Archive | February, 2010

Vintage violence

28 Feb

Friday night we watched Sharky’s Machine. This is 100% a Burt Reynolds vanity vehicle – directed by and starring Burt, he has maybe three spoken lines and spends most of the movie smoking silently in a hotel room on stakeout watching a high-class prostitute.

So why would we even bother to watch this poorly-edited, poorly-acted cop film? Because it was shot primarily in Downtown in the late ’70s. There are some cool scenes of Five Points, Kenny’s Alley, Trinity Avenue, the Westin, Peachtree Center, and the old viaducts. The only time the story leaves Downtown is an outside shot of Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, which in the film is a heroin binge den/prostitution ring hub. Everyone speaks with cliched NYPD accents even though the film is set in Georgia. (Well, everyone except for Ralph, a tranny prostitute.) But I would rather be confused by Brooklyn accents in the APD’s vice squad than hear terrible forced, fake Southern accents, so we let that inconsistency go.

Here are the first ten minutes of Sharky’s Machine to get you hooked. Recognize anything? (It’s easier to spot familiar buildings and sights when watching on non-pixelated DVD.)

Warning: Swear words and violence! Someone gets murdered on a MARTA bus.

There are also cameos from Atlanta’s star newscasters of that era: Monica (Kaufman) Pearson, Wes Sarginson, Dave Michaels, and Forrest Sawyer.

We watched it at the invitation of “Kaneharvest,” noted Downtown expert and inventor of the parking deck tour. If you don’t know the C&S building from a hole in the ground then be sure you screen this film with someone who does, otherwise it won’t be fun.

(According to some sources, Mark Wahlberg is remaking Sharky’s Machine. It supposedly won’t be set in Atlanta so who cares?)

Previously: Fact, fiction, and mystery

Please forward to Kwanza Hall

26 Feb

Thinking about Chef Luna’s comment on the earlier post about Lunacy Black Market led to my big, really obvious idea for sustainable small business development in Downtown, Sweet Auburn, or Old Fourth Ward: Fly By Night Row.*

Renovate a series of storefronts within a couple of blocks of each other. Suit them up very basic retail fixings. Rent them out by the day, week, month, whatever for pop-up shops. An individual or business comes in, sets up shop, and peddles their wares for a set period of time, and then vacates for the next short-term retailer. These could also be temporary satellite locations for existing businesses that operate in another neighborhood or city or country.

a) This gets people downtown on a regular basis to see what’s new in those stores.

b) Would-be entrepreneurs or small businesses are more likely to try out running shop for a few days to see how it goes before taking the full, risky plunge into a venture.

c) Longer-term businesses would want to open up around this area.

d) Pop-up businesses eventually become long-term businesses.

e) No pre-paid mobile phone businesses allowed.

There’s already an existing stream of potential customers with GSU students – they’ll be around no many how many office buildings foreclose.

Bam. YOU’RE WELCOME.

More on pop-up shops: Forbes, Business Week, LA Times, Time, Times

*I am not a marketer. Someone else come up with a better name. Ephemeretail?

(Photo, of course, from Atlanta Time Machine)

History in the making

26 Feb

I was looking over the Atlanta Preservation Center’s Phoenix Flies sched for March 6-22, making my wish list. Don’t be fooled upon first glance! It looks like a lot of stuff but it’s really just 27 tours of the Wren’s Nest WHICH THEY OFFER EVERY DAY ANYWAY. Just sayin’!

But you guys, is the Oakland Cemetery tour about fraternal organizations going to be as exciting as the 2000 feature film The Skulls, starring Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker? That’s all I want to know.

Lunching and looking

26 Feb

First, a few updates: Miss Darrow was interviewed over on Creative Loafing‘s Culture Surfing blog, where she says terrible things about blogs! Don’t forget who made you who you are, “Susannah”!!! Also, the Georgia Soul blog has an actual single – Vicki Collins’ “I’m Ready” – released by Soulville Records, the record label storefront behind Robert Kennedy in this 1968 photo of Martin Luther King’s funeral procession we posted a few weeks ago.

Now, I don’t really do restaurant reviews around here because I’m not a food writer, and most of the time I order the same thing at the same restaurants. I went to Lunacy Black Market today primarily because I was intrigued by the location – Mitchell Street! Downtown. Not Peachtree Center Downtown, or even GSU Downtown, but Downtown. The part I love the most because of how perfectly preserved it still is since no one cares about it. (Oh, and also since it is on the National Register.) The restaurant is on Hotel Row, named such because it used to have a bunch of hotels there right by where Terminal Station was. This is the most visible vestige of that time, the former Concordia Hall:

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Do you guys remember Glamour Shots?

12 Feb

I always wanted to get them done.  Always.  I’m not ashamed.  I mean, dang.  Do you remember the teachers who would slip a Glamour Shot into the yearbook as opposed to the regular old “picture day” photo?  I wish I had been there to overhear that conversation between said teacher and the yearbook staff.  “Um, yeah, it’s just that I was sick on picture day, and on retake day, but luckily, I have these professional photos just laying around, so I was thinking these might be OK!”  Then you get the popped collar on the acid-washed denim jacket, streaks of fushcia blush, and if you’re lucky, a Kennesaw Claw to top it off (I would give you a nice link to a nice version of the Kennesaw Claw here, but I don’t want to hurt any feelings).
Anyways, I recently went for the awesome version of Glamour Shots.  Not the real Glamour Shots, which is apparently still around and no longer providing sequined outfits for all the models.  I went to PinUpGirl Cosmetics over in Grant Park, and got the hair, make-up and photo shoot treatment.  It was spectacular.  As a mom (this is where some of you realize that it is mamalikey writing this post, and not Christa, so I’m pausing while you remember that I am that deadbeat contributor who never writes entries any more) who usually looks frumpalicious from day to day, just having someone paint my face and touch my hair was pretty amazing.  The best part: they totally touched up my photos and made me look much much much smaller from the neck down.  So now I have proof of what I would look like if I went to the gym.  It hurts.  But it makes a great gift for my husband!  I highly recommend going, even if just for one of their hair and make-up specials.  You will feel like a real pin-up.  Valentine’s Day is a great excuse to blow money on things like this.  You get to make yourself feel really pretty and awesome, but you can tell everyone that it wasn’t really for you.  It was for your significant other.  Obviously.

Old news

4 Feb

Are you guys ready for one of the most emotionally stirring anthems you’ll ever hear?

Two things: 1) Maybe in 1974 you could “see for a million miles on a starry night,” but now the Fulton County landfill gets in the way; 2) I love how awkward yet harmonious the closing is: “Atla-anta-a Georgia (WXIA!) Atla-anta-a Georgia (WXIA!)” I’ll be singing that all weekend.

This was from the day when local news promos were really cheeky and fun. Here the WAGA guys play in a crappy quartet on the lawn of the Atlanta History Center. (1975)

News intros from 1976-1977. These are so dramatic! I wish The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been about these people instead. It would be called The Monica Kaufman Show. On second thought, that sounds kind of boring.
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Bobby Kennedy in Atlanta

3 Feb

In 1963, with Vice Mayor Sam Massell:
(via the Atlanta History Center)

(via. Does anyone know where/when this might have been taken? I’m not yet convinced this was Atlanta.)

And lots of WSB-TV news clips at UGA’s Civil Rights Digital Library.

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