Minnesota Lynx tomorrow at 6 p.m. (TV: Peachtree TV)
⚾ The Braves are six games behind the Phillies after taking two of three games in Chicago this week. Atlanta faces the Pirates in Pittsburgh tonight at 6:40 p.m. before returning home for a Memorial Day game against Washington at 4:10 p.m. (TV: BSS)
🏀 In the NBA Conference Finals, the Celtics lead the Pacers 2-0, and the Mavericks lead the Timberwolves 1-0.
🎾 The French Open begins on May 26. Atlanta natives Ben Shelton and Christopher Eubanks will compete in the men’s bracket. Eubanks will play against second-seeded Jannik Sinner, and Shelton will play against Hugo Gaston. (TV: Tennis Channel and Peacock)
🏎️ The most famous F1 race, the Monaco Grand Prix, is Sun., May 26 at 7:30 a.m. Drives look to topple Max Verstappen and Red Bull from their seemingly permanent seat atop the standings. (TV: ESPNEWS)
🏒 The Professional Women’s Hockey League finals are tied at one game each as Minnesota handed Boston its first loss in the postseason. The series continues tonight in Minnesota at 7 p.m. (TV: TSN).
WANT MORE LOCAL SPORTS?
📧 Madison is authoring a pop-up, summer newsletter. Sideline by Rough Draft hits inboxes on Friday afternoons. Subscribe for free.
💡 Interested in having your child or teen take their Spanish to the next level over the summer? Register for a free, trial Spanish class with Atlanta Spanish Immersion. Sign up for a package before May 31, and receive two complimentary hours. Aprende más.
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4. Top Stories of the Week
A look back at this week’s most-read stories from our website.
① 8 restaurant openings to get excited about this summer (pictured)
② Election results from the Georgia primary
③ Brookhaven’s Dresden District to become alcohol-friendly zone
④ Nino’s gets a glow-up with new Italian cocktail bar Dopo Lavoro
⑤ MARTA Airport Station reopens after renovations
💭 Test your knowledge of the week’s news in tomorrow’s News Quiz. Keep an eye out for our email at 8 a.m. or bookmark this page!
📧 Today’s newsletter was edited by Julie E. Bloemeke.
