Fresh Loaf

Looking for a place to watch Super Bowl 43 when the Arizona Cardinals take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in a fight for the championship ring? We’ve got the when, where and why for the top 10 Super Bowl parties.

1) THE ULTIMATE SUPER BOWL PARTY

Features multiple plasma screens, video DJ, live entertainment, food, drink specials, door prizes, giveaways, halftime dance party and after-party. General admission is free, but VIP is $60, which includes preferred seats. Top-shelf open bars at 6 p.m. Westin Atlanta Perimeter North, 7 Concourse Parkway.

2) THE SUPERIOR SUPER BOWL PARTY

Free admission + food and drink specials = good time. (2 42-foot flat screens) + (1 50-foot flat screen) + (1 projector) = a good place to watch the game. Music by DJ Nash. 4 p.m. Marriott Perimeter Center, 246 Perimeter Center Parkway.

3) CROWN ROYAL STEWPER BOWL PARTY

Hosted by 790 the Zone’s (WQXI-AM) “2 Live Stews’” Ryan and Doug Stewart. Entertainment includes a pre-game Xbox 360 tournament by Konsole Kingz, a half-time couture fashion show presented by the Blue Corset Co. and special guest DJ Cannon mixing beats until midnight. Proceeds benefit the Stewart Family Foundation. Free from 3-5 p.m.; $10. Luckie Food Lounge, 375 Luckie St.

4) FOX SPORTS GRILL

The Super Bowl comes to Atlantic Station via this snazzy sports oasis. Flat-screen TVs broadcast the game while guests order food ranging from steaks to sandwiches. Pool tables are available for hustling. Free. 6:30 p.m. 261 19th St.

5) JOCKS & JILLS

The Jocks & Jills Galleria location will show the game on more than 100 TVs. Miller Lite and Icehouse drafts are $1 each. Well versions of cosmopolitans are 99 cents. Free. 6:30 p.m. 1 Galleria Parkway.

6) FRONT PAGE NEWS MIDTOWN

A flip-cup competition encourages teams to out-speed-drink their opponents. Food specials include buy-one-get-one-free hot wings. Miller Lite drafts pour for $2.50 a pop. Free. 7:30 p.m. 1104 Crescent Ave.

7) STATS

This Super Bowl party is the most expensive on the list, but with a party bash and appetizer buffet, it’s sure to please every fan. Downstairs in the Lincoln Lounge tickets are $50, and upstairs buffet tickets are $20. 4:30 p.m. 300 Marietta St.

8) SUPER BOWL VIEWING PARTY

Hosted by DeMarcus Lamon “Tank” Tyler of the Kansas City Chiefs and Paul Oliver, a Kennesaw native who plays for the San Diego Chargers. Free. 4 p.m. Velvet Room, 3358 Chamblee Tucker Road.

9) BARNACLES

Hundreds of televisions available at the Duluth and Norcross locations. The menu features seafood specialties such as shrimp, crab cakes and stuffed grouper, but also includes Super Bowl favorites like sandwiches, chicken wings, nachos and loaded potato skins. 2125 Market St., Duluth.; 5955 Jimmy Carter Blvd., Norcross.

10) MAZZY’S SPORTS BAR & GRILL

From every seat in the place, you’ll have a good view of one of the many TVs located throughout the bar. Offering plenty of bar favorites, as well as pasta dishes and seafood. 2217 Roswell Road, Marietta.

Did we miss something? Leave it in the comments for your fellow football fans.

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Tom Coffin, former Atlanta arborist

Tom Coffin, the Atlanta senior field arborist whose firing last summer sparked a firestorm of controversy, says he’s mulling legal options if the city doesn’t rehire him.

In mid-December, his attorney told the city — in the form of an ante litum notice — that he planned to sue to under the city’s “whistleblower” statute. Coffin has maintained he was fired because he alerted superiors about alleged lax enforcement by his colleagues of the tree ordinance — an eco-minded yet controversial law that forces homeowners or businesses to meet criteria before cutting down trees. Coffin, whom we cheekily referred to as a real-life Lorax, helped write the ordinance, and has earned both praise and scorn from residents and developers for keeping a watchful eye on its enforcement.

In an open letter last week to the city council and residents, Coffin said he’d prefer to be rehired and get back to enforcing the tree ordinance rather than head to court to argue a case he thinks he can win.

Coffin writes:

“…I seek reinstatement to the Sr. Arborist position that I won through merit and lost through deceit. I wish to continue my nearly 12 years of service to the city in formulating, implementing and enforcing one of its signature environmental laws. I seek my job back. I ask for compensation for lost salary and benefits, and for the legal costs incurred by me since my firing in July 2008. These demands are reasonable and minimal. I ask that the [city's Public Safety] Committee recommend this result to Council in the interest of justice, fairness and economy.”

Beth Chandler, the city’s attorney, says the law department is reviewing Coffin’s claim. There is no timeline for when a decision will be made, she says.

In an earlier open letter to city council and residents, Coffin said the city’s tree ordinance, in his absence, has become a “dead letter.” Coffin, who travels around the city on a recumbent bicycle, told CL on Friday that even months after he was sacked by the city he still finds himself surveying trees and reporting possible violations to the arborist’s office.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Fleming Daniels, a.k.a. Ill

In news that would never have seen the light of day had disgraced NFL star Adam “Pacman” Jones not been named in a lawsuit, it appears the former Dallas Cowboy had been covering the attorney fees for the Black Mafia Family’s third-in-command, Fleming “Ill” Daniels.

In fact, Pacman allegedly picked up the tab for legal representation in a whopping 18 cases involving his friends and family.

Daniels, who was a major player in BMF co-leader Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory’s $270 million cocaine ring, is under indictment in Fulton County for the 2004 shooting death of Rashannibal “Prince” Drummond, who was gunned down in the parking lot of Midtown’s now-defunct Velvet Room.

According to the AJC, the high-priced attorney who was representing Daniels on the murder charge, Manny Arora, is suing Pacman for failing to pay more than $10,000 in fees the lawyer had been promised in exchange for representing Pacman’s friends and family, including Daniels.

Documents filed in Fulton County Superior Court show that Arora removed himself from Daniels’ case last year and was replaced with a public defender.

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SPARE $2 BILLION? Perdue delivers bad budget news to lawmakers

It’s a shame Gov. Sonny Perdue’s penchant for prayer doesn’t work as well for deficits as it did for drought. If that were the case, Georgia would literally be swimming in greenbacks.

With revenues plummeting in an economic landscape akin to Mad Max, the state is currently facing a $2 billion shortfall, the deepest hole anyone at the Gold Dome says they’ve ever seen. In response last week, Perdue delivered a cost-cutting whack, slashing nearly all state agencies and programs — many of which state Democrats say help the most vulnerable of Georgians in this most precarious of times.

The Department of Labor, the state agency that’s been the first stop for pink-slipped residents? Nearly 13 percent cut. The Public Defender Standards Council, the arm of government that provides indigent defense attorneys in an attempt to ensure justice for both defendant and victims? Almost 11 percent cut. The departments of Education, Community Health and Human Resources? Cut, cut, and cut. State employees’ salaries? Frozen — and vacant positions eliminated.

Add to that the $350 million slashed from K-12 educational funding, and you’re left with a budget that has little wiggle room. From lobbyists to lawmakers, behind-the-scenes staffers to Gold Dome shoeshine men, everyone we queried agrees: The 2009 legislative session will be about money, and what little of it the state has.

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Jamarcus Usher, on his MySpace page

Late Wednesday night, two bar patrons leaving East Atlanta’s Graveyard Tavern were approached by 29-year-old Jamarcus Usher. After the couple climbed into their vehicle, Usher reached for his waistband. Fearing that Usher was a threat, one of the bar patrons knocked him to the ground back a few feet with the door of his pickup truck, then shot and killed him after Usher raised his weapon.

Eerily, Usher’s MySpace page lists his occupation as “staying alive.”

Another bit of strangeness: Usher died in almost the exact spot where, eight years ago, another robbery suspect was shot and killed.

It’s not yet clear if this week’s shooting has anything to do with the climate of fear that has descended on Atlanta following a recent spate of violent crime, including the shooting death of John Henderson. Henderson, a bartender at the Standard in nearby Grant Park, was killed Jan. 7 by armed robbers who broke into the Memorial Drive restaurant.

It seems to me that Atlanta — and East Atlanta Village in particular — has been through this before.

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Like many locals, I was shocked and, frankly, a little pissed off when I read in the AJC over the weekend that Atlanta police had unexpectedly changed nearly every important detail that had previously been reported about last week’s late-night armed robbery at the Standard and the shooting death of bartender John Henderson.

John Henderson

If Henderson hadn’t been killed “execution-style,” as the initial AJC headline blared, then why say he had been? Was his female co-worker hiding in a cabinet during the shooting, as WSB-TV had reported, or not? Sometimes, in order to trip up or mislead the criminals, the cops don’t tell everything they know about a crime, but it didn’t make sense that the public narrative of the event could have been so far off.

After talking to Lt. Keith Meadows, commander of the Atlanta Police Department homicide unit, I’ve reached the conclusion that the press snafu over the Henderson murder was brought about by a combination of vague, inconclusive information offered by the police and a competitive news environment in which reporters race to make their stories as definitive as possible — often before all the facts are nailed down.

In other words, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

Meadows conceded that detectives were initially mistaken about how Henderson was killed. (Readers should be warned that some of what follows is fairly graphic.)

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Jetski enthusiasts, bass fishermen and bass were shocked — shocked! — Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court said it wouldn’t consider the decades-old legal war between Georgia, Florida and Alabama about how those three states share water from Lake Lanier.

The court’s decision raises fundamental questions about Georgia’s rights to Lake Lanier, a huge federal reservoir outside Atlanta that serves as the city’s main water source. It could also play a key role in deciding related water-rights disputes in lower courts.

Monday’s decision involves a 2003 water-sharing agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers that would have allowed Georgia to take far more water from Lanier for its drinking supply over the coming decades. The deal would have allowed Georgia’s withdrawals to jump from about 13 percent of the lake’s capacity to about 22 percent.

Florida and Alabama contested the pact, arguing that larger withdrawals would cripple downstream flows into their states. They said the lake was initially built for hydropower and providing water to Georgia was not an authorized use.

And now Lake Lanier is the primary source of drinking water for metro Atlanta! Yikes. Gov. Sonny Perdue! Sir, what’s your take on this?

“While we are disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision today to not correct a flawed ruling by the D.C. Circuit, it is important to remember that this decision simply maintains the status quo in terms of the operation of Lake Lanier by the Army Corps of Engineers.

We felt strongly that Supreme Court review of this case could have resolved a major piece of our ongoing water negotiations, and we will now move forward continuing to work with our neighbors and other stakeholders to reach consensus on a plan that fairly shares our limited resources and adequately protects the headwaters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin.”

Thanks, governor! Other officials will most likely weigh in throughout the day. We’ll include their thoughts as they become available.

UPDATE: After the jump, view Florida Gov. Charlie “Tan-tastic” Crist’s statement on the matter.

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An interview with Ashley Elder, the bartender who was closing up the Standard Food & Spirits alongside John Henderson the night he was killed, aired on Fox 5 this weekend.

In the interview, Elder recounted the Jan. 7 attack. She told Fox 5 that she and Henderson were about to leave the popular Memorial Drive bar and restaurant when a group of gunmen broke in. She said she was in the office and Henderson was behind the bar when the gunmen shattered the Standard’s glass door.

Elder said she begged the robbers not to kill her, stating her grandmother had just died and her mother wouldn’t be able to bear the loss. She also said Henderson, who joined her in the office after being shot in the leg, was conscious and alert — until the gunmen, upon leaving, fired several rounds through the office’s closed door.

Elder’s interview was aired the same day the AJC ran a story stating that most of the details police originally released about the crime were incorrect.

A reward for info identifying the gunmen has topped $10,000.

UPDATE: Just learned that Elder also talked to WSB-TV Channel 2 the day before.

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The Associated Press says Saxby Chambliss has convinced voters to send him back to Washington, D.C. for six more years.

Six. More. Years.

Saxby supporters election night November 4

(Photo By Joeff Davis)

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