Saxophonist of Distinction Rod Adwaters, “My Funny Valentine”

Eddie Sawyer, “Open House at My House”

B.O.S.S. Funk, “Baby I Love You”

Light up your luckiest love candle from Rondo, hit “play” above, and pick which House member is going to be your Valentine this year. (Don’t forget to email us at true.romance@house.ga.gov and tell us, or someone else might claim your rep).

Kim Bassinger takes it in The Real McCoy (1993) after she’s just been released from jail where she was doing time for a botched bank robbery, now on MARTA and on her way to new life, a fresh start. We’ve all been there before.

MARTA is hilariously rebranded as “NARTA” in Livin’ Large! (1991). Livin’ Large was shot all over the city, so if you’re really into that, be our guest.

The most felicitous use of MARTA, however, is in the truly terrible 1985 movie you’ve never heard of, The Heavenly Kid.
In “the early ’60s” a bunch of 1950s greaser “teens” play a deadly game of chicken and Bobby ends up running his car off a cliff. Suddenly we’re hurdling through a tunnel…

…and Bobby is on a train with a bunch of freaks. Where am I? Who are these people? Does this train end at Doraville or North Springs? etc. 
This line actually ends at PEACHTREE CENTER STATION.

Of course if you are going to do a movie where a bunch of dead people are ascending to heaven, you have them end up in this otherworldly station.

PERFECT.

(Do not bother with the rest of the movie. Trust us.)

Previously: The gay ’90s

I just feel like this campaign preys on every intowner’s unspeakable fear, which is that one day they will open their recycling bin, trash can, or dumpster to find a half-crazed human or animal living there. The Cartlanta Frequently Asked Questions don’t even address this concern.

Nite club owners and employees in an unidentified area of Atlanta, Georgia protesting a decision by Lester Maddox to deter their business, 1967. (Atlanta History Center)

“We are the World” sings the crowd in an impromptu lovefest at the party celebrating John Waters’ visit to Atlanta last spring, 1987. (Atlanta History Center)

Unidentified women at a party given by Charles and Dorothy Ross at their home on Eleanor Terrace in the Collier Heights neighborhood, 1975. (Atlanta History Center)

Women’s Chorale, no year given. (Emory University Archives Photograph Collection)

In 1958, Emory University opened Thomas Hall, Hopkins Hall, and Smith Hall, known collectively as “the complex” as a residence for Emory women. (Emory University Archives Photograph Collection)

Click on any of those to go deeper down the rabbit hole. The Lester Maddox protest and Ross party are especially fun.

We saw episode 4 (“Wicked Dance”) at something at the Plaza Theater earlier this year where a bunch of people who hung out at the Plaza frequently when they were at GSU as art/film students showed their comedic short films and web episodes that they have been making as successful young adults. (Well, the event was much more professional and put-together than we’re making it sound here but you know what we mean.) Diligent Witches was one of our favorites, among many high-quality and funny pieces.

Speaking of being a witch, somehow this very blog “won” a “Best of Atlanta 2012″ nod from Creative Loafing in the fake sounding category of “Best recap by a local blogger of a 1990s educational series.” Clearly no one fact checked the date stamp on those recap posts of ours, but if you are here to read about The Making of Modern Atlanta, you should start on this post. If you are here and work for Creative Loafing, we want one of those plaques all the restaurants and businesses have.

Most importantly, the Chattahoochee River did not give anyone flesh-eating bacteria this summer, which still seems unbelievable.

If you are already looking for holiday gifts already and want to continue celebrating the Hooch, may we direct you to this Ramblin’ Raft Race t-shirt that is on Ebay right now for $75?

May 21, 1977. Calvin Cruce (AJC) via GSU

What is the Ramblin’ Raft Race? Well, obviously it’s something that doesn’t exist anymore because the hippies had too much fun with it. And so it was also sponsored by WQXI, sponsor of all things cool in the ’70s in Atlanta like Bike Day.

Every Memorial Day weekend for over a decade, fraternities, clubs/organizations, businesses, groups of friends, and swingin’ singles apartment complexes would make these crappy and/or elaborate rafts and drink and smoke and probably listen to America and Lynyrd Skynyrd way too loudly on their little radios and just float down the river.

May 21, 1977. Calvin Cruce (AJC) via GSU

AJC did a little memorial of the event as did Atlanta magazine (“River Rats,” by Jay Busbee, June 2005).

May 21, 1977. Calvin Cruce (AJC) via GSU

Atlanta has a long and proud history of parades. WE LOVE PARADES! And we love the tradition of parades and their marchers and floats, so don’t try to just start a parade from scratch (VIRGINIA-HIGHLAND) unless you have a true vision and soul and something to celebrate (like the Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons), because everyone else already has a great parade. 5Ks and half-marathons and “run/walks” are for making people run/walk down a popular street in a popular neighborhood just for the hell of it. Just invent one of those things and be uninspired and people will somehow still think it’s fun to watch. But this innovative, tacky, nature-mingling river parade needs to come back if the EPA and EPD and riverkeepers will have us (they won’t, we’re sure; just asking). We want to see all our favorite parade characters like the woman with the convertible full of pugs and John Lewis and the gay rockclimbers and those cartoon superheroes made out of boxes and Baton Bob and the intown Montessori schools flailing around on homemade rafts just aimlessly drifting under bridges for 4 hours, communing with the river gods.

Here’s the best set of photos you’ve ever seen in your life, starting with the pictures of couples in flirty graphic tees lounging around on the banks of the river up to the mannequin photos and on and on. Now every single person in Atlanta just wants to be this gal for Halloween and that’s fine.

Previously: You light up my ‘Line!

If you don’t have time to read all 9,000 words of the exhausting Atlanta MSA page, at LEAST look at its nightmare urban apocalypse images, including one of of a demon cloud swirling over the city skyline.

via Wikipedia

Here are the highlights:

• The area is the world’s largest toll-free calling zone spanning 7,162 square miles (18,549 km2).
• …Atlanta [was] one of the US’s first cities to employ ten-digit dialing, which was begun by BellSouth the year before the Centennial 1996 Olympic Games.
• Cooktops and ovens are a mix of gas and electric, while gas clothes dryers are rather rare. Nearly all homes have a fireplace with a manual-valve gas starter, and some are now equipped with permanent gas logs with electric switch start. Some homes also have natural gas barbecue grills, formerly sold at utility company stores.
• Because of larger lot sizes, and natural-looking architecture such as California contemporary, older neighborhoods typically have many mature forest trees, except in cases where they have been destroyed by homeowners.
• Second-hand stores include several Goodwill Industries of North Georgia and a few Salvation Army thrift stores, three America’s Thrift Stores, and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. For-profit local chains which buy and resell higher-quality goods include local chains Abbadabba’s and Plato’s Closet.
• The area’s subsoil is a dense clay soil, colored rusty by the iron oxide present in it. It becomes very muddy and sticky when wet, and hard when dry, and stains light-colored carpets and clothing easily. It also tends to have a low pH, further aggravating gardeners.
• Common lawn weeds are wild strawberry, violet, wild onion, and of course the ubiquitous dandelion, crabgrass, and plantain.
• Among mammals, the eastern gray squirrel is by far the most ubiquitous, stealing birdseed from the bird feeders which many locals maintain.
• Falcons roost on skyscrapers in downtown Atlanta and can be regularly seen feasting on pigeons.
• The first commuter rail line would run south of the city, eventually extended to Lovejoy and possibly Hampton near Atlanta Motor Speedway. This project took two decades under Democrats, and has now been threatened by some Republicans in the Georgia General Assembly as being “wasteful”, despite being successful in every other U.S. city that has it.
• Owing to the area’s long history of settlement and uneven terrain, most arterial roads are not straight but meander instead, which can be confusing as much as the famed proliferation of Atlanta streets with “Peachtree” in the name. It is also often joked that half the streets are named Peachtree, while the other half have several names to make up for it.
• Where more than one town in the same county has a road to the same place, the smaller towns have their own name prefixed to it, while the county seat does not. The road need not go directly to the other place, but may connect through other roads. Examples include Due West Road west from Marietta, Kennesaw Due West Road southwest from Kennesaw, and Acworth Due West Road south from Acworth. Some are usually hyphenated, like Peachtree-Dunwoody Road, Ashford-Dunwoody Road, Chamblee-Dunwoody Road, and Chamblee-Tucker Road.

This opus to the metropolitan statistical area is INCREDIBLE! I imagine some first-year city planning student turned in his or her last paper last week, got drunk off of a bottle of Three Wishes cab sauv and thought, “Now that the semester is over I can finally write what’s in my heart.” Well done, child.

…only to fall in love.

Real life? No, we’re talking about In the Flesh, an independent gay film shot in 1997 Atlanta.
It is so gay, it is so ’90s, it is so Atlanta. Eat your heart out, Gregg Araki!

The first thing that tipped us off that In the Flesh was no ordinary movie was the really intensely detailed Wikipedia entry, in which the section summarizing the movie’s plot is longer than the same section for The Godfather‘s Wikipedia page. Then there are the polarized Netflix reviews. Naturally, we needed to see this for ourselves. (Please watch the trailer here to really get a “feel” for the movie before proceeding.)Oh yes, this movie starts out on Cypress Street! That can only mean one thing – it’s about a hooker with a heart of gold and a dark past, Oliver:First, though, we meet the other protagonist, a cop…

Wait, no, FIRST, we are introduced to the heavy glass block motif that runs throughout the entire film.

Then we meet the cop, Phillip – undercover vice cop, that is.

He’s got a tough new assignment from his boss – to go undercover at the Blue Boy, “hustler bar, off of Ponce? Word has it they’re not just dealing boys, know what I mean?” This is a confusing assignment.

Here’s the outside of the Blue Boy:

“Is that…isn’t that…?” you ask.

Here’s the inside:

Those particular glass block windows are still visible from Ponce – the former MJQ space under the Ponce de Leon Hotel.

But now let’s look at MORE GLASS BLOCK!

..In the apartment of the heroin addict sister of the sweet little hustler.

…Outside the “Metro Police” HQ, which is clearly in the same building in which Oliver’s sister lives.

And let’s look at MORE BOYS OF THE BLUE BOY!

If you watch this movie – and you will – the boys are the best part. Oh, and also the lesbians that keep getting kicked out for being girls:

The second best part is how ’90s everything is. 79% of Atlanta and 86% of Atlanta’s gay community is still decorating like this:

“What? The ’90s were a great time! Ever heard of THE OLYMPICS??? Ever heard of Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid???” you’re saying.

The music is also really good! There are just three songs but they are played CONSTANTLY throughout the film. There is even a casual plug for one of the artists on the soundtrack!

How ’90s are those song titles? “Kamera (A Photographic Memoir)”?

Based on the really heartfelt plot synopses of In the Flesh that we’ve read, we are supposed to know that Oliver is a college student because he is always carrying a backpack around Charles Allen Drive and Piedmont Park.

Beyond the Goat Farm, MJQ, a brief but really intense scene at Coronet Club, and some Midtown shots, there’s not much more to say about In the Flesh except that everyone should see it. It’s just a simple love story of two dudes, one a prostitute and one a cop, just trying to keep from being accused of murder  by corrupt police officers in a heroin ring so they can live in their cool masculine urban loft together and fix cars and benchpress for fun.

Previously: A brief filmography of Xernona Clayton

Scottdale also pioneered beefing it up.



You know you’ve driven by those antiques stores a few times and wondered if they were any good. Well, they’re not, not really. The most intriguing merchandise was a giant box of mix CDs someone made with titles written in Sharpie like “30 and Fading” and “Bad Teacher” and “Take it Slow.” But we just weren’t willing to pay real money to find out what they sounded like.

Oh, fine, we know you only looked this far to watch the Charlie Boy Gang’s BRAND-NEW “BEEF IT UP” MUSIC VIDEO!!!!

And here’s how regular people beef it up at Scottdale Day.

Previously: Pecanne Log’s Suburban Explorer (Pine Lake)