Kevin Malone

Kevin wants three things from a place to live: great food, no stairs, and no health food stores. Metro Atlanta contains a single road that is, functionally, a five mile international buffet. This one basically places itself, and Kevin would want us to hurry up so he can eat.

After Creed, who broke the entire system, Kevin Malone is a gift. There is no mystery to Kevin. There is no hidden depth, no secret agenda, no tragic subtext. There is a large, gentle, food loving man who wants to be comfortable and near his friends and within arm’s reach of something delicious, and who would be genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy in the right spot. Placing Kevin takes no detective work at all. You just follow his stomach, which points, unerringly, in one direction.

Who we’re working with

Kevin is an accountant by trade and, later, the proud owner of a bar, which tells you his two areas of genuine competence are numbers and hospitality, in whichever order gets him to a good time faster. He is a simple extrovert in the kindest sense, warm, easygoing, motivated almost entirely by food, friends, and the occasional sports bet. He played drums in a Police cover band. His famous life philosophy involved using fewer, larger words to save time. Kevin is not chasing status or reinvention or acreage. Kevin is chasing chili, and dinner, and people to eat it with.

His profile is beautifully honest about all of it. A basic apartment or small house, nothing fancy. Suburban, casual, laid back. A budget of $200,000 to $300,000. And two deal breakers that are the most Kevin sentences imaginable: stairs, and health food stores. He wants a single level so life is easy, and he wants to live somewhere that food is treated as a joy and not a moral test. Rule out anywhere that would try to sell him kale, and follow the smell of something frying.

The match: the Buford Highway corridor (Doraville and Chamblee)

Kevin belongs on Buford Highway, out around Doraville and Chamblee, and for Kevin this is close to paradise.

His own profile is telling us where to go. Kevin lists food as his number one value, and metro Atlanta’s answer to “where is the food” is not really up for debate: it’s the Buford Highway corridor, a stretch packed with more than a thousand immigrant owned restaurants and markets, Korean and Vietnamese and Mexican and Chinese and Ethiopian and more, widely considered the best and most delicious eating in the entire region. For most people that’s a fun perk. For a man who values food above literally everything else, living here is the whole dream realized. Kevin could eat somewhere different every night for years and never repeat, and never once be offered kale.

And the practical pieces fall right into place, better than his own top pick does. Kevin’s budget is $200,000 to $300,000, and Doraville is one of the more affordable pockets in the whole inner ring metro, full of the modest single level older homes and condos he actually wants, no stairs required. It is casual and unpretentious to its core, exactly Kevin’s speed. His matrix headline was Smyrna, which is a perfectly nice laid back suburb, but it runs pricier than his budget and its food scene, while fine, cannot remotely compete with Buford Highway. When food is the entire point of a person, you put him where the food is. You put Kevin on Buford Highway.

The alternatives

Smyrna. His stated primary, and not a bad life. Casual, laid back, the Market Village for beer and a bite. The problems are that it’s above his budget and that choosing it means driving to Buford Highway for the good stuff instead of living in it. For most people, defensible. For Kevin specifically, why would you.

Tucker. Genuinely laid back, affordable, an easygoing older suburb with a friendly small town feel Kevin would like. It’s a real option and closer to his budget than Smyrna. It just isn’t sitting on top of the best food in Georgia, which, again, is the one thing Kevin came here for.

Doraville versus Chamblee. Same corridor, slightly different flavors. Doraville is cheaper and plainer and fits his budget most cleanly. Chamblee is a touch more polished and pricier as it gentrifies. Kevin, being Kevin, follows the cheaper rent and the better tacos, which means Doraville.

The verdict

Kevin settles into a modest, single level place in Doraville, on the Buford Highway corridor, roughly ninety seconds from a thousand restaurants, and becomes the most contented man in the metro area.

It’s the purest match on the site, because Kevin’s wants are pure. He didn’t ask for prestige or a view or a school district. He asked to be comfortable and well fed among friendly people, and Buford Highway hands him exactly that, on a budget, with no stairs and no kale for miles. Everyone else on this list is optimizing for some idea of a better life. Kevin already knows what the good life is. It’s a full plate and good company, and he found the one road in Atlanta that offers infinite versions of both.

Meredith Palmer is next, and Meredith has requirements too, though most of them involve proximity to a bar.