This past weekend while researching the second installment of Pecanne Log’s Rural Explorer, which has been a full year in the making, we snooped around Cedartown. I had to go ahead and post these pictures and urge you to make haste to Cedartown because last Friday wrapped a shoot for an upcoming Billy Bob Thornton movie in downtown Cedartown. This was/is a gigantic deal for the little town, and a gigantic deal for me as the whole downtown is still done up like it’s in 1969 small town Alabama (the setting). I’m not sure how long the “set” will be up, or if the production crew took it down on Monday – but if you’re going up that way for the 4th of July weekend, check it out if you love good old-fashioned window dressings!
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Sneak peek!
29 JunPoncey-Highland’s construction boom
14 Jun
Do we really need two stories of hot dogs? No, this isn’t a hypothetical question; do we as Atlanta residents need two stories of gourmet hot dogs? I have been waiting on a hot dog retailer to start in this city for YEARS but frankly, I just think two stories of hot dogs is one too many. It just is!
And a block south, we have been struggling to comprehend Buddy’s strategy and corporate vision through its recent aesthetic improvements – taking down the iconic Buddy’s lettering, painting the awning, transforming from a Citgo into a Chevron, etc. Still, they have not done a thing with that flower shop that was supposed to be the King of Pops’ shop, and the latest development is a small shanty town on the north side of the store. Seriously, what is going on at Buddy’s?
Previously: Unsolved mysteries
Boys of Summer, Part I
14 JunHelloooooo Georgia Historical Society Senior Historian Dr. Stan Deaton, star of Today in Georgia History!
For the record, until Councilmember Alex Wan grows back his surfer hair, we will not be featuring him as a Pecanne Log Boy of Summer!
Well, maybe for old times’ sake we’ll post one screenshot of his previously wavy locks just to remind us how it used to be:
Thank you to the special tipster who sent us that screenshot.
A brief filmography of Xernona Clayton
6 JunThe street renaming controversy has gotten everyone in a lather over what constitutes a boulevard, if things should be named for living people, if Centennial Olympic Park should be renamed Thomas Patrick Wheatley Contemplative Park and redesigned as a traditional Irish garden/a potato field, etc., etc., etc. But the biggest question in the comments of every local internet news source is, “Who is Xernona Clayton?” Since people do not curse Ms. Clayton’s name whenever they get lost in Downtown Atlanta trying to find Trader Vic’s but instead just keep running into one block of loading docks and parking garage entrances after another, and since she has a first name that starts with an X, everyone is curious about this future namesake of some sort of City of Atlanta property (a plaza). However, one correct answer to this popular query about her identity that I haven’t yet seen is, “Co-star of the 1974 horror film The House on Skull Mountain.”
(Senator Leroy Johnson also makes a brief appearance as “Mr. Ledoux”, an attorney.)
Well, this is just leading us to more questions; specifically, what is the house on Skull Mountain? Obviously, guys, this is it:
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Alternatives to public transit
15 MayWhile 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.
Be a doll and buy these for me
13 MayClear 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?!?!?
Previously: St. Patrick’s Day, again??
Buford Highway, Esquire
12 May
Has anyone ever employed the legal counsel/architectural design services of this fine firm?
Little Darlings
9 MayIt’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.
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Another modest proposal
5 May
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.
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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.
27 years ago, folks! Get the full article here.
And y’all gotta go to the DeKalb History Center‘s exhibit “The Great Speckled Bird: The Turbulent Sixties in Atlanta, 1968-1976” that opens May 17 (I know – only two of those years were the actual sixties). We’ve heard it’s so good, and hope to see lots of photos and former residents of the infamous Pershing Point Apartments!
In the meantime: Boyd Lewis’ “Hippies in Atlanta! However did they get in?” on Like the Dew and Tales of Old Atlanta.
Previously: This week in history: Edgewood Avenue increasing in importance and popularity
Anarchy in the PDL
4 MayHere’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!
Do you think “Destroy Midtown” played last Saturday night when 3 Legged Cowboy closed?
According to our sources, there should be another tour of Ponce this spring/early summer, so watch the Urban Hiking blog or email list for updates.
Previously: Plaza Drugs through the ages
Let’s get literary
20 Apr
via GSU's Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Photographic Collection
What’s your favorite poem about Buckhead? Come on, everyone has one!
“Looking for the Buckhead Boys” by James Dickey?
(Sample verse: “First in the heart/Of my blind spot are/The Buckhead Boys. If I can find them, even one/I’m home. And if I can find him catch him in or around/Buckhead, I’ll never die: it’s likely my youth will walk/Inside me like a king.”)
“Buckhead Spring” by Clark Dean?
(Sample verse: “And a woman walks her goldendoodle alongside joggers who stride down sidewalks glistening,/while brightly colored buses lurch from their stops to join the sports cars and SUVs/that parade down Peachtree”)
“This Smells” by an elderly academic?
(Sample verse: “And I remember that ’56 Chevy/Barrelling down the valleys of Piedmont and Habersham/Down, careening one-eyed in to the trees down Roswell Road/Down our sainted and genuflecting Peachtrees”)
Happy National Poetry Month!
Previously: Buckhead Betties
Step it up
12 AprThese photos, taken by Thomas Askew, were collected by W.E.B. DuBois and shown in his “Negro Exhibit” at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 to demonstrate middle-class African-American life in America. Askew photographed many of his scenes in Atlanta because that was where black middle-class life could be had. DuBois wanted to show progress, education, and prosperity – the lives of the “talented tenth” – in the African-American community, not the suffering and tribulation that was typically the focus of national and international attention on his race. Read DuBois’ description/review of the show, “An American Negro in Paris,” in The American Monthly Review of Reviews.
But on a lighter note – watch your step for some serious fashion!!
Atlanta University
Alma mater
30 MarAny fans of the documentary Alma in the house tonight? The film shows little clips of Margie Thorpe’s band Miss Margie and the Tall Boys performing, but here’s a full song – gospel hymn “I Saw the Light,” live at Austin Avenue Cafe (was this in Inman Park?).
Here’s the part where we would normally tell you to go rent Alma (set mostly in Hapeville and, I think, the West End; IMDb key words: “Exhibitionism,” “Southern U.S.,” “Mother Daughter”) at Movies Worth Seeing as we were once also wisely instructed to do, but now there’s a special urgency to that assignment because they’re closing soon forever!! And all the movies are not only for rent, but for sale!
(Don’t worry, WEEKS AGO we bought all the VHS documentaries that had anything to do with Georgia or food, if only to spite the person who tried to throw away our VCR last month.)
Previously: Blue Christmas
Still life with meat
13 MarSimon Doonan and Barneys have nothing on the window dressers working Dowtown. And we’re not talking about the glorious old Rich’s at Christmastime. We mean the religious candle store, and now Park Place Bookstore on Decatur Street.
Park Place Bookstore enjoys a prominent spot on the stretch between most of the GSU classroom buildings and Five Points. The shop has not shied away from spectacle – a live iguana resided in one of the front windows for a while a few years ago – while still sticking to the traditional college used bookstore decor, like hand-written signs that say “LEAVE ALL BOOKBAGS AT COUNTER.”
The iguana’s home has since been vacated (including the branch it sat on and its heat lamp) leaving a blank, high-profile canvas for this retailer’s creative expressions.
What is the world the Park Place window dresser was trying to create when designing this scene meant to lure passers-by into the storefront? What is the imagined setting for this sad tableau that includes cut-out magazine photos of meat and a jar of peanuts?
Oh, now we see!
The modern past
10 Mar
Atlmalcontent re-posted these photos of the now-terrifying/awe-inspiring C&S bank on Moreland from DOCOMOMO. LOOK AT THEM ALL. (There are only three.)
Previously: Latest obsessions
The door to your dreams
28 FebLook what we turned up – an untagged/unlabeled photograph featuring the main entrance to Burt’s Place at the Omni International complex, circa 1980.
Via Jeff.Ford on Flickr
We’re all going to have to learn to deal with the fact that that marquee was a real thing! Maybe it’s archived at the Burt Reynolds and Friends Museum?
Previously: The swing of things at Burt’s Place
Window dressing
25 Feb
American Period Furniture on Ponce (right next door to Atlanta Furs) is a bit unassuming in its recognition of whatever the upcoming holiday is, but we can always count on the pair of giant plush teddy bears propped up on Chippendale chairs to be tastefully festive, even before the Midtown holiday house has wrapped the first strand of colored lights on their urns.
For Valentine’s Day, the bears were holding red satin stuffed hearts in their laps.
Previously: It’s Christmas time in the city
Torn apart by wolves
22 FebDoes anyone else feel like this city is disintegrating before our very eyes? At least the ice-eating dirt and gravel on all our major thoroughfares finally washed away, leaving us looking a little less like San Salvador. But still, every vertical surface is getting tagged over in the sloppiest, stupidest graffiti yet! Are these guys even trying anymore? Blech!
Oh, and is anyone else anticipating the moment when we find out Catlanta is all just a campaign for Dove Urban Refreshing Essences Body Mist? I certainly am!
If you want to see truly topical street art, may I suggest:
Poncey-Highland
Old Fourth Ward
Viaduct mysteries exposed!
17 Feb
There’s another Unseen Underground tour next Saturday (February 26), plus two during the Phoenix Flies festival! You now have absolutely no excuse to miss it.
Seriously, move fast – these things fill up.
UPDATE: Tour guide Jeff Morrison’s email address is here; contact him directly if you want to reserve a spot on any of the walks.
Previously: The endangered marine life of Overground Atlanta
The show must go on…and on
17 Feb
Were you clever enough to get your Designing Women Live seats way ahead of time, before they sold out, or are you just now realizing that there IS such thing as Designing Women Live? Well, if you’re in the latter category, no worries – the Process Theatre just added another performance of its semi-annual fundraiser at 10:30 PM on Saturday. Reserve tickets, put on your finest jewel-toned ruched blouse, get a heaping cup of white wine at the concession stand, and enjoy episodes “Julia Gets Her Head Caught In a Fence” and “Blame It On New Orleans.” There’s still time to laissez les bons temps rouler – but not much.
Also, for those of you devotees who have caught the show the last couple of times, be warned that there’s a new Charlene this time around. Good luck under all this sold-out pressure, New Charlene!
OnStage Atlanta, 2597 North Decatur Road
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