Sucking up space in Southern towns

As a mayoral candidate and sometime local tour guide, Walter Reynolds is always armed with a fast fact about Milledgeville, Georgia, best known as the former home of Oliver Hardy, Flannery O’Connor, and the thousands of people institutionalized at Central State Hospital. That facility, he’s quick to note, boasts a 120,000-square-foot kitchen ready for the right manufacturing tenant to move in.

In other words, when Reynolds talks about Milledgeville, he stresses big ambitions and small-town charms. Vape shops don’t fit neatly into that narrative.