While MARTA is famous for being MARTA, there are lots of other little lesser-known transportation services running in metro Atlanta that are realer than the streetcar, BeltLine’s transit component, and Stonecrest monorail – for example, Buford Highway’s jitneys, Decatur’s pedicabs, and the Jesus Come Into My Life bus service. We’ve seen these buses traveling in a pack through Downtown before, but were never fast enough with the camera phone to capture the moment.
Then this weekend a map/transit nerd reader who shares with us an appreciation for Google Maps’ street view sent us this:
While you’re googling the Jesus Come Into My Life bus schedule and routes, watch the first minute or so of the following super 8 footage to see MARTA rail in the very early 1980s.
Clear out a shelf in your lighted curio cabinet or rearrange the decorative needlepoint pillows on your bed to accommodate the greatest sale on Gilt Groupe ever, Madame Alexander Collectible Dolls! Including three kinds of Scarlett O’Hara dolls AND A RHETT BUTLER DOLL.
WHAT AM I DOING BLOGGING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW WHEN I DON’T EVEN HAVE A TARA DOLLHOUSE YET?!?!?
It’s almost summer camp time, which means for adults, watching movies about summer camp with deep nostalgia and sentimentality and pretending that summer camp was like that for us. One of the most famous of the camp genre was 1980′s Little Darlings, which still languishes in VHS-only purgatory. However, the summer is a great time to catch it edited for television audiences, whether on TBS, TNT, or one of those other channels.
Little Darlings was filmed at Hard Labor Creek State Park (terrible name, wonderful place) in Rutledge, Georgia but the pre- and post-camp scenes were shot in Atlanta. The generic poor person apartments where Angel (Kristy McNichols) lives have likely been demolished…
…but we know Ferris (Tatum O’Neal) is rich because she lives at the Swan House and shows up for camp in a smart linen suit and a Rolls-Royce. (more…)
While on the Ponce kick from yesterday, we found this clever little article by one “Slab Towner” in the July 1984 issue of The Great Speckled Bird proposing an Atlanta Fast Food Historic District:
The creation of an “Atlanta Fast Food Historic District” in the area of Ponce de Leon, Boulevard and North Avenues, to maintain the historic value of the area, could serve to protect the fast food and convenience stores from unfair competition from other potential retailers who might employ vicious tactics, like offering quality and lower prices, to drive them out of business. A certain percentage of the land would have to be devoted fast foods and convenience, just like it is now, forever.
…
This modest proposal could also serve as a model for other areas seeking such designations, like the Memorial Drive Strip Center Archeological District, to preserve the remnants of the earliest days of “white flight” in the southern portions of Fulton and DeKalb, or even the selection of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and Parking Lots as a National Historic Site to show precisely how sensitive and responsible a white local government can be in balancing community needs for frivolous stuff like housing and the desires of big business for a Big League City with Big League profit opportunities, and fast.
Here’s another charming reminder of Atlanta’s relentless gentrification and decline and unfulfilled threat of gentrification and even further decline: An early ’80s be-turtlenecked Tom Zarrilli performing “Destroy Midtown”, a vicious punk number with the band Attack and Decay to protest the closing of the Nitery Club on Ponce.
Warning: Contains satirical adult language and graphic descriptions of violence inflicted on landlords and Evil Real Estate Developers!
If you’ve been on his tour of Ponce de Leon Avenue, you’ll recall that the Nitery Club is where the owner sold Italian men’s dress shoes behind the bar. According to Mr. Zarrilli, after the Nitery Club shut down, it briefly became a gay bar, and then a Greek restaurant called the Golden Dolphin. Now it is that grown-up version of a college dining hall adored by overcooked pasta lovers all over town, Eats.
As we’ve mentioned before, there’s been a long-time fear of Ponce de Leon Avenue becoming upscale or overly yuppie. Now there is a Whole Foods, a Chipotle, and an Urban Outfitters on Ponce – all signs of modern middle-class retail development. But there is also the vandalized City Hall East, the rotting empty Clermont Hotel, Model T bar, the mysterious Lake Building, and the woman who pleasures herself on a beach towel in front of the vacant Wachovia at the corner of Monroe Avenue. Ponce doesn’t have a Smut Busters like Cheshire Bridge Road (well, Midtown Ponce Security Alliance) but there is an ongoing resentment of the crime and blight issues related to the sharp divide between Midtown and Old Fourth Ward that Ponce represents, as well as, on the other hand, the isolated development or “revitalization” that has happened (don’t even get us started on Sembler parking lots and in the ’50s and ’60s what an article in The Great Speckled Bird alluded to as “a shadowy group called the Ponce de Leon Association”). Everything we find about Ponce’s condition since the dissolution of Atlanta’s urban core echoes the same concerns, like everything else about Atlanta ever – but we’re too busy to be self-reflective or observe multi-decade patterns of failure!
recent comments