Georgia Native Rant
PG saw something on facebook that he has seen, and heard, before. “I’ve had enough of the conservative bullshit of the South and a job that does not fit with my personality. I think it is time for some changes in my life. I’m seriously considering continuing my education and becoming certified to teach high school math.. but first moving away from the conservatism that treats me as a second-class citizen, not just politically but with all the internalized homophobia of Atlanta gays. I would love to hear your thoughts.”
Atlanta is a city of outsiders. People move here from all over the world, and possibly other galaxies. They move here for a variety of reasons. They also move out for a variety of reasons.
Growth has long been a staple of the local economy. The imports bring money with them, and create jobs. Creating roads for these people has been an afterthought. The recent T-SPLOST disaster was a result of trying to provide transportation for all the newcomers. What infrastructure we have was built by the people who were already here.
Some of the people who move here are grateful. Some do little but complain. They say that southerners talk funny. The food here isn’t as good as it is back home. The people here are backwards, and just not as smart as the folks back home.
Some of the imports move out. They hop over the fence to the next greener pasture. The people left behind take care of the city for the next batch of imports. Life goes on.
This city was running just fine before the imports came down here to help us. And this city will do just fine after they go somewhere else. The next batch of imports will be just as full of themselves. The natives are used to it.
When PG started at Redo Blue, the Digital Imaging Manager (DIM) was a man from Colorado. He moved to Georgia after the economy tanked in Colorado. The DIM found a job in Atlanta, bought some rental properties, and did rather well here. Atlanta was good to the DIM. And all he talked about was how he hated living here, and wanted to go back to Colorado.
There used to be a man named Lewis Grizzard, who wrote a column for the fishwrapper. PG would get hoppin mad at Lewis, whose attitudes embodied much of the “conservative bullshit”(and possibly “internalized homophobia”) that the facebook friend decries. Lewis, may he rest in peace, did have one comment that PG appreciates. It is about the folks that move to Georgia, make lots of money, and complain about the south. “Delta is ready when you are”.
Don”t Cry For Me Hyuro
Hyuro is a street artist. She was born in Argentina, and lives now in Valencia, Spain. She painted a mural in Atlanta recently, as part of the Living Walls celebration. (Turn off HD when viewing this video.) All the artists at LW this year were women.
The people living near Hyuro’s mural are not celebrating. They are mad. The painting is of a woman, whose fur skin morphs into a wolf. It was painted on the remains of a GM plant, across the street from the federal prison.
The mural is also across the street from a mosque, and a church. “Tajiddin Muwwakkil, the imam at the neighboring Masjid Al-Quaran (housed in a former restaurant), led the charge against the painting, calling it “pornographic and offensive.” However, the pastor of Antioch Baptist Church, which sits directly across from the mural on McDonough, never made a public statement against it”.
Eventually, the controversy got to be too much for the property owner. The mural is going to be painted over. When PG read that it had already been covered, he made an emergency trip to go photograph the mural.
According to Creative Loafing, the artist may be part of the problem. “When Living Walls submitted its applications about a week before the conference began, the proposal for Hyuro’s wall depicted a series of chairs, not nudes. Love promptly gave it OCA’s stamp of approval. An avid supporter of Living Walls, Love has bluntly called the switcheroo a “misrepresentation.” Monica Campana, Living Walls’ executive director, explains that Hyuro decided to rethink her approach after seeing the wall, which was much smaller than she had anticipated. According to Campana, this frequently happens with Living Walls’ artists, who come from all over the world. The street art conference is often their first interaction with the city, and they look to it to inform the pieces they put up here. Had an accurate sketch been submitted beforehand, or resubmitted once Hyuro had finalized her design, perhaps this conversation would have taken place before the fact. Perhaps we would have avoided some of the hypersexualized rhetoric, shaming, and fearmongering of the female form. Or perhaps we would’ve gotten a bunch of chairs. (No offense to chairs.)”
Pictures are by Chamblee54. This was written like Ursula K. Le Guin.
Shade Festival
It was almost two pm, on the last sunday before labor day. This is the sunday of the shade festival in Grant Park. It is also the time to go see the living walls . To pass the time before leaving, PG was twisting through the tweets of Teju Cole. He saw a double feature. It had trouble written all over it.
@tejucole 1. None of your business. 2. None of your business. 3. None of your business.
4. No. 5. None of your business.
@tejucole Want to be depressed by humanity? In Google search box, type “is,” followed by a space bar.
Sure enough, PG opened a new tab, and typed “is” in the google spot. Instead of hitting the space bar, he hit enter, which may or may not affect the results. Just as he was about to sink into the nerdosphere, the phone rang. It was Uzi, saying that he would be over in a few minutes. This limits the time that PG can devote to this hopeless endeavor. When he gets back this evening, there will probably be something else to occupy his attention.
Teju Cole is known for telling little stories in 140 characters. They are like a Chinese drawing, where the blank spaces are an opportunity for your imagination to take over. Even if the riders were to show up in the next minute, these little stories will be waiting.
@tejucole Going up Monte Salvatore in the Swiss Alps, C. M. Chandler, of New York, did not put a foot wrong, but coming down, he did.
@tejucole Hilarious lads in Williamsburg placed bullets on the tracks. A train set them off and Browhall, real estate agent, was shot in the leg.
@tejucole Unable to pay for his mother’s funeral, Zindel, 17, of Broome Street, had to rob a grocery store. Bullshit. His mother is alive and well.
@tejucole Miss Curran, newly arrived from Ireland, is the fourth fatality in as many years at Room 21 of the Broadway Raines Hotel. Hoodoo?
@tejucole Earth must look peaceful from space. In Chicago, Mr Brand underestimated his wife and got a black eye, a torn ear, and two missing teeth.
@tejucole Deaf-mute Max Katz crossed Canal Street. Peddler Selig Katz (no relation) hurried down the Bowery. “Look where you’re going!” Blows ensued.
@tejucole Alas, Mrs Mary Thomas, of Pittsburgh, neglected to remove her false teeth last night and did not live till morning.
@tejucole Nobody’s perfect. The artiste on East 22nd Street who shoots at high heels from a distance got Rebecca Sussman in the foot.
@tejucole In addition to heading a 4th Avenue firm, Rosa Zindel also wrote fiction: $5,795 in fake checks, to be exact. She was arrested for forgery.
Before PG ran out of tweets, Uzi arrived, along with his nephew Hazmatt. The trip down Clairmont Road, into, town began. The plan was to see a few of the walls, and then go to the festival.
The first wall was an underpass, and it was not worth stopping for. The second was on Hosea L. Williams Boulevard, in Kirkwood. Last year, this location took a bit of looking, but this time it popped right up. It was a black and white drawing, and looked like the artist had a good time painting it.
The next stop was painfully trendy East Atlanta. There were two walls on Flat Shoals, but PG was not sure where to turn. He found a risky place to park, and walked over to where the murals should have been. One was on the side of a nightclub that had changed names at least twice recently. There was a parking lot between two buildings, with a padlocked gate blocking the entrance. The murals were inside, on facing sides of the two buildings. PG took pictures between the barbed wire.
A picture of George W. Bush with a Barack Obama mask led PG to tell a story. Once, PG was in a group of people taking phone calls during a public television fundraiser. Once, when the cameras were rolling. PG held a picture of Ronald Reagan in front of his face. Some people were horrified. The fundraising was not affected.
The next stop was Grant Park. Parking karma was with PG, who found a place a block off Boulevard. The portopotties had been moved, and were next to the entrance. (The spell check suggestion for portopotties: opportunities) This was a welcome sight for all three travelers.
The shade festival is the last summer festival in Atlanta, and usually comes at a time when people are tired of festivals. It has fairly light attendance, which may account for the parking karma. The festival crowd was a diverse bunch, with everybody friendly and enjoying the afternoon.
PG walked a few steps behind Uzi and Hazmatt. Even before PG tore up his knee, he was a slow walker. The lesson today was that lots of food venders were giving samples, and the slower you walk, the more samples you get.
There were no funnel cake samples given away. The funnel cake truck had bright new banners to welcome the cake funnelers. PG remembered something he read earlier this week… the guy working in the funnel cake truck has never cooked anything before except meth.
After a while, PG decided that the photographic theme of the day was going to be fat women. This was a racially diverse observation.
On the way back north, PG found the Krog Street tunnel. (The spell check suggestions for Krog: Grog, Frog, Grok, Kroger) The plan was to hit a few murals on the way home, but the only one they found was on Irwin Street, and it was not that special. There is always next sunday.
Going into the Piccadilly on North Druid Hills, PG thought of an incident there, but decided not to mention it. Uzi read PG’s mind, and felt obligated to talk about it out loud. Once, PG and Uzi went into the men’s room at this facility. A serving line employee was in there, in the finishing stages of taking a dump. He went back to work without washing his hands.
She Always Carries Jonquils
PG found Archival Atlanta: Electric Street Dummies, the Great Stonehenge Explosion, Nerve Tonics, and Bovine Laws : Forgotten Facts and Well-Kept Secrets from Our City’s Past at the Chamblee library. There are always more stories to be heard. Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This is a repost. It is written like Margaret Mitchell.
In the 1840s, the Western and Atlantic railroad wanted to hook up with the Central of Georgia railroad. The spot for the meeting was called Terminus. One idea was to name the town for William Lumpkin, a former Georgia Governor and a railroad executive. Lumpkinville sounded bad in the mouth, and the new town was named “Marthasville”, after the daughter of the Governor. (Martha is buried in Oakland Cemetery.) Few people liked this name, and someone decided that the feminine form of Atlantic was Atlanta. Unlike the state flag, this is unlikely to change.
The new town prospered, and recovered from the unpleasantness of 1864. In 1875, there was a problem with stray cows. The answer was the “1875 Cow Ordinance”. The law required that cows be kept in a pen at night. A fine of two dollars was assessed for every stray cow that was caught.
About this time, there were a few very busy railroad tracks going through downtown. People were getting tired of waiting for the trains to go through. One by one, viaducts were built over the tracks, creating a forgotten ground floor. This was built up into Underground Atlanta in the sixties, which was red hot for a while, then cooled off, and is now so so.
In 1897, J.W. Alexander was the first person in town to own a “horseless carriage”. One day, he decided to take a ride to East Point. A mule objected to the device, and kicked man and machine into a ditch.
It is a rule that all history books about Atlanta have to discuss Coca Cola and Gone With The Wind. There are only so many stories to go around. This book tells of an Alpharetta farmer who bought the Tara set from MGM. He stored in a barn, the location of which was a secret. Betty Talmadge wanted to buy it, and the price went from $375k to $5k. After a while, the sale was finalized. There was only one problem…the farmer died, and never told anyone where the barn was. Mrs. Talmadge got the money from her husband’s overcoat, went to Alpharetta, and found the barn. The set was moved into another secret location, where it was in 1996, when Archival Atlanta was published.
Sam and William Venable owned Stone Mountain, and had a quarry there. (The Ku Klux Klan held meetings on the mountain.) (The spell check suggestion for Ku Klux is Kook Klutz.) Sam built a large granite house at 1410 Ponce de Leon Avenue, and stocked it with ammunition. He thought a race war was on the way, and wanted to be prepared. One night, a chimney overheated. The roof caught on fire. The explosives in the attic exploded, and took the roof off. The house was repaired, Mr. Venable died, and the house became part of a Lutheran church.
One of the few ante bellum houses in Atlanta is near Grant Park. It was once owned by Lemuel Grant, who donated the land for the park. He stays in a large marble house in Oakland Cemetery now. The Grant Park house was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. John Marsh, in partnership with Boyd Eugene Taylor. After the death of Mrs. Marsh (also known as Margaret Mitchell), she was known to visit the house. “Margaret just wanders through the house, looking things over. She never talks, and she always carries jonquils. The first night she came I was very shocked. I went out to her grave at Oakland Cemetery the next day. I’d never been to the house before. But I was almost certain of what I’d find. The plot is covered by a bed of jonquils.”
Richards
A comment at a recent post mentioned “Jenning’s Rose Room, a classic poor white juke and dance hall … where Trader Joes now sits.” PG had been in that building when it was called Richards, and knew stories. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
There is no telling what the original use of the building at 931 Monroe Drive was. It was across the street from Grady Stadium, and adjacent to Piedmont Park. The railroad tracks that became the beltline ran behind it. The parking lot was primitive, with a marquee sign built at some point. (PG drove by that sign several nights and saw that Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing. Somehow, he did not make it inside.)
There was another nightclub building on the hill behind JRR. One night, PG went to see a jazz band there, accompanied by someone who lived in a nearby house. After seeing the band, PG was led to a horse stable behind the bar. The horses were not well maintained … you could see the ribs sticking out. There is a story of a goat getting loose from the stable, and being chased out of the jazz bar during happy hour.
Jennings Rose Room was before PG’s time. There is a story that some men had lunch there, and made a bet. The idea was to hit a golf ball from the JRR parking lot, and putt it into a hole at Piedmont Park. A biscuit was used as a tee. The first shot went across the street, onto the field at the stadium. Eventually, the ball was hit across Tenth Street, onto a green, and into the cup.
At some point, Jennings Rose Room closed. A gay club called Chuck’s Rathskeller was opened in that location. A rock and roll club or two did business there. Then Richards opened.
The first time PG was in the house was after a Johnny Winter concert at the Fox. There were rumors of visiting musicians dropping by Richards to play after their shows. Mr. Winter was only onstage for a couple of minutes after PG got there.
The most memorable trip to Richards was during the summer of 1973. The headliner was Rory Gallagher, who was ok but not spectacular. The opening act was Sopwith Camel, one of the forgotten bands of the seventies. They performed a novelty hit, “Hello Hello”. Someone in the audience liked it, and paid them to do it again. The band wound up doing “Hello Hello” five times, and said that was the most money they made on a show in a long time.
Average White Band was making the rounds that fall, and had a show at Richards. A lot of the audience was black, and they hit the dance floor in unison when “Pick up the Pieces” was played. Fellow Scotsman Alex Harvey was in town, and joined AWB to sing “I heard it through the grapevine”.
Muddy Waters played at Richards one night. The band did most of the playing, with Mr. Waters tossing in a few licks on bottleneck guitar. He might have sang a couple of times.
About this time, Iggy Pop played a few shows at Richards. One night, someone snuck up on him, and gave him a hug. It was Elton John, wearing a gorilla suit.
PG saw two more shows (that he can remember) at Richards. Soft Machine played in the winter of 1974. Larry Coryell played a show that summer, with the Mike Greene Band opening. PG got to talk to Mike Greene that night. The National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences ( who do the Grammy Awards) had a President named C. Michael Greene at one time. PG thinks this is the person he talked to that night, but cannot find confirmation.
Two friends of PG went, as their first date, to see Spirit at Richards. They were married a few years later. Towards the end of 1974, Richards was running out of steam. They advertised a New Years Eve show starring B.B. King, and sold high priced tickets. When the crowd showed up for the show, they found the doors locked. Richards had closed.
The next tenant for 931 Monroe Drive was going to be Cabaret After Dark, a gay club. There was a fire the night before the grand opening. The building was never used again. Eventually, a shopping center was built on the site.
UPDATE: Here is a article from the Great Speckled Bird about the Richards.
This is a repost, written like Gertrude Stein.
Supremacy
There is a playwrite named Owldolatrous. He wrote a blog post about the chicken sandwich company that went viral. The post today is about a follow up, Aesop to the Right: Why I Believe Bristol Palin. The concept of Ms. Palin as an advocate for “traditional marriage” is kinda bizarre. When you are an attention whore, any camera is your friend.
OD says things a lot better than PG. With the miracle of copy paste, they can be easily borrowed. Here is a selection from the post.
I don’t think you hate me. I certainly don’t think you’re afraid of me. Neither is Bristol Palin. She probably even has LGBT people she calls friends. She just disagrees with them about whether they should be invited to the party (the party, in this case, being marriage). But here’s the problem: the basis of that disagreement is her belief that her relationships are intrinsically better than ours.
There’s a word for this type of statement: supremacist. … I know that the word “supremacist” makes you think of “White Supremacists,” which makes you think of the KKK and cross-burning and lynching. We think of supremacist as a Southern thing, a rural thing, a racial thing, a militia thing, a hate thing.
Here, maybe this will help: I’ve had supremacist habits too. I grew up in the rural South. I never hated African-Americans. I never knowingly said or did or voted in any way that hurt African-American people. I even had African-American friends. But I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that some white supremacy seeped into my thinking at a very young age. This is a painful thing to admit. Even now, I find I can’t go into specifics, from sheer shame. Fortunately I have been able to break those habits, but it has taken a while.
Supremacy is the habit of believing or acting as if your life, your love, your culture has more intrinsic worth than those of people who differ from you. Supremacy can be about race, but it doesn’t have to be. Supremacy and hate aren’t identical, but they often go together.
Some people turn supremacy into an over-arching philosophy. For most, it’s just a habit of mind. As a habit of mind, supremacist ideas can spring up in anyone. Being liberal doesn’t make you immune. Being gay doesn’t make you immune. Being a minority doesn’t make you immune.
You don’t have to hate people to feel innately superior to them. After all, what kind of threat are your inferiors to you? You may be annoyed by them, from time to time, or you may even like them. You can even have so much affection for them that you might call that affection love.
There is more, but this is enough for our morning discussion. Supreme, Supremacy, Supremacism, Supremacist. It is not just for white people. The whole business of thinking that you are somehow better than your neighbor is part of being a human being. Think about it, aren’t there some people that you think you are better than? Of course there are. You are a competitive animal, and you have to win sometimes. You, and your tribe, are just better than that other tribe.
PG saw a sign over a desk once. I have never met a snob who was not a born liar. Above this sign was a plastic case. In the plastic case was a white dress shirt, with an ink stain in the front pocket.
There is a concept, mythos over logos. The idea is, when you present people with information that contradicts a long held belief, the person will ignore the information and stick to the belief. This is related to the concept of supremacy. If you think you are better than a person, and you get evidence that the person is better than you, you will ignore that evidence and continue to believe the person is inferior to you. It helps when your magic book agrees with you.
PG was riding his bike yesterday, when the thought came to him. Anti racism is a form of supremacy. PG associates with a so called “radical community”. There has recently been a rabid discussion about racism. Now, this is a pretty enlightened bunch. The type of virulent racism that PG saw growing up in Georgia is simply not there. This does not stop the Anti Racist Supremacist Egophile (ARSE) from looking for racism to combat. The ARSE will expand the definition of racism to include every PWOC, except him and his immediate tribe.
One root word of Supremacy is Supreme. There were once three young ladies performing as “The Supremes.” Four videos are embedded into this post. That is not real hair. Diana Ross did not get to sing lead because of her vocal ability. Pictures for this episode were taken at a dance performance on July 11, 2012. This was written in the style of H. P. Lovecraft.
The Strip
There is a nifty webcam up now. It shows the progress of a high rise going up now at 12th and Peachtree in midtown. The location of the camera itself is not certain, with the speculation centering on 999 Peachtree, two blocks south on Tenth Street.
A glance at the image reveals a curve in the road, between the two glass boxes under construction. Atlanta does not have wide, straight boulevards extending to the horizon. It is said that Atlanta did not build roads, but paved the cow paths.
People of a certain age will remember this area as the strip. The tenth street district was a neighborhood shopping area, up until the mid sixties. At some point, the old businesses started to move out and the hippies moved in. For a while, it was a festive party. Soon enough reality returned, and the area went into a crime filled decline.
The 999 complex is the neighborhood story in a nutshell. Before 1985, it was a block of small businesses. There was a hardware store, with the peace symbol set in tiles in the sidewalk. On Juniper Street stood the Langdon Court Apartments. They were named for PG’s great uncle Langdon Quin. Ru Paul used to stay there. He would sit out on a balcony, and wave to the traffic going by.
Across the street was a chinese restaurant, the House of Eng. A staircase on the side led to the Suzy Wong Lounge. Behind the building was an apartment building. It was one of the residences of Margaret Mitchell, while she wrote “Gone With The Wind”. She called it “the dump”, which was fairly accurate.
PG went to the House of Eng for lunch one day in 1985. He noticed that he was the only customer in the house, at 12:30 pm on a weekday. After finishing his lunch, PG knew why.
At some point, it was decided to build a high rise there. Heery was one of the equity partners, along with a law firm and an ad agency. The building was designed by Heery (duh).The ad agency folded before the building opened, followed within a couple of years by the law firm. Heery was sold to a British company. PG does not know who owns 999 Peachtree now.
This is a repost . The building, at 12th and Peachtree, is finished. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” This is written like Margaret Mitchell.
Eatmorchikingate
Eatmorchikingate was made for 2012 media. The corporations give tons of publicity to a valued advertiser. The spelling challenged ads of CFA have inspired giggles and groans for years. The entry of The Jim Henson Company introduces a stable of beloved charactars. And there is matter of equal rights for LGBT people.
There was a comment exchange on facebook recently. “Turning a chicken sandwich into Public Gay Enemy Number One makes LGBT people look superficial, vindictive and juvenile — everything that we as a community have worked hard to overcome.” “Maybe that is why the press is giving this so much attention. It takes attention away from Sally Ride’s surviving partner.” The struggle to live without being hated has degenerated into waffle fry jokes.
There is a dandy commentary about this whole thing, The Chick Fellatio: stuck in the craw. It has a paragraph at the start that needs to be quoted in its entirety. It is about listening, and paying attention. Too often. people assume they know what you think, and don’t listen to what you are saying. Or they break in to interrupt, and don’t give you a chance to finish. Even if you disagree with the rest of the feature, this one paragraph should be displayed everywhere. Maybe someone will post these words in front of a pretty picture, and the poster will be liked on facebook.
Now, let’s get to the nitty-gritty of things. Please read carefully. These things have been said before, but not by me, and not all in one place. Please read with an open mind. If you can’t read with an open mind, please leave, take a minute, come back, and try again. If you can’t do that, then please don’t bother. Please read all of the words here, rather than just reading half of the argument and assuming you know what I’m saying. Read these words as they are written. Again, if you don’t want to read my words, then don’t continue.
You really should read The Chick Fellatio: stuck in the craw. before you continue. The link opens into a new tab, so it is easy to come back here. The pictures, from The Library of Congress. , will be here when you get back.
There are four points to this discussion. Chamblee54 will offer a commentary on each.
1 – There is little to argue with on point 1.
2 – “Asking for “mutual tolerance” on this like running up to a bully beating a kid to death on the playground and scolding them both for not getting along”. To begin with, if you take the word bully, and change the vowel, you can get belly. Like the protruding body part you get when you eat too many perfected chicken sandwiches.
PG used to work with a bully for Jesus. There was no physical abuse, although there were a couple of threats. It was emotional abuse, a lot of it. Lots of so called good christians supported the BFJ. They seemed to think they were standing up for Jesus when they did this. After all, they were going to go to heaven when they died, so it is ok to treat your neighbor like dirt while you are alive. This point will be relevant in point 3.
3 – “This isn’t about Jesus. I have a lot of Christian friends. Most of them …” Ok, this is where we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Jesus is a spirit living in the heart of man. It has little to do with the star of the Bible. This spirit has evolved over the years, until what we have today has little resemblance to what people felt even a hundred years ago.
To some people, Jesus is love. To some, she is righteous anger. To the majority of Jesus Worshipers, Jesus is a scheme for life after death. If you don’t agree with this scheme, then you are going to hell, and it is ok to treat you like dirt.
People, including the author of this feature, like to refer to the so called teachings of Jesus. The truth is that we know very little about what Jesus actually said. The Bible is a controversial document, with much disagreement about what it says and how to interpret it. Both sides in this dispute claim to have the teachings of Jesus on their side.
To PG, the best way to know Jesus is through the people who believe in her. Remember the Bully for Jesus? PG worked across the room from him for seven years. He witnessed thousands of hours of an on the clock ministry. (BFJ was paid to work for Redo Blue. He spent this time conducting a ministry.) BFJ showed an enormous amount of hatred towards PG, and used Jesus to express this hatred. It was during this nightmare that PG came to realize that Jesus hates him.
And so now, we have the spectacle of people waving a book, and calling it the word of G-d. This book leads people to hate LGBT people. The fact that others find love in this book is a cruel irony, or perhaps the Stockholm syndrome. And this same spirit is calling people to go buy overpriced chicken sandwiches, to support a company that hates LGBT people. That has EVERYTHING to do with Jesus.
4 – This chapter gives the example of KFC giving money to groups that fight equality for Asian Americans. This is a bad analogy. KFC is owned by Pepsi. They are the ultimate corporation. Pepsi has a faceless CEO in some office somewhere, who would not be giving interviews to a Baptist magazine about gay marriage.
CFA is the Cathy family. It has long been known for staying closed on Sunday, and for other “Christian” quirks. It should be noted that Dan Cathy is the son of the founder, and might not know enough to keep his mouth shut. (Ryan Tate is another founder’s son run amok.)
The company has tried to back down. The controversy will die down eventually. This too shall pass.
The Morning After
It is the next day. Yesterday was the most controversial election in a long time. T-SPLOST lost. And the City of Brookhaven is going to happen. Neither event is the end of the world.
The transportation initiative was poorly planned. The sales were worse. PG has an unlisted number, and still received over a dozen robocalls for T- SPLOST.
Atlanta has long had an economy based on growth. This means building stuff on cheap land, and getting jobs to move here. This type of growth is not sustainable. The growth industry has long worked on the model of putting up the buildings first, and building roads later. Sooner or later, the cheap land is going to run out.
Another issue is water. Five years ago, there was a drought. The fishwrapper printed charts showing how many days until the water ran out. One day, there will be another drought. The next time, the Governor praying for rain might not help. Unless a dependable source of water can be found (and this includes east Alabama and northwest Florida), then all the roads and trains will do nobody any good.
DeKalb County will still be supplying the water for Brookhaven. If the overall supply runs out, then this fancy new city will be a ghost town.
Chamblee54 has been critical of the marketing for the proposed new city. That DeKalb County has room for improvement has not been in question. While there are doubts about this new city, the voters have spoken. It is going to happen.
The ethics complaint against DeKalb County should be withdrawn. If it was wrong for the County to interfere in the election, then it was also wrong for officials from Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, John’s Creek, and Chamblee to promote the new city. PG is not a lawyer, and may be technically wrong on this, but if it wrong for one side to use government resources, then it is should be wrong for the other side. PG suspects this complaint was an election gimmick, and will never be dealt with.
There is talk about using the empty Kroger on Peachtree Road as a city hall. There are concerns about locating this facility at a clumsy intersection, with a lot of traffic.
Locating city hall at Peachtree and North Druid Hills would be ironic on several layers. (The story you are about to hear happened a few years ago. PG may have some of his facts wrong.)
At one time, John Portman wanted to build a supercenter in downtown Brookhaven. It would have high rise office towers, and a big hotel. The residents of Brookhaven fought this, and it was not built. The shopping center with the Harris Teeter/Kroger was built on part of the land that would have been occupied by the center.
One of the residents fighting the plan was Tom Cousins. In the recent election, Mr. Cousins was a major contibutor to No City Brookhaven. PG suspects that Mr. Cousins may have been correct in opposing the new city. The voters have spoken, and they disagree.
The fashion police are looking for J. Max Davis . He talked to a reporter, on camera, wearing shorts. His shirt tail was exposed. As a public service, this should not happen again.
There was one nasty surprise at the polls yesterday. According to this map, PG lives in the 4th Congressional District. The ballot yesterday said he is in the 6th district. This means that PG is represented by the evil Tom Price, instead of the merely goofy Hank Johnson.
PG usually finds more action on the Republican primary ballot. In the 4th district, there was a competitive race. If a significant portion of the district was kept from voting in the Republican race, then this may be a problem.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library.”
Babe, Hank, Barry, And Joe
There was a comment on facebook … “I don’t understand the arguments against involving steroids in Olympic sports.” This is an issue which jock sniffers get worked up about. Many non sports nuts wonder why. This reminded PG of a lovely post from 2007.
Barry Bonds was about to break the lifetime record for home runs. Folks said the record was tainted because of steroid use, and because Mr. Bonds was not a nice man. There were calls for an asterick in the record book. This was odd to PG, who was in Georgia when Hank Aaron broke the record in 1974. Back then, the line was that Babe Ruth had fewer at bats than Mr. Aaron. A lot of hateful things were said about Mr. Aaron before home run 714, and it should not be surprising if he is just a touch bitter.
PG decided to take a look at the metrics, and see what he saw. This post is the result. As a bonus to the reader(s), Joe Torre and Hank Aaron gets a summer rerun. It is based on a column by Furman Bisher, who went to the press box in the sky March 18, 2012. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. .
There is a certain controversy these days about the eminent breaking of the lifetime home run record. Currently held by Hank Aaron, the record is threatened by Barry Bonds. Before Mr. Aaron held the title, Babe Ruth was the owner.
Controversy about the Lifetime Home Run Record is nothing new. In 1974, when Hank Aaron was about to break the record, the admirers of Babe Ruth said that Mr. Ruth had fewer at bats than Mr. Aaron did. Many attributed this criticism to racism, with a black man besting a white man’s record. The current controversy is two fold. There are allegations that Mr. Bonds took steroids to make him stronger, and that he “cheated”. There are also some concerns about the overall personality of Mr. Bonds.
PG does not think steroid use is a big deal. Ballplayers are abusing their bodies to perform, and if they take the risk of using steroids, that is their business. Many people disagree.
A good question to ask is, would Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron have used steroids if they had the chance? Mr. Ruth was a wildman, who drank during prohibition, and was known for undisciplined behavior. Mr. Aaron played in an era where steroid use was not as common as it is today. The answer to the first question is (Mr. Ruth) Probably and (Mr. Aaron) Who Knows.
While you are keeping hypocrisy statistics, Mr. Aaron and Mr. Bonds played on television, where beer commercials were constant. While alcohol is legal, it is a very damaging drug, deadly and addictive. But it is legal, and any ballplayer who plays on television promotes its use. This is both steroid users and steroid non users.
As for personalities, there is the widely circulated story about the college team that Mr. Bonds played on voting 22-3 to kick him off the team. Apparently, at the very least he does not charm sportswriters.
In 1917, Babe Ruth was suspended for hitting an umpire. He was known for his outlandish behavior throughout his career. It should also be noted that he played in an era when the press did not scrutinize the behavior of players as much as they do today. How would today’s reality show media have dealt with Babe Ruth?
PG once heard a radio show caller say that Hank Aaron was a mean racist, who would just as soon cut your throat as look at you. He had never heard this said out loud before, but had heard hints about Mr. Aaron’s personality over the years. After the personal attacks before breaking Babe Ruth’s record, Mr. Aaron might be entitled to a bit of anger. Also, in any arena, people who achieve great things are not always especially friendly.
Mr. Aaron is the only one of the three that PG met, however briefly. In the summer of 1965, the Milwaukee Braves came to Atlanta to play an exhibition game at the newly finished Stadium, which would be their home the next season. After the game, PG was allowed to wait outside the clubhouse, to get autographs from the players as they left. Joe Torre saw the crowd, hid behind a truck, and made a quick getaway. Hank Aaron came out, patiently signing every autograph requested of him, while smoking a cigarette.
The fact is, all three men played in different eras. Babe Ruth never played at night, never flew to California, and only played against white players…many of the most talented players of his era were in the Negro League. Hank Aaron played before free agency, interleague play, the DH, and widespread use of steroids. The only way to determine who is the home run champion is to count how many homers are hit, and award the prize to the man who hits the most.
Which of the three made the most money? Barry Bonds, by a wide margin. He played in the free agent era. Babe Ruth had the best line about his salary. In 1930 Ruth was asked by a reporter what he thought of his yearly salary of $80,000 being more than President Hoover’s $75,000. He replied ” yea, but I had a better year than he did.”
Who played on the most teams to win a World Series? Babe Ruth 7, Hank Aaron 1, Barry Bonds 0.
The career of Babe Ruth was a long time ago. He made a greater impact on America that the other two combined. He was one of the first sports superstars, as America emerged from the carnage of World War One as a prosperous superpower. When he broke the single season home run record, he hit 29 homers. The next year, (1920, his first year with the New York Yankees) he hit 54. There is a possibility of a livelier baseball.
Babe Ruth captured the imagination of America like few personalities ever have. Playing in New York (which dominated the press) did not hurt. He was a man of his times…it is unlikely than anyone could have that kind of impact on today’s superstar saturated America. While his record has been broken, his place in the history of baseball is the same.
Furman Bisher has a piece at the fishwrapper site about Joe Torre . The punch line is that Mr. Torre “grew up” when the Braves traded him to St. Louis. PG was a kid when this was going on, and did not hear a lot of what went on.
In 1965, the Braves played a lame duck year in Milwaukee before moving to Atlanta. One night, there was an exhibition game at Atlanta Stadium, the Braves against the Yankees. PG got his oh so patient dad to take him to the clubhouse after the game, to get autographs. In those days, you could go into the bowels of the stadium and wait outside the locker room. Hank Aaron came out and signed dozens of autographs while smoking a cigarette. Joe Torre came out, hid behind a truck, and took off running.
Mr. Torre was a raccoon eyed catcher for the Braves. In the first regular season game in 1966, he hit two home runs, in a thirteen inning loss. Soon, the novelty of big league baseball in a toilet shaped stadium wore off. Mr. Torre got at least one DUI, and apparently a reputation as a barroom brawler. He was traded to St. Louis in 1968. Mr. Torre hit .373 and won the national league MVP in 1971.
The comments to the feature by Furman Bisher were interesting. Cecil 34 contributes “The reason that Torre was traded is because on the team’s charter flight back to Atlanta back in 68, a drunken Torre got into a fistfight with Aaron. Aaron popped off to Torre, and thus the fight was on, broken up by the other players. Since Aaron was the face of the franchise at the time, Torre was traded. There had been bad blood between them for years before this incident anyway. Reasons vary. But the final nail in the coffin was this fistfight. I was told Torre could pack a punch and Aaron came out on the worse end of it.”
There has been whispering for years about Hank Aaron and his attitude. Furman Bisher made hints once or twice, but there was never anything of substance. It seems that Mr. Aaron does not lack for self confidence. Mr. Aaron was the subject of much racially based abuse while chasing the home run record in 1973, and some anger is justified.
Hank Aaron was known to not get along with Rico Carty. Mr. Carty is a dark skinned man from the Dominican Republic, who was popular with fans. Mr. Carty was eventually traded. Rico Carty had a barbeque restaurant on Peachtree Road in Chamblee, next door to the Park and Shop.
Joe Torre was the manager of the Braves in the early eighties. The team won a divisional title in 1982, but lost the NLCS. This was after Ted Turner bought the team, and Mr. Turner fired Mr. Torre in 1984. ( Managers are hired to be fired ).
Getting back to the comment thread, Misterwax contributes “Turner cut Joe Torre loose because Ted was in love with Henry Aaron and Aaron thought Joe Torre was a white supremacist….A hangover from the clubhouse days when they were teammates…still does today. And THAT is the only reason he was cut….beause Hank Aaron said so.”
Hank Aaron was recently quoted on Barry Bonds and Steroids. Joe Torre is managing the Los Angeles Dodgers, and is leading his division. Furman Bisher is 90, has outlived Bear Bryant by 26 years, and continues to sign his columns “selah”.
Block Party
PG and Uzi usually talk on the phone on Sunday, around noon. At 11:45, the phone rang. PG answered with a cheerful “good morning”. He felt very foolish when it was a robocall, telling him to vote for T- SPLOST on tuesday. This is one of six automated phone calls PG has gotten in the last two days, ensuring a no vote on tuesday. Joseph Lowery should know better.
Since PG injured his knee in February, there have not been many Sunday afternoon walks. Today though, the heat and the sore joint are not going to be an obstacle. It has been a while since the two went to Little Fivc Points, and today was the day.
One thing you should never discuss publicly when you go to a trendy neighborhood is where you park. Some things are just too personal to talk about. Today was a low traffic day, and a huge parking spot opened up for PG’s honda.
There was a sign, indicating an WRFG block party in the community center. You could hear a band playing, by the time you reached Bass High School. The party was a low key affair, which seemed like fun for the people attending. After a few minutes, it was time to go back towards Zestos.
The photography was fun. PG has been taking it easy on the camera lately, and soon remembered how much fun it was to photograph everything in sight. The mannequins had new outfits, at least new to PG. The wig store was in it’s glory. You have to wig in before you can wig out.
Soon, it was time to go up Moreland, towards Junkman’s Daughter. The knee was starting to protest, and PG didn’t want to force the issue. A couple of men were panhandling. One had a hint of menace in his voice, and the other had been wasted since Jimmy Carter was Governor. As PG walked by the stonezombie a second time, he was heard to say “lets get naked”. PG was going to say it’s too hot, but thought better of it. This was almost in front of the Vortex, and PG was concerned about a possible extention of their no idiot policy to the sidewalk.
Soon, PG and Uzi were back in the vehicle, heading up to the Piccadilly on North Druid Hills road. The server lady was offended that PG did not get a dessert. He said he would have gotten one if she had paid for it, which simply did not work.
One More Post About Brookhaven
By this time next week, we will know if the City of Brookhaven will be established. A lot of noise has been made. The competing claims made by NoCityBrookhaven (NCB) and BrookhavenYes (BY) are tough to sort out. There is a third committees registered with the State of Georgia, the Brookhaven Ballot Committee (BBC). BBC supports the new city. The role played by BY and BBC is a matter of speculation.
Chamblee 54 has posted five times about this issue in 2012. One way to chart the evolution of this issue is to review these posts.
Brookhaven Pie, published May 19, is a repost of Brookhaven Burger, posted May 20, 2011. Both have pictures of the Peachtree Road commercial strip in the pre Marta days. The city movement was in the planning stages. The post was made after a story at Peach Pundit. Here is a fun quote.
The story in Peach Pundit is a lively affair. People with reservations about this new city are given links calling them liberal crackpots . The author tells the tale of seeing a young man walking away with his lawn mower. He was not happy with the police response, and feels that an new city police force would do a better job.
The story spawned a festive comment thread. Instead of discussing the merits of a new city, the commenters discuss the pros and cons of confronting the lawn mower thief personally, as opposed to calling the police. There is one comment that begs to be quoted. I agree, creating government is not conservative. It is a conservative reaction to liberalism gone awry.
City Of Brookhaven was posted June 13. The mailers had started to arrive. … The yes mailer has racial undertones. It has a picture of Dekalb CEO Burrell Ellis, who is African American. The headline read “What’s CEO Burrell Ellis doing with Your Tax Dollars? There is a quote from an “Email from lobbyist to DeKalb County”, with a line about fighting the proposed new city.
This mailer was from BBC. PG looked for a web site, and could not find one. The difference between BBC and BY had not been made clear. To PG, they were just the people who wanted a new city.
The other issues … taxes, financial viability, police protection … were being discussed at this stage, at least at the NCB and BY websites. The BBC mailers were personality based DeKalb county bashing. It should be noted that the BBC mailer was the first message to arrive in the mailbox.
Brookhaven Town Hall Meeting was posted June 29. PG attended a meeting at Cross Keys. The bathroom did not smell like cigarette smoke. A collection of officials from BY, and several other cities, were on hand to promote the new city. The point was made that a new city would not be a new layer of government, but a parallel layer controlling certain aspects of governance. The other mayors said that they had their own naysayers, and that their towns were running smoothly.
Letter About Brookhaven marked a return to the personal attacks. A Republican politician wrote a letter to various media outlets, where he compared DeKalb county CEO Burrell Ellis, and County Commissioner Kathie Gannon, to Barack Obama. When PG went to the website of Ms. Gannon, what he found contradicted most of what was in that letter. The website also referred to a county study about decreased tax revenues. This would tend to support the NCB contention that the new city would not have enough money to operate on.
Somebody Made A Mistake was where things got interesting. There was another BHO bashing mailer, which was denounced by Chamblee54. It was soon pointed out that the mailer was from BBC, and not BY. Apparently, this is an important distinction. (The original title was “Brookhaven Yes made a mistake”. That was changed the next day.)
At roughly the same time this mailer was going out, Brookhaven Patch published NoCityBrookhaven Outraises, Outspends Cityhood Proponents. This article had many of the same talking points as the BBC mailer. The issue stressed by BBC in this mailer was the source of financing for NCB. Apparently, a few Historic Brookhaven residents have been the primary contributors to NCB.
The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, formerly known as the State Ethics Commission, has a dandy website showing the committee financial reports. There are reports about NCB Contributions, BY Contributions, and BBC Contributions The largest contributor to both BY and BBC is J. Patrick Hoban, CEO of Troncalli Motors, and a Historic Brookhaven resident.
The story at the Patch linked has a lively comment thread. Apparently, this has been going on for some time. A handful of people do the majority of the posting. Personal insults, threats, and name calling is part of the fun. Both sides are confident of victory. It is not known whether the pro city people in the comment thread are connected to BY, BBC, or both. The Patch has made noise about conduct and civility, but has not taken much action.
BY had a picnic at Ashford Park July 22. PG walked over to attend. He talked to J. Max Davis, the Chairman of BY. Mr. Davis stressed that the offensive flyer was not from his group. He said that he doesn’t know who is in BBC, and cannot control what they say. Mr. Davis did not denounce the mailer in this conversation, and evidently has not done so in public.
At this stage, it is coming down to trust and personalities. The financial claims made by BY and NCB are tough for a non expert to sort out. It is obvious that DeKalb county is poorly run, and not giving the Brookhaven area the attention it deserves. The question is, can BY/BBC do better?
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library.”
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