Commercial Truck Insurance in Macon, GA

Under the flashing lights and surrounded by the sound of legendary rock-n-roll music, Macon wrote another chapter in its history of music over the weekend.

On Sunday, thousands filled the seats of the new Atrium Health Amphitheater to attend its inaugural concert headlined by Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top.

Approximately 6,500 concert-goers attended the show, according to Macon Mayor Lester Miller. The venue can hold about 12,000 people.

Miller, who was at the venue several times throughout opening day and attended the concert, said it was an amazing night.

“I think it was a great night for Macon-Bibb and an amazing kickoff to a year of shows,” he said. “The management team has already booked a diverse lineup of shows in our first year, from southern rock to R&B to Hip Hop to country to comedy.”

Miller said attendance was high, but there was enough room for people to spread out and enjoy the concert comfortably.

The new arena is one of the two largest of its kind in the state. It is the most ambitious entertainment hall to be built in Middle Georgia since 1968, when the Macon Coliseum opened and its first singing act was James Brown.

“We’re told several other shows coming up are already outpacing this one in sales, so we’re looking forward to even bigger shows,” Miller said.

Miller said the entertainment wasn’t the only thing that went smoothly on opening night.

“The amazing staff got nearly 1,600 people through the gates within 20 minutes of them opening, which is incredible,” he said. “And then to have the entire venue and parking lot cleared of more than 6,000 people in fewer than 40 minutes from the end of the show is nothing short of amazing.

“That tells me we picked the right location for the amphitheater and the right team to manage it.”

Miller said Macon is a city and community that takes great pride in its music heritage, and the venue gives residents a place to bring larger groups and more people to see what it has to offer.

“We’ve known for years this could work because large acts have passed us over because we didn’t have a large enough venue, and the bookings this next year have proven that,” he said. “This is only going to get bigger and better, and more people will be coming here regularly to enjoy great music and events.”

Macon native Julie Busbee said she was initially skeptical when she heard where the location of the new amphitheater would be built, but said her experience at Sunday’s opening night far exceeded her expectations.

“It is a state of the art venue with no details spared - parking was easy and free, the sound system was great, and the seats were comfortable and roomy with leg room between the rows,” she said. “I doubt there is a bad seat anywhere.”

Busbee said she is excited to see how the amphitheater will add to Macon’s already stellar music history.

“Of course Macon is rich with musical history so having an outdoor venue for concerts is a benefit,” she said. I can’t wait to see who else will be coming in the future.”

Miller, who grew up in Bloomfield, said the improvements happening where the mall used to stand will continue to benefit the community.

The 12,000-capacity amphitheater will also welcome performances by Riley Green, Justin Moore, Lauren Daigle, Moneybagg Yo, Glorilla, Jason Aldean and more in 2024.

This story was originally published March 26, 2024, 2:04 PM.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Living Local, a regular series featuring a look inside local businesses — the things they make, services they provide and their impact on the community.

Fountain of Juice, affectionately known as FOJ, is all about keeping things fresh and natural.

The business opened in 2007 as a small juice and smoothie bar attached to a fitness facility.

Owner Natasha Phillips, daughter of fine dining matriarch Natalia del Basso-Orsini, had food and flavor running through her veins.

Basso-Orsini opened Natalia’s in Macon in 1984 and owned the popular restaurant until 2018.

Phillips’ husband Carl, an artist with a flair for food, assisted in growing the business to the beloved eatery it has become today.

FOJ now offers a variety of entree salads, sandwiches, burgers, great appetizers and soups, and even has a nice beer and wine list.

Phillips said she opened FOJ because she felt Macon lacked healthy eating options and wanted to offer all-natural menu items.

“We make 95 percent of our menu in-house, with all natural ingredients,” she said. “We use hormone free Springer Mountain Chicken, local Rocking Chair Ranch Beef, Patagonian Salmon, and preservative free Metro Deli Meats.”

“It costs a little more but I believe we should recognize what we put in our bodies and think about the long haul in it,” Phillips said.

House beef lasagna, turkey chili, bacon egg and guacamole grilled cheese, sea bass tacos, Greek chicken orzo salad, and hot honey tossed fried chicken wrap are just a few of the unique items on the menu.

Phillips said she takes pride in seeing repeat customers and bonding with the community over food.

“We see a lot of the same faces daily and I feel really good about that,” she said. “We have made lifelong friends in this community through our love of food.”

Phillips also loves giving back to the community that continues to frequent her business.

“We donate quite a bit, whether it’s pasta salad every year for The Nutcracker, salads for Teacher or Coach Appreciation Day, or gift card giveaways for Jay Hope, Breast Cancer Awareness, Alzheimer’s Association, teachers, nurses, and others,” she said.”We are always happy to assist our local community.”

“Also, we are a pretty big operation that employs a lot of folks - and taking care of my employees is part of taking care of my community,” Phillips added.

Phillips lives by the motto that “local feeds local.”

“Local feeds local - by supporting local businesses you help locals put food on their tables, sign their kids up for rec ball, put their kids in private schools, and more,” she said. “I am here for the long haul, so supporting us is supporting people in our community.”

FOJ is located at 4123 Forsyth Road and can be reached at 478-755-5000.

If you lived in Macon between the late 1960s and 1980s, you may have noticed a 20-foot-tall fiberglass cowboy towering over local businesses, blotting out the sun and greeting customers.

After a 13-year-long search for the statue, Muffler Man hunter Joel Baker says he found Mr. Finance Giant lying in Jones County woods, less than an hour away from its original location.

Baker’s passion for tracking down the roadside giants began in 2011. That same year, he began looking for Mr. Finance Giant after seeing a photo of him on the Roadside America website taken by Georgia artist Laura Floyd in the mid ‘90s.

“It kind of became a treasure hunt and I got really into that,” he said. “I really like learning about the history of these giants and telling their individual stories, and [Mr. Finance Giant’s] story is very Macon.”

During the ‘60s and ‘70s, Muffler Men grew to be the pinnacle of outdoor advertising for automotive and retail businesses.

International Fiberglass, a fiberglass molding company in California, delivered the cowboy statue to Macon in the late ‘60s. One of its first iconic roles was at the Phillips 66 Gas Station on Hartley Bridge Road, Baker said.

Mr. Finance Giant relocated from south Macon to downtown Macon before expanding to Warner Robins, Baker said.

In the early 80s, Dennis Lockaby, Macon native and owner of C&L Motor Co. on Eisenhower Parkway, purchased the the western giant and refurbished it into a captain figurine after his own nickname, “Captain.”

Dennis wanted the giant to attract attention to his sales lot, but the statue became a problem for the Macon-Bibb County Planning and Zoning Commission, Baker said.

“He got in the newspapers quite a bit because they were always fighting about zoning laws. Back in the ‘70s, a lot of people thought of these big giants as eyesores,” he said.

The commission said the giant was over the limit on the number of square feet a business could have in signs, per local zoning regulations at the time, he added.

“Every time I moved the man, I had the Planning and Zoning Commission jumping on me,” Lockaby told Telegraph reporters in November 1984.

Dave Distler, a former genealogist and valuable asset of the giant’s recovery, said the Highway Beautification Project of 1965, which was led by First Ladby Bird Johnson during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency, played a role in the regulation of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain signs like the Muffler Men on Route 66.

“Unfortunately for the Muffler Men, the closest thing they could be described as was a sign to advertise the businesses,” Distler said.

Distler agreed to help Baker track the giant down in late February. He immediately began researching and communicating with Middle Georgia residents on Facebook.

Within a week, he struck gold and connected with Walt Reynolds, a Milledgeville native who said the towering giant had been sitting on his late grandfather’s property for over 20 years.

“It was kind of shocking to me actually because to some extent it was like a needle in a haystack,” Distler said. “A lot of things had to line up exactly for this to happen in only five days. I still can’t believe it.”

Reynolds recalled his grandfather collecting a large number of antiques and keeping them at the family farm in Jones County.

“Anyone else would have thought of it as a junkyard, but to us it was where we spent our weekends running through the woods and exploring his old cars,” Reynolds said. “The giant just sat back there in the back with the rest of the junk.”

It’s far from junk to Baker, who said his second passion is restoring the vintage giants and adding them to his collection at The American Giant Museum, a tourist attraction of Muffler Men on Route 66 in Illinois.

Mr. Finance Giant ranks as Baker’s seventh recovered item. He said the cowboy has been the second-worst fiberglass giant he had to restore.

“He was in rough shape,” he said. “A few more years out there, and he would’ve been pretty much gone.”

Reynolds agreed to sell the statue to Baker, who said that it is rare to find and obtain the historic landmarks because families typically want to keep them.

“I’m glad to see that this hunk of fiberglass is going to be restored and going to be enjoyed. Hopefully, it lasts for another 60 or 70 years for people to understand more about the history of these great mid-century monuments,” Reynolds said.

Learn more about the giant’s recovery and history here.

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Reality Check is The Telegraph’s series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email momoore@mcclatchy.com.

According to AARP, the U.S. will have more seniors than children by 2030.

“As boomers age through their 60s, 70s, 80s and increasingly beyond, the ‘big bulge’ of the boomer generation will contribute to the overall aging of the U.S. population in coming decades,” said Stella Ogunwole, a demographic statistician with the U.S. Census Bureau. “The older population is becoming even more significant.”

And as the country’s 73 million Baby Boomers age, quality nursing homes will be in demand.

In a state with more than 200 options, which are the best?

Thankfully, medicare.gov has made it simple to see which homes have the best care and which fall short.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid services evaluated Georgia nursing homes and rated each based on health inspections, staffing and quality measures like the number of residents in pain or up to date on flu shots.

Here’s a breakdown of the rating criteria:

With that criteria in mind, let’s check out the worst rated nursing homes in the Macon area:

Of the 20 nursing homes reviewed, five were rated “much below average,” four were rated “below average,” seven were rated above average and one facility received the highest rating of much above average, five out of five stars.

Note: To view each home’s report, follow the linked facility names below.

The Lodge - 200 South Kimberly Road, Warner Robins

Pruitthealth - Peake - 6190 Peake Road, Macon

Fountain Blue Rehab and Nursing - 3051 Whiteside Road, Macon

Cherry Blossom Health and Rehabilitation - 3520 Kenneth Drive, Macon

Pruitthealth - Eastside - 2795 Finney Circle, Macon

Macon Rehabilitation and Healthcare - 505 Coliseum Drive, Macon

For detailed list of nursing home reviews, visit Medicare.gov.

This story was originally published December 29, 2023, 3:37 PM.

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The amphitheater officially opens Sunday with a concert from Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top. Here's what you need to know.

MACON, Ga. — Macon's almost ready to rock. After two years of planning and construction, Macon-Bibb County's amphitheater is just days away from opening.

General Manager David Aiello says more than 6,000 people will be at Sunday's show with Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top. His staff is getting ready, and he wants people coming out to the show to be prepared too.

"Crews here around-the-clock over the last two weeks, setting up tables, setting up furniture, putting pictures on the walls," Aiello said.

There are several questions he's trying to answer for future patrons, but two of them dominate.

"It's really cashless, lawn chairs. Those are the two big things. No coolers," he said.

Lawn chairs at the venue can't be more than nine inches from the ground. Some acts won't allow them, but that's noted on your ticket or event page.

"We will have what we call, 'reverse ATMs' on property," Aiello said.

In other words, you can put your cash into the machine, follow the on-screen steps, and out pops a prepaid card.

"People are paying with their smart phones. People are paying with, just in different ways. Less and less people are carrying cash," he said.

Aiello says food or drinks at the venue will run between $5 and $15, depending on the item. You'll have plenty of places to choose from.

"Sold out show, we could have up to 100 points of sale, which is really 100 different locations where you can go and buy certain things. That's really new for this market," Aiello said.

There's also no re-entry, so if you're leaving the venue, make sure you're planning to leave for the night.

Parking is free around most of the mall. Tailgating is not allowed because the mall will still be open.

Valet service starts two hours before showtime and costs $68 for Sunday's concert. Doors open an hour-and-a-half before the concert.

You can find the amphitheater's A to Z guide here for more answers to your questions.