Online retailer Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe has opened a brick-and-mortar offline retail store at 672 Highland Avenue in Atlanta’s Inman Park neighborhood.

It actually opened a month ago, but I only just learned about it from the Food Fight! blog. Apparently Cosmo’s has a blog, too (how did I not know that before?!) and now I’m subscribed to it. Their blog features quite a few entries about the store opening, including a bunch of great photos. It really looks like an awesome store! They also got a sweet write-up in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I really love the idea of food and sundries stores that are loudly and explicitly vegan (like Food Fight! or Cosmo’s), as opposed to health food stores that maybe happen to be vegan. Why doesn’t New York have one of these?

Here are some tips for raising healthy vegan kids.

Yesterday an Atlanta court convicted a vegan couple of the murder-by-malnourishment of their 6-week-old baby. Apparently Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas were feeding their son a diet of soy milk (not formula) and apple juice; there’s no explanation as to why Sanders was not breastfeeding the newborn, who weighed 3 1/2 pounds when he died. Both parents will be serving life sentences.

This comes only three weeks after an Arizona woman was found guilty of starving her children on a diet of ground carrots. These people are ignorant, dangerous, and they contribute to the “crazy vegan” stereotype. But I do take a bit of solace in the words of prosecutor Mike Carlson in the Atlanta case: “They’re not vegans. They’re baby killers!”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently published an interview with Atlanta Hawks guard Salim Stoudamire, all about his veganism.

In the macho world of pro-basketball this seems like a pretty big deal, and it’s a brave move on his part: “I finally reached a point where I just didn’t care what other people thought, and I didn’t have a problem with eating alone.” While Stoudamire doesn’t “think you should eat something that had a mother,” he seems glad that the NBA returned to using a leather ball. Hopefully Salim will extend his respect for “things” that had mothers beyond food!