Creative Loafing history

By 1977, Creative Loafing’s circulation had climbed to 55,000, and the Easons were breaking even.

In 1979, Eason was introduced to Scott Walsey, then a 20-something owner of a backgammon nightclub located at Piedmont and Peachtree.

In 1987, they launched an edition in Charlotte.

In 1990, CL began a new political tradition: the Golden Sleaze Awards, a scathing review of the General Assembly’s legislative session told through lawmakers’ misdeeds.

Carrie Karas, a senior advertising specialist at CL, started as an advertising assistant in 1991.

In September 1998, OutKast released its seminal album, Aquemini.

Two days after Christmas last year, Eason cut seven staff positions, leaving just one member of the editorial staff, music editor Chad Radford, who had started writing for CL in 1999.

Wall had been a reporter at the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2000 when Edelstein lured him to Creative Loafing, where he covered the General Assembly and the environment.

In July 2007, Creative Loafing Inc., a mini-empire with four papers in three states, purchased two heralded alt-weeklies—the Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper—and The Straight Dope, a longtime Reader-syndicated column by Cecil Adams.

In Atlanta, he was a staff columnist and editor until 2008.

Shalhoup’s reporting would result in the 2011 book BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family.