Archive | January, 2010

Tween genius

25 Jan

Stephen Stafford makes my heart explode, in a good way. T. Wheatdawg profiled this 13-year-old Morehouse sophomore for Creative Loafing. Someone needs to make this kid the face of Atlanta, stat!

I just love the idea of the city, like downtown Atlanta. I went there for the first time the other week. We went to this building and it had a radio station. I was on two radio shows in the same building. And I just loved downtown.

Rah rah rah!

Here’s an Inside DeKalb video interview of the little tyke from last summer.

Stephen is infinitely more appealing than the last Georgia homeschooler to make the news.

Boob tube

24 Jan

Just wondering if Thomas Wheatley got his new television from Love TV Rental.

Previously: The most fantastic disco in the South

Monday in Sweet Auburn

22 Jan

Oh yes, the MLK Day parade! I nearly forgot!


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Pre-Brand Atlanta

21 Jan

Ahh, the ol’ “pros and cons about Atlanta” list. We’ve all been there! Somehow the negatives always outweigh the positives (like in this case: the good “Babyland General Hospital” vs. the bad “Missing and Murdered Children Cases”) but we always stick around because we would be too embarrassed to leave and then have to come back after running out of money trying to find a job in Portland.

My Convention Task Force list would be, off the top of my head:

POSITIVE STORIES

Legynds LARPers
Thomas Wheatley
Furries v. Klingons
Dragon*Con
City of Decatur (incorporated areas only)

NEGATIVE STORIES

Honky tubes
AJC.com commenters
The demise of Fruitopia
Recycling
Blue jean bandits
City of Buckhead

I’m sure I left off something.

(From the July 1988 issue of Harper’s. Click to enlarge.)

Selling out

20 Jan


I got lost in Duke University’s digital archives of American advertising. There are plenty of good things here! Related to Atlanta, of course. It’s hilarious how quaint and unsophisticated advertising was back in the day before sexy Don Draper told us cigarettes are healthy because they are toasted, or before Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus, you know? Now we have revolutionary ad campaigns like twelve years of cows who can’t spell and tell us to eat chicken – that’s both humorous and cutting edge!

Earlier I posted an ad from a 1910 program of Atlanta’s Grand Opera House (which, if I’m correct, later became Loew’s Grand Theatre and then even later became yet another victim of fire). There are so many more where that ad came from in this playbill! And also a list of characters in the performance, such as “The Senator’s Boys, Known About Town as ‘The Midnight Sons’–Dick, who plays with the ticker; Harry, who trifles with the Stage; Tom, who fusses with sport.” I would pay a lot of money (before my student discount) to find out more about the Midnight Sons! Hint, hint, Alliance Theatre. Here are some of the other businesses who bought space in the program. (Click anything for the larger version).

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Baubles, bangles, and beads

17 Jan

My! My! My! opened this past fall in a Peachtree Street storefront that has never seen a successful business as long as I’ve been walking by there. Nothing’s ever made for long there because they never sold anything interesting. But when I first saw the dramatically sequined mannequins in the window dressed to attend the 1992 Daytime Emmys I was so pleasantly surprised – most Midtown clothing stores opening these days seem to just sell $300 men’s Oxford shirts with French words screenprinted on the sleeves. I was intimidated to enter for a couple of months but finally made it in to dig up something flashy to wear for New Year’s Eve.

Daily Candy has the full My! My! My! story here, but basically all you need to know is that John, the owner, is friends with someone who does costumes for soap operas in L.A. and gets some unbelievable pieces. There’s also a TON of jewelry and other accessories that are a little more acceptable for the days you have to go sensible business casual instead of Suzanne Sugarbaker at the Governor’s ball.
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Fact, fiction, and mystery

15 Jan

If there is one thing Atlanta doesn’t have enough of, it is CRIME. Or at least that’s the only reason I can think of that would have made Jessica Fletcher wait until the very last season of Murder, She Wrote to visit Atlanta! In previous seasons she makes a few visits to the Deep South, but the characters she meets in these places are either missing teeth and only interested in lynching OR they dress and act like they are in Auntie Mame when Mame goes to meet Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside’s family.  Finally, by 1996 the viewers of Murder, She Wrote had probably heard of Atlanta so it wouldn’t be too daring for J. B. Fletcher to solve a mystery there in the episode “Mrs. Parker’s Revenge.”

We are to believe that Jessica is a guest at the glamorous Gambier Hotel for the Georgia Amateur Mystery Writers Conference. All of the shots inside and outside of the hotel were definitely filmed in California. In fact, everything was filmed in California. The episode was not very faithful to maintaining accuracy about Atlanta. To begin with, the conflict in the story revolves around this place:
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Full of joy and vinegar

14 Jan

This is just to say that we have some treasures in the coming days for you so if you gave up on Pecanne Log a while ago, thinking, “Man, those bitches never blog,” well, you were 100% true…then. Now we are committed. I mean I am committed. For now.

I was given the travel tome Go Straight on Peachtree by Anne Rivers Siddons by someone who knows well how much I enjoy receiving gifts. Published in 1978, virtually none of the places the book suggests exist anymore, except for Peachtree Street and Pittypat’s Porch.  Siddons also has some really delightful yet totally baffling descriptions of Atlanta. Tell me if you think her metaphor is apt.

In the intro chapter, “This Place Called Atlanta”: (more…)

Working to Make You Proud

13 Jan

In one corner of the City of Atlanta’s website, it is always Shirley Franklin’s celebrated first term.
I clicked on “Contact Your Elected Officials” thinking I might be able to tell my councilperson to take care of this embarrassment immediately, but I just got this page begging me to contact President George Bush, Senators Zell Miller and Saxby Chambliss, my Representatives in Congress, Governor Sonny Perdue, Lt. Governor Mark Taylor, and Fulton County Commissioners to get clean water for Atlanta.

That’s cool – I will email denise.majette@mail.house.gov right away and tell her!

The Dirty South in the kitchen

13 Jan

It is a new year, and two of our resolutions were joining in on the hottest trends in America – having a food blog and eating local. We’re only two weeks into 2010 and that is so hard already, though. So we naturally looked to the internet to see how our fellow foodie blogger sisters manage to do it. With barely any difficulty, we found some dishes that originate in our region with ingredients you can find around your house or yard! We hand-selected our four favorite receipts from The Dixie cook-book, published in 1885 in Atlanta.

Don’t make fun of us for not knowing how to “scrape off hair” and “prepare some calf’s foot jelly”!! We are still new at this.

What to look forward to in 2010

11 Jan

2009 was awful! Everyone lost their jobs, criminals ran wild in the street, we had to deal with city election promises that seemed especially uninspired and empty, and the Clermont Hotel was shut down for health code violations. But we’ve come up with a few measly things to get excited about this year, and we promise not to mention how Atlanta’s professional jobs won’t come back until maybe 2011 at best, and we still have to live through the gubernatorial race!

Baby minature animals: January is BABYFEST at Tanglewood Farms. “In the tradition of the South, our two favorite porkers – Scarlett O’Hama and Rhett Gruntler – show off their newest offspring.” There are also baby goats, a baby alpaca, baby sheep, and baby horses. This is the only reason to go outside for the next two months!

Less to get NIMBY about: The commercial real estate market hasn’t quite bottomed out yet – that’s what 2010 is for! However, while evil developers won’t be starting any new faux-luxury commercial strips next door to you, they also won’t be finishing anything in those perpetual construction sites around the city. It’s up to you as to if the office building is half full or half empty.

The rapid weathering of Kasim Reed: His jet-black hair, babyfat cheeks, and youthful energy will only make the unavoidable aging of being Atlanta’s chief executive right now that more dramatic.

Artichoke Bliss: We don’t see how the City’s permitting process will ever allow a good idea like this to get off the ground, but we’re still excited.

Creative Loafing‘s financial stability: Remember for a while when they were so carefully and honestly chronicling their demise? Get a Livejournal, CL! Can’t you be more WASPy like the AJC and just pretend everything’s going great even though everyone knows it’s not? Well, now they have a new owner, so we don’t have to keep offering Thomas Wheatley a guest spot on Pecanne Log if things don’t work out for him in yellow journalism.

Top secret Pecanne Log collaboration project: We can’t say anything about it yet except that it will involve face painting and a cruise.

One year closer to the BeltLine: PSYCHE.

Some ongoing things that will only keep getting better this year:

Dragon*Con: Avatar has really raised the bar, am I right? What a downer year it was when Dark Knight came out. All those naked blue people around the Marriott will really liven things up.

Pecha Kucha: When does Volume 15 happen, guys? When when when?

Georgia Tech’s Sonic Generator: Y’all gotta see resident composer Michael Gordon’s “Light is Calling” live on February 8.

Atlanta and the WPA

10 Jan

Walker Evans, "Houses and Billboards, Atlanta, 1936."

For the past week I’ve been looking through the Federal Writers’ Project life histories at the Library of Congress site. These narratives were gathered between 1936 and 1940 in most of  Georgia‘s major cities. Some are hilarious, some are sad, some are enlightening, some are all of the above. Specifically, I was reading those of Atlanta residents. Typically the WPA writer includes the street address of the person he or she is interviewing, so I’ve been Google Mapping to figure out if these homes still exist (they don’t).

In “I Got a Record,” Molly Kensey assumes the interviewer is coming to talk with her about Gone With the Wind, which was clearly the talk of the town. Journalists from all over were converging on Atlanta interested in the Civil War and Reconstruction, interviewing those who remembered it including African Americans who were not permitted to attend the premiere of the film.

You say you want me to talk to you ’bout the experiences uv my life, is this somethin’ ’bout ‘Gone With The Wind’? Oh, I thought maybe it was, I’ve heard so much ’bout the Premiere of ‘Gone With The Wind’ I jes’ know’d when you axed me to talk with you it was somethin’ ’bout that. Well, that’s alright, I wouldn’t have mind tellin’ you nohow ef it was, fer I got a record and I don’t mind tellin’ it to nobody.

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