This was only my first of many, many ballots I will forge for Creative Loafing’s Best of Atlanta ‘09, and look what I noticed:

Before I could even finish! Is the site prompting me to vote for him? Is it just a lucky prediction? Or has he garnered that many votes already? What does the smiley face mean? HOW DOES DEMOCRACY WORK?

(Sorry, Mark Davis, but we gotta stay tru to our roots and vote for T-Dubs. Bulldawgs 4 lyfe!)

We also want to encourage all our readers to vote for Miss Darrow’s vanity project, Burn Away, for best local arts website.

Pecanne Log won’t be campaigning for votes for any category because the shame of not winning after publicly admitting it’s important to us to have that kind of validation and recognition would be too crushing. We have dignity, you know! And last year we received some sort of consolation prize for making Thomas Wheatley a household name, and that’s enough, right? Here’s a photo of us at the award ceremony last year:

Yeah, we take some fashion cues from Ellen; what of it?

Here’s something from the Atlanta Constitution in 1913 (from the book Gay and Lesbian Atlanta). The article was about Anthony Auriemma, “a professional female impersonator who contested  Atlanta’s city ordinance banning cross-dressing.” Would that he were still around today, because Danni Lee Harris totally wouldn’t let “Chief Beavers” mess with him!

Auriemma was at at the top of his game back in these days as a vaudeville drag queen (primarily performing as Francis Renault after leaving Atlanta), traveling the country where he “enjoyed the attention of many bedazzled young men.”

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Lots more on Francis Renault here at Queer Music Heritage with some fantastic photographs.

Gay and Lesbian Atlanta also mentions Baltimore Block, which I didn’t know was a thing in Atlanta. These rowhouses between West Peachtree and Spring were, in the ’20s and ’30s, “home to a vibrant assortment of artists, photographers, landscape architects, and antiques dealers.” In other words, GAYS.

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I love Baltimore! This is such good news!

Previously: Speaking of drag queens…

Boy, are you guys in for a treat! Guess what I just got in the mail? Highbrows, Hillbillies and Hellfire: Public Entertainment in Atlanta, 1880-1930, by Steve Goodson. I’m excited to get to the part about dime museums so maybe I can get some ideas for a little dime museum of my own. I think I am going to try to buy the Rose Mansion, that brick Victorian house on Peachtree across from Crawford Long, and open the dime museum there. Then I could also eat chicken, waffles, or game pie whenever I felt like it, on account of its proximity to Gladys Knight Chicken & Waffles and the Shakespeare Tavern.

Would you guys pay a dime to see my treasures and some sort of hastily assembled freak show, with acts like “The Terrifying Girl Who Loses Her Temper All Too Quickly” and “The Well-Mannered Gentleman With The Astounding Ability To Prepare Over One Hundred Delicious Dishes With Only Mexicorn And Mayonnaise” and “Thomas Wheatley”?

Wait, according to my calculations, 10 cents in 1869 (the heyday of Atlanta’s dime museum scene) is equal to $1.60 today. Well, there goes my business model.

Are we heartbroken about the demise of DeKalb’s plans for a tacky theme park? No? Well, you know, Atlanta did have its own amusement park, and I’m not talking about the place in Austell where you can buy Taz satin baseball jackets. It was Ponce de Leon Park, and it was the most beautiful place on earth, known as “the Coney Island of Atlanta.” That area is now known as “where the Whole Foods is in Midtown.”

Well, we all know the Atlanta Crackers used to play at that site, but before Ponce de Leon Park came along in the very early 20th century, that area had a spring and some little man-made lakes with summer houses.
(via Southern Spaces)

A summer house along Ponce; can you imagine? Everything you see covered in water in that photo is now covered in asphalt, for parking.

But before parking, the lake was filled in to become a ballpark for the Atlanta Crackers in 1907. (The infamous magnolia tree from the deep right field still stands to this day!) Not into baseball? You could still catch other entertainment nearby like alligator wrestling.
(via Atlanta Time Machine)

When Ponce de Leon Park opened June 1, 1903, it offered such amenities as the lakes, greenspace for picnics (although no one threw around new urbanist words like greenspace back then, not even Olmsted), along with “the theater, the merry-go-round, the laughing gallery, the cave of the winds, the penny arcade, the Japanese ping pong parlor, the Ferris wheel, the pony track, the miniature railways, the Gypsy village, the shooting gallery, the knife and cane boards, the baby racks, two attractive restaurants, pop corn and candy stands and two elegant soda water pavillions.” A GYPSY VILLAGE?! A JAPANESE PING-PONG PARLOR?!?! And what the dickens is a baby rack?

Read more about the park at Southern Spaces in this fascinating article “Vale of Amusements: Modernity, Technology, and Atlanta’s Ponce de Leon Park, 1870-1920” by Sarah Toton, or about the ballfield at the New Georgia Encyclopedia, or check out these old postcards of the park. If you have the money or can find it at a library, David Kaufman’s Peachtree Creek: A Natural and Unnatural History of Atlanta’s Watershed is also a great read on the springs and park.

Previously: Breaking news! Atlanta’s seddy past!

Weather.com now gives makeup tips along with their 10-day forecast. Now how about that?

As if every proper Southern lady hadn’t thought of that already!

It’s the summer doldrums in TV land – don’t even talk to me about NYC Prep, okay? If you need something to hold your attention and where the lead characters aren’t emotional cripples, I recommend digging through the archives of PBA 30’s This Is Atlanta with Alicia Steele website or YouTube page. The short episodes explore our city and its environs’ wonders and eccentricities, such as the Cotton States Cat Club, Burn Unit B-Boy Dance Crew, The Great Speckled Bird, the Pallookaville corn dog wagon, Legynds LARPers, &c., &c., &c.

How can you not love a show that plays Close to the Edge over merchant prince battle scenes?

I only wish more of our readers would send in their Rascal gang sightings, like the one Thomas Wheatley helpfully submitted today.

However, we did receive a hot tip earlier this evening that, “I just saw a pidgeon [sic] eating a condom at whole foods.” That one, although unrelated to personal mobility devices, was also pretty good.

Previously: Your Rascal, your safety, and you

I did a Google image search of “Atlanta 4th of July” and this was my favorite find.

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Happy Independence Day!

These three days are not just a long weekend devoted blowing off fingers in celebration of our nation’s independence from an oppressive empire; it’s ATLANTA BEAR FEST! Don’t worry, it’s nothing to be frightened of, according to this recent article in the AJC:

Bears are on the move in north Georgia. A number of bear-related incidents have been reported in the past few weeks and months, including two on Thursday.
…
“We have a healthy, growing, really thriving bear population in Georgia and north Georgia in particular,” Hammond said. “We’re seeing bears in places where we haven’t seen them in some time.”
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Some simple precautions Hammond suggests individuals take include never feeding a bear, respecting bear cubs and minimizing the amount of garbage, pet food and bird food kept outside.

Did you get that? RESPECT THE CUBS.

(I know, I know – it’s difficult not to be redundant when we’re over on Twitter and here.)

Previously: Community calendar

I can’t tell if Urban Outfitters had something to do with this street art or not. Poncey-Highland