“If you did not want much, there was plenty.” Harper Lee | The Guardian

**I’d have quoted this entire subculture exploration if email etiquette and copyright law allowed such a thing. Every bit of it is an unsettling pleasure. And I mean that in the intellectual sense, thank you very much. Do yourself a favor (innuendos abound) and read this story.

“‘It’s gumbo in there,’ Esco told me. 'You can see actresses, musicians, a weed man, a killer, probably a police officer. You can find anybody in Magic City, anybody.’ It’s a place where part of the clientele can fantasize that they’re still street while a different part of the clientele can fantasize that they’re not. I can’t think of another place in America where the one percent stand unprotected next to so many other percents at the bar. And all those elements are held together by respect for the institution Big Mag has created, by the collective ego of a whole room full of people who are dying to be seen, and by a common fantasy—they’re all making the same movie. They are also held together, Magic would argue, by the power of booty, which was Magic’s first real business innovation.” Devin Friedman | GQ

“The dancing went on as before. The four men seemed to bounce off one another in different pairs and groupings, splitting off in search of young women, returning to compare notes before heading out onto the floor again. They were one, they were two, they were four, merging, dividing and merging again as the music played, long into the evening.” Susan Dominus | NY Times Magazine

“My mother wore the broken back of the house inside her. She made us grey dinners and lifted her face to see our faces when our lips moved.” Jessica Plante | SmokeLong Quarterly

Tallahassee writer Rob Rushin reflects on the haunting complexity of Southern culture and quiet racism.

“And so it came to pass somehow that at a tender young age, when we lived in the Tennessee tri-city area, I was given a small Stars and Bars of my own. It was not very large, and cheaply made, with staples holding it to a dowel that served as an ersatz flagpole. Nobody explained anything about it, other than that it was “the Southern flag”. I hung it my room and really didn’t think much about it.” - Rob Rushin | i2b

Developed by the same crew that churns out one spectacular story a month, Atavist gives writers a digitally native platform for compiling and publishing compelling multi-media stories. The interface alone is enough to inspire that storytelling itch.