Rush To King Soopers
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Schrodinger Jokes ~ nypd hate crimes ~ hate crime ~ istheshipstillstuck ~ biden sb202
pivot table ~ DERRICK JAXN ~ blackvotersmatter ~ cannon arrest ~ cannon arrest
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1000 true fans ~ dead032470 ~ h.r. 1319 ~ Gerrymandering ~ repost
mathasville ~ glaad jesse ~ video ~ red dirt poetry ~ gloria and max
It turns out that Marthasville, with 12 letters, took too long to write. Someone decided that the feminine form of Atlantic was the best name for the railroad terminus. ~ xxx The husband of Georgia spa shooting victim Delaina Ashley Yaun says officers handcuffed him for hours before telling him his wife died ~ Nikuyah Walker Is this better? I’m asking the person who reported my short poem to FB. ~ Charlottesville: The beautiful-ugly it is. It lynched you, hung the noose at city hall and pressed the souvenir that was once your finger against its lips. It covers your death with its good intentions. It is a place where white women with Black kids collects signature for a white man who questions whether a black woman understands white supremacy. It is destructively world class. White people say that it is a place where gentrification started with the election of a Black women in 2017 and because of white power, a lie becomes #facts. Its daily practice is that of separating you from your soul. Charlottesville is void of a moral compass. It’s as if good ole tj is still cleverly using his whip to whip the current inhabitants into submissiveness. Charlottesville rapes you of your breaths. It suffocates your hopes and dreams. It liberates you by conveniently redefining liberation. It progressively chants while it conservatively acts. Charlottesville is anchored in white supremacy and rooted in racism. Charlottesville rapes you and covers you in sullied sheets. ~ @chamblee54 It is dehumanizing to say, about #SallyHemings , that she was incapable of feeling for #ThomasJefferson To hear today’s experts, everything they did together was rape #Charlottesville ~ I recently was given “no advertising or live appearance” probation. I had posted a meme, created by someone else. It gave credit/blame for some motivational nonsense to a German politician, with a little mustache. I posted the meme in 2016. ~ @GSpellchecker I don’t eat meat for ethical reasons, but these people peddling ‘intersectional veganism’ make me seriously consider cannibalism. ~ @chamblee54 When I go somewhere, I often bring a plastic bag, and pick up trash along the way. This afternoon, I saw this, and took it as a sign of approval. ~ City of Oakland Mayor is branded racist for giving families of color $500 a month if they earn under $59,000 with no rules on how they spend it – but offering poor white families nothin ~ This article has a description of the actual changes mandated by SB 202. The “Jim Crow” rhetoric of the Democrats is hysterically overblown. We have been poorly served. Instead of concrete information about what is being proposed, we have a scaremonger circus screaming racial nonsense. There are some specific parts of the legislation that are objectionable. Requiring a copy of voter id to get an absentee ballot is a bad idea. Criminalizing giving food/water to voters in line is a bad idea. Very little of the rest is problematic. If you know of some specifics, please comment below. ~ @chamblee54 what did the trooper say to Rep. Cannon? If he gave her a lawful order to stop the disruption, and she ignored him, then the arrest was justified. ~ It is psycho theatre. A highly questionable bill is rushed through. The Governor immediately signs it. A publicity hungry legislator tries to disrupt the signing, and is arrested. Did Kemp and Cannon have this planned? ~ ultracrepidarian noting or pertaining to a person who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside the area of his or her expertise – spell check suggestion: ultraconservative ~ @rupaul “Derogatory slurs are ALWAYS an outward projection of a person’s own poisonous self-loathing.” ~ This article has a description of the actual changes mandated by SB 202. The “Jim Crow” rhetoric of the Democrats is hysterically overblown. We have been poorly served. Instead of concrete information about what is being proposed, we have a scaremonger circus screaming racial nonsense. There are some specific parts of the legislation that are objectionable. Requiring a copy of voter id to get an absentee ballot is a bad idea. Criminalizing giving food/water to voters in line is a bad idea. Very little of the rest is problematic. If you know of some specifics, please comment below. ~ How would Stacey, or any other Governor, like it if a loudmouth tried to disrupt a bill signing? ~ this was written as part of a writing workshop. the theme was joy and guilty pleasure … joy is looking at spell check suggestions, seeing that the scs for ultracrepidarian, a person who gives advice or criticism outside of their expertise, the scs for ultracrepidarian is ultraconservative, my guilty pleasure is the gleeful practice of ultracrepidarianism, i find joy in learning keeping a list of online discoveries, and then writing poems under the latest one, the guilty pleasure is making rude facebook comments, and then chickening out, deleting them, but keeping a copy for myself, there is joy in walking up peachtree road to la fitness ~ pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
David And Elton
On page 327 of David Bowie: A Life, the Live Aid show goes down. “There wasn’t much love lost between David and Elton–perhaps they’d fallen out at some point …” This is a repost.
Elton John says he fell out with David Bowie over ‘token queen’ remark “David and I were not the best of friends towards the end. We started out being really good friends. We used to hang out together with Marc Bolan, going to gay clubs, but I think we just drifted apart…. He once called me “rock’n’roll’s token queen” in an interview with Rolling Stone, which I thought was a bit snooty. He wasn’t my cup of tea. No; I wasn’t his cup of tea”.
1975 was a different time. David Bowie was moving out of Ziggy Stardust, and became the Thin White Duke. At some point he starting doing lots of cocaine. On page 196 of DB:AL, Jayne County has stories. “It was pretty obvious the David was taking coke. He became very skeletal in his appearance and began rattling off speeches that sounded meaningless to the rest of us–strange things about witchcraft, demons, and sexual prostitution in ancient times … weird things that made everyone nervous. He began to get paranoid and accusing people of ripping him off and stealing his drugs…. He had to have cartilage removed from one part of his body and put in his nose because the coke had eaten his nose cartilage away.”
While David was popular in 1975, and had a certain aesthetic aroma, Elton John was a phenomenon. Everything Elton touched went to Number One. Elton was one of the most popular solo acts the market ever sold. Maybe David was jealous of Elton’s success.
By all accounts, Elton did his share of “hooverizing.” In 1975, Elton was officially in the closet, although a lot of people knew otherwise. In one impossible to confirm story, a friend of PG was working in an Atlanta club called Encore, later known as Backstreet. One busy night, he was in a hurry to get somewhere, and bumped into someone. The person he knocked over was Elton John.
The infamous Rolling Stone interview was part of the damage. “Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media. …. I mean, disco music is great. I used disco to get my first Number One single [“Fame”] but it’s an escapist’s way out. It’s musical soma. Rock & roll too — it will occupy and destroy you that way. It lets in lower elements and shadows that I don’t think are necessary. Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t.”
Cameron Crowe How about specifics? Is Mick Jagger evil? David Bowie “Mick himself? Oh Lord no. He’s not unlike Elton John, who represents the token queen — like Liberace used to. No, I don’t think Mick is evil at all. He represents the sort of harmless, bourgeois kind of evil that one can accept with a shrug…. Actually, I wonder … I think I might have been a bloody good Hitler. I’d be an excellent dictator. Very eccentric and quite mad.”
Playboy Magazine gave David another chance to talk about Hitler. “I’d love to enter politics. I will one day. I’d adore to be Prime Minister. And, yes, I believe very strongly in fascism.” “Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.” “#54: PLAYBOY: How so?” BOWIE: “Think about it. Look at some of his films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger. It’s astounding. And, boy, when he hit that stage, he worked an audience. Good God! He was no politician. He was a media artist himself. He used politics and theatrics and created this thing that governed and controlled the show for those 12 years. The world will never see his like.”
#77: PLAYBOY: “Last question. Do you believe and stand by everything you’ve said?” BOWIE: “Everything but the inflammatory remarks.” We don’t know whether a jab at Elton was inflammatory. “I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions–they know who they are. Don’t you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I’m not.”
Seven daily grams of coke (DB:AL, p.223) did not kill David Bowie. He soon moved on to make The Man Who Fell to Earth. People magazine helped out with the publicity. “No role could have suited David Bowie better in his first major movie than that of an inscrutable interplanetary traveler outfitted with human skin, sex organs, Ronald Reagan hair and humanoid pupils to slip in over his horizontal, mismatched feline slits.” Forty years before Donald Trump made the tangerine toupee cool, Ronald Reagan was prematurely orange. Pictures for this deplorable dive into hissyfit history are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Gerrymandering
99% Invisible recently had an episode about gerrymandering. It was based on a series at FiveThirtyEight, The Gerrymandering Project Gerrymandering is like the weather: many people talk about it, but few know how it works. One former governor of California likes to say that we should terminate gerrymandering. The Austrian accent is a nice touch. This is a repost.
Gerrymandering is “the division of electoral districts for partisan political advantage.” The name dates back to Elbridge Gerry, one of the founding fathers. (…we should remember eight men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and later attended the Constitutional Convention … Elbridge Gerry (the namesake of gerrymandering) refused to sign the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights.) When Mr. Gerry was Governor of Massachusetts, a bizarre district was drawn. It was said to look like a salamander, thus gerrymander.(Some purists say gary-mander.)
OK. How does it work? There are two terms used in the show, Cracking and Packing. “Cracking: Spreading like-minded voters apart across multiple districts to dilute their voting power in each. This denies the group representation in multiple districts. Packing: Concentrating like-minded voters together in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts. This gives the group representation in a single district while denying them representation across districts.” When you put these concepts into play, you start to cause brain damage.
The idea behind “The Voting Rights Act of 1965” was to safeguard the right of minorities to vote. The devil is in the details. “Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis. Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect.”
“In 1982, the North Carolina state legislature approved redistricting plans for the North Carolina State Senate and the North Carolina House of Representatives. The maps were challenged in United States District Court. The challengers alleged that the new maps “impaired black citizens’ ability to elect representatives of their choice in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.” The district court ruled that six legislative districts violated the Voting Rights Act “by diluting the power of the black vote.” The decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.
On June 30, 1986, the high court ruled unanimously in Thornburg v. Gingles that five of the aforementioned six districts “discriminated against blacks by diluting the power of their collective vote.” … In Thornburg v. Gingles, the court also established three criteria that must be met in order “to prove claims of vote dilution under section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act]:” “The minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.” “The minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.” “The minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.”
In the post 1990 census redistricting, an effort was made to create “majority-minority” districts. This did enable some minorities, mostly African American, to elect people to congress. It also had the effect of creating highly republican districts. When you pack the (mostly democrat) black people in a district, the neighboring districts become more white, and more republican.
One of the states affected by this is Georgia. Congressional districts in the peach state have long resembled abstract expressionism. It got so bad in 1995 that the US courts had to draw the new districts. Court Draws Georgia Map Of Congressional Districts “The State Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, ceded responsibility for drawing new Congressional lines to the courts in September when it failed to agree on a plan in a 20-day special session. That session was called after the United States Supreme Court ruled in June that Georgia’s 1992 Congressional map was unconstitutional because race played a dominant role in the configuration of the 11th District. Represented by Cynthia A. McKinney, who is black, the 11th snakes 260 miles through east Georgia, pulling pockets of black voters into a gerrymandered district that was intended to elect a minority candidate.” The bizarre district lines continue to this day.
There are probably not any easy solutions. We you try to remedy one problem, like racial imbalance, you aggravate another one, like overly republican districts. Arizona tried using an independent commission. The meetings wound up on the Jerry Springer show. Do we want to choose our representatives, or do our representatives want to choose their voters? Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Shock And Awe Day
Eighteen years ago, Iraq teetered on the edge of regime change. It was obvious what was going to happen, at least at first. America was going to storm in, kill a bunch of people, and take over.
In post 911 America, the military industrial complex saw an opportunity for plunder, unrivaled since the fall of the Soviet Union. The stories of WMD would infect the body politic with fear of a mesopotamian madman. Saddam Hussein wanted Iran to think he has wonder weapons, and did not think America was serious about regime change. We all make mistakes.
In the eighteen years since the time of shock and awe, trillions of dollars have gone down the drain, dragging the mighty American economy along into the sewers of bankruptcy. One of the oldest civilizations of mankind was reduced to hiding, from neighbors, behind concrete barricades. They fought the conquerors with bombs triggered by garage door openers. Thousands of women and children have been murdered. The WMD were never found. This is a repost.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Downtown’s Architectural Heritage
The tour began at the Commerce Club, It is a glorified parking deck, with a dining club on the top two floors. It was started as a place that would allow Jews. In the early sixties, the Commerce Club was the site of a secret meeting between Atlanta City officials, and Civil Rights demonstrators. Since it was mostly parking, the activists drove in and parked unannounced.
In 1992, PG saw Dan Quayle arrive to give a speech at the Commerce Club. A couple of hours later, PG was crossing Walton Street, when the Vice President’s limousine drove by. PG waved at the vehicle, only using one finger.
The next stop was the Fulton National Bank building. It was the first high rise built after the depression. For many years it was red brick, until some idiot had the idea of painting it beige. Across the street is 2 Peachtree. At 41 stories, it was the tallest building in town for a while. Some say it was the ugliest building downtown, although that is tough to quantify. An 8 story brick building in front was retrofitted with black panels, so that it would look like its tall neighbor. These panels are falling off, and may eventually be taken down.
Woodruff Park is across Five Points from 2 Peachtree. The legendary head of Coca Cola, Robert Woodruff, bought several blocks of aging buildings, and tore them down to create the park. Some say he wanted the open space in front of the Trust Company building, so it could face Peachtree. The Trust Company was Coca Cola’s bank. For years, the formula for Coca Cola was held in their vault.
In one legend, Governor Gene Talmadge went into the Trust Company lobby. This would be in the old building on Pryor Street. (Now Park Place) The Governor had enjoyed a happy lunch, and was being held up by two of his aides. Soon, Governor Talmadge felt the need to use the restroom, which he did in the corner of the lobby.
Gracing the North end of Woodruff Park, at 100 Peachtree, is the Equitable Building. It, and the adjacent Georgia Pacific building, were designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, or SOM. No, that is not short for SOM-bitch. These two buildings were more modern, and are sometimes called glass boxes. At least the GP building has some variation in the back.
Georgia Pacific was built on the site of the Loews Grand Theater. Across the street was a giant Coca Cola sign. GP did not think that sign fit in with their new building. Coca Cola was tired of making repairs to the sign, and was happy for an excuse to take it down.
Behind GP, on John Wesley Dobbs (formerly Houston Street, pronounced HOUSE ton) was the Belle Isle Garage. This was the original Merchandise Mart. At some point, the present Merchandise Mart was built on Peachtree. The people going to shows needed a place to stay, and John Portman started building hotels.
A few spots north, past the site of the Paramount Theater, is 191 Peachtree. John Portman had wanted to build there for years, but was never able to pull it off. Finally, the property was taken over by someone else, the S&W cafeteria was torn down, and Philip Johnson and John Burgee designed the high rise that sits there now.
PG asked if that building was still mostly unoccupied. The guide said that you read the AJC too much. After King & Spalding moved out, the building began a comeback, and is mostly occupied today. The parking garage, with faux columns outside, is a favorite.
Across the street, on the site of the Henry Grady Hotel and Roxy Theater, is the Peachtree Plaza hotel. There is a duplicate of this building in Detroit, that is 4 feet higher, but that doesn’t stop people from calling the Atlanta version the world’s tallest hotel. A few spaces north on Peachtree are the original Peachtree Center buildings.
One of the PC buildings is different from the rest. Mr. Portman was not able to buy the land for one building, but merely lease it. The lenders wanted to be able to tear the building down easily if land lease problems developed. This building has a steel frame, and is bolted together.
Another one of these buildings was all electric. This was a sixties concept, that is not much seen today. Across the street, a major tenant was the Atlanta Gas Light Company. An all electric building would not do. Natural Gas heating was installed. This building is not on the grid, but has a generator in the basement that supplies their electricity.
The tour ends with three hotels in a row. The Regency Hyatt House was revolutionary. It was the first modern hotel with a large atrium. Mr. Portman had lunch with Conrad Hilton, and described his plan. Mr. Hilton said it would not work. The management contract for the new hotel went to the Hyatt company, which was then little known outside California. The Regency has been renovated in the last few years, and does not have much of its old character.
A short walk over a sky bridge takes you to the Marriott Marquis. This is the Regency on steroids. The last time PG saw this building was during Dragon Con, when it was different. Across the street is the Hilton. It is another atrium building, with mini lobbies every few floors blocking the open space. The Hilton is built on the site of the Heart of Atlanta Motel, which is another story.
The last stop on the tour was One Peachtree Center. This was intended to be the crown jewel of John Portman’s empire, but it almost brought it down. An economic downturn hit during construction, and Mr. Portman’s lenders got nervous. John Portman went for being known as a baroque modernist, to just plain broke. He managed to survive.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. This is a repost. John Calvin Portman Jr. took the glass elevator to eternity on December 29, 2017.
π Day
Today is 3-14. It is a saturday, and 314 are the first three digits of pi (affectionately known as π ). It is a math thing, the number you multiply a diameter by to get the circumference. When your grammar school math teacher told you about π, she probably used 3.14, or 3 1/7. (PG went to school when Hewlett and Packard were still in the garage.)
You might also have heard the formula for the area of a circle, the racy π r squared . This means that you multiply π by the radius (half the diameter, a line from the border to the center point), and then multiply the whole contraption by the radius again. The formula has a funny sound to it. Pie are not square, cornbread is square, pie are round. Like Sly Stone says, all the squares go home.
According to wikipedia, π seems to have been known as early as 1900 b.c. The pyramids of Egypt have a π based feature. The Greek letter π is the first letter of the Greek word περίμετρος (perimeter) . This was determined OTP.
The pyramid- π function is fairly simple. The total length of the four sides, at the base, will be the same as the height of the pyramid, times two, times π. PG likes to make model pyramids. They are 6″ tall, and the base sides are 9 3/8″. The combination of these four sides is 37 1/2″. If you multiply 6x2x3.14, you get 37.68″ The .18″ is because of a measuring error.
A lady named Eve Astrid Andersson has a page of her website dedicated to π. The only trivia question that PG understood was the first one…1. What is the formal definition of pi? …the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter // 3.14159 // the radius of a unit circle // the surface area of a sphere of diameter 22/7 // a delicious dessert, especially if it contains cherries.
There is the football cheer from M.I.T. ” Cosine, secant, tangent, sine 3.14159 // Integral, radical, u dv, slipstick, slide rule, MIT!”
In 1998 a movie titled π was released. It caused brain damage in 3.14% of those who saw it. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that 1998 = 666 x 3.
π has been calculated to over five million digits. The second part of this feature are a few of those numbers. There are 82 characters in each line. This feature shows π extended to 10,165 digits. This is .02% of five million. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
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Slavery And Global Warming
Have you ever wondered why your ancestors owned other human beings? How can you justify something this cruel? In an NPR interview to promote a new book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening, Adam Goodheart has an answer. This is a repost.
It was economics. “But I think we think of it differently when we realize that the value of slave property, some $4 billion, enormous amount of money in 1861, represented actually more money than the value of all of the industry and all of the railroads in the entire United States combined. So for Southern planters to simply one day liberate all of that property would have been like asking people today to simply overnight give up their stock portfolios, give up their IRAs.”
Mr. Goodheart compares it to the situation today with fossil fuels. “many of us recognize that in burning fossil fuels we’re doing something terrible for the planet, we’re doing something terrible for future generations. And yet in order to give this up would mean sort of unraveling so much of the fabric of our daily lives, sacrificing so much, becoming these sort of radical eccentrics riding bicycles everywhere, that we continue somewhat guiltily to participate in the system. And that’s something that I use as a comparison to slavery, that many Americans in the North, and even I believe sort of secretly in the South, felt a sense of guilt, felt a sense of shame, that knew that the slave system was wrong but were simply addicted to slavery and couldn’t give it up. “
When the economic pressure is there, people will find a way to justify their actions. Slavery was justified in a number of ways. Today, there are people who deny the ill effects of using fossil fuels, and they have an eager audience. The payback for the environmental horror is in the future. This is similar to the way people today are paying … with racial turmoil … for slavery.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Post Racial America
It is a cliche among certain pundits that this is not “Post Racial America.” No one seems to know what PRA would look like. PRA might be less noisy, with fewer odors, than the current model. The opinion that we do not live in PRA seems unanimous. After PG heard the denial of PRA one too many times, he began to wonder something. Who said America is Post Racial?
Mr. Google has 119 million answers to the question “who said america is post racial?” The short answer is nobody. The closest thing on the front Google page is an NPR commentary from January 2008. This was the early stages of the BHO run for the White House. The commenter said that the election of a dark skinned POTUS might usher in a post racial era in America.
This piece will not have any fresh opinions about race relations in America. That subject has been worn out elsewhere. If someone finds it to their advantage to denounce “racism,” there will be an audience. The truth is, very few people have ever said that America is Post Racial.
This is a double repost, on the subject that people can’t get enough of. If you can’t say anything good, you can always talk about racism. Pictures for this friday morning are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Some times you see something, and realize that you are being pushed over a line. Today’s straw, landing on the camel’s back, was a meme. It has pictures of a statesman-like BHO, and a goat smiling BS. The text was white comic sans letters, on a black background. “Regarding those who call Obama an illegitimate president because his father was born in Kenya, Bernie Sanders replied: “No one asked me if I was a citizen or not, and my dad came from Poland. Gee, what’s the difference? Maybe the color of my skin.” The comment was from a Las Vegas town hall meeting. Some things that are said in Vegas need to stay in Vegas.
No one denies that white people and black people often do not get along. Few deny that there is systemic inequality. The connection of “birther” speculation to systemic inequality is tough to see. Of course, the definition of racism is elastic, and can fit whatever situation the observer wants to critique.
Are we helping the cause of racial tranquility by making comments like that? Yes, it is foolish for “birthers” to whine about a birth certificate. But entertaining followers in a town hall debate does not mean you are going to be able to govern. Maybe BS should focus on his economic fantasies, and quit scoring cheap shots about racism.
The Color Of My Skin was originally published in February, 2016, when BS was taken seriously. As we all know, HRC eventually got the Democratic nomination, only to lose to DJT in November.
Mr. Trump was one of the original “birthers,” or people disputing the Hawaiian birth of BHO. In the general election campaign, Democrats liked to say that DJT was a racist, with birtherism frequently given as an example. The many other unappealing parts of DJT, like crookedness and mental instability, were brushed aside, in the mad rush to scream racist. Some even went so far as to say that anyone voting for DJT was a racist. When the electoral votes were counted, DJT won.
Peachtree Street
PG finished a book, Peachtree Street-Atlanta. The author is William Bailey Williford, and it was published by the University of Georgia Press in 1962. PG found this at the Chamblee library, and this is probably the best way to find this book today. (Reissued by UGA Press.)
How this road got the name Peachtree is a good question. Most peaches grow south of the fall line. The story goes that there was a Creek Indian village called Standing Peachtree, located where Peachtree Creek runs into the Chattahoochee. During the war of 1812 Fort Peachtree stood there.
There was a trail that ran from Buckhead to an intersection with the Sandtown Trail, at what is now Five Points. A short distance south of this intersection was a settlement known as White Hall. For many years, Peachtree Street south of Five Points was known as Whitehall Road. At some point in the last thirty years, a decision was made to change Whitehall to Peachtree. It did not help the rundown condition of Whitehall Street.
In 1835 Governor Wilson Lumpkin decided that a railroad that would be centered near the junction of Peachtree Trail and Sandtown Trail. The new town was named “Marthasville”, after the daughter of the Governor. Martha Lumpkin resides in Oakland Cemetery today.
The village was soon renamed Atlanta, which was a feminine form of Atlantic. Houses, churches, and businesses were soon built on Peachtree Road. In 1856, Richard Peters built a flour mill. To insure a steady supply of firewood, he bought four hundred acres of land, for five dollars an acre. The land was between Eighth Street, North Avenue, Argonne Avenue, and Atlantic Drive.
Another pioneer citizen with a large landholding was George Washington (Wash) Collier. Mr. Collier bought 202 acres for $150 in 1847. The land was between West Peachtree, Fourteenth Street, Piedmont Road, Montgomery Ferry Road, and the Rhodes Center. Much of the land was used for the development of Ansley Park.
In 1854, Atlanta entertained, for the first time, a man who had been President. On May 2, Millard Fillmore arrived from Augusta on a private rail car.
There was some unpleasantness in 1864, which we will not concern ourselves with.
In 1866, there was a shocking murder. John Plaster was found dead, in an area known as “tight squeeze”. This was an area of shanties, at the present location of Crescent Avenue and Tenth Street. A hundred years later, this was near “the strip”, Atlanta’s hippie district, also called “Tight Squeeze”.
As the nineteenth century rolled along, many mansions were built on Peachtree Street. The road was paved, and streetcars ran up and down. Automobiles came, and came, and came. An expressway was built in the 1950’s, and quickly became obsolete. One by one, the mansions were torn down and replaced with businesses and churches.
The book was written in 1962, when the party was just getting started. The High Museum was known then as the Atlanta Art Association. In June of 1962, a plane full of prominent Atlanta residents crashed in Paris, killing all on board. As a memorial to those people, the Memorial Arts Center on Peachtree, at Fifteenth Street, was built.
Another phenomenon which is not explained by the book is the custom of naming everything here Peachtree. There are countless streets and institutions named for a fruit tree that likes warmer climates. Atlanta has a one street skyline, that stretches from Five Points to Peachtree Dunwoody Road, almost at the city limits. PG lives a quarter mile off Peachtree, in Dekalb County, and has no idea why Peachtree is a magic word.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. and The Library of Congress. This is the annual repost.
The Georgian Terrace Ballroom
The Georgian Terrace hotel used to have an adjacent ballroom. The building opened as the “Lucky Strike”, featuring “Duck Pin” bowling. At some time, it became a 1300 seat ballroom. It was not the grand ballroom, where events for the premiere of “Gone With The Wind” were held. As time moved on, the ballroom became a music performance hall. PG saw shows there under four different business names. After the Agora Ballroom closed, the building was vacant, until a fire August 30, 1987. The site of the ballroom is now occupied by an annex of the Georgian Terrace Hotel.
The first show PG saw at this facility was in 1972. The name of the business is forgotten, as is the act that performed. A band, comprised of people PG went to high school with, played before he got there.
In 1974, “Big Time” promoter Alex Cooley opened “Alex Cooley’s Electric Ballroom”. (Alex Cooley died December 1, 2015.) The first show that PG saw was Dr. John The Night Tripper. A few months later, Capricorn artists Cowboy played, with a vulgar New York band named Mercury opening. Gato Barbieri played, with PG wondering how people could dance to that type of music.
Several major acts appeared at the Ballroom, mostly without PG in the audience. KISS played there in 1974, and photographs from backstage are in the embedded video. In April of 1974, Steely Dan was across from the Fox. In the summer of 1974, The Tubes played a week at the ballroom, with another heavily hyped show. On January 23, 1976, The Patti Smith Group played at the ballroom.
In 1975, Bruce Springsteen was on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and was receiving a promotional push unlike anything seen before. He played a show at the ballroom that summer, with a generous press party in the balcony. (At one unforgettable show Alex was caught off guard by a Bruce Springsteen request. “He asked if we could shut down the cash registers because they were making too much noise!… That’s the only time I ever did that.” Alex admits.)
PG attended two shows in 1975. Mckendree Spring opened for Fanny, while PG drank too many bourbon and cokes. In November of 1975, Juice Newton opened for Hot Tuna. Miss Newton seemed to be a bit pale, and performed “Get drunk and screw”. Hot Tuna was amazing. They went on stage at 10:55, and played, without a break, until 2:50. The drummer wore a shirt, mother fucking hot tuna. Few would argue that night.
In autumn of 1977, some brave soul opened a place called “The Ballroom” in the space on Peachtree Street. One night, PG went with some friends to see an act, Happy the Man. There seemed to be a bit of chaos in the management of the facility. The Great Southeast Music Hall loaned a few microphones for the show. When the show was over, PG walked out to a car, whose motor was running, with the driver asleep inside.
In the summer of 1978, the ballroom opened as The Agora Ballroom. Apparently, there is a music hall in Cleveland with that name, and they opened branch facilities around the country. There were some shows that PG did not attend. Todd Rundgren opened the facility August 19, 1978. On October 2, 1979, The Clash played. Pictures from the crowd appeared on an album by the band. On December 2, 1981, U2 made their Atlanta debut.
A few weeks after the opening, PG won tickets to an all Texas show. Marcia Ball opened, and a bored PG went to a neighborhood bar to drink beer. PG returned later, and stayed long enough for the singer with Asleep at the Wheel to ask the crowd, Are you stoned?
In November of 1978, PG called a radio station, and asked to be put on the guest list for Talking Heads . (For Talking Heads, and three links in the following paragraphs, the link is for a previous Chamblee 54 post about the show.) The first six people he called were busy, but the last one agreed to go. On the bus going home, a group of black men started to make unfriendly comments. At the next stop, a black friend of PG got on the bus, and went to talk to him.
A few weeks later, Tim Curry made his United States debut. Some record company invested a lot of money in him, and supplied him with an outstanding band. PG was wandering around the balcony after the first show, and saw Tom Waits sitting at a table. The bodyguard said no, that’s not Tom Waits, it is just someone that looks like him. At a bar, after the show, PG was raving about what he had seen, when a lady came up to him. What color are your eyes? They are brown, because you are full of shit. Soon, the 23 Oglethorpe was taking him home.
Somewhere in the haze of 78 and 79, Ultravox brought their synthetics to the Agora. A local band, First Blood, was more entertaining as the opener. PG drank a very large can of Foster’s beer, and floated through the proceedings. After the show, PG was invited to a party in Candler Park. On the way there, there was a horrific car crash on Ponce de Leon. At the party, friends of First Blood dissected their performance, between lines of coke.
One night, PG was enjoying drink specials at a neighborhood bar. He took a break, walked over to the Agora, and saw a few minutes of a show by Freddie Hubbard.
In early 1979, the B 52s were on the verge of stardom. (Here is a nifty feature about the Atlanta local music scene in those days.) The opener for the 52s was The Brains , yet another talented band that never made it big. At the table next to PG, a lady wore a dynamite World War Two army uniform.
Later in 1979, Ted Turner had an idea for a TV show, “Live at the Agora”. The first show was filmed in Atlanta, and featured Graham Parker and the Rumor. If they ever show that film again, and you see a crowd shot, that is PG wearing a white T shirt, with a white Agora iron on logo. Parker was a great musician, who had the misfortune to look like Big Bird’s nerdy little brother. If Graham Parker looked like Bruce Springsteen, he would have been a superstar.
In March of 1980, Lene Lovich came to the Agora. About a year later, Spirit played on Peachtree Street. The show was sponsored by a radio station, and tickets were $2.96. Despite the low price, and high musical quality, the balcony was closed, and only about a hundred people were at the show. PG thought this was odd, but little surprised him by this time.
The last show that PG caught at the Agora was The Ramones. Joey and the pinheads were past their prime, with only two original members playing. It was an all ages show, with alcohol served in the balcony. Downstairs was a festive party, with costumes and enthusiastic high school kids. The balcony was the same rock and roll drunks you had seen for years. The Ramones would have made a great oldies band, if they could have quit dying. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Mardi Gras
It is fat tuesday again. For someone who lived most of his life in Georgia, it is just another day.
In 1990, PG went to carnival. He rented sleeping bag space in a house on Marigny Street, just outside the quarter. It was like nothing he had ever seen.
This was 14 months after PG quit drinking. If he had life to do over, he would have gone to Mardi Gras first. He did feel good about going through that much drinking without being tempted to participate.
By the end of the Rex Parade, PG was getting tired of the whole shebang, Mob scenes of drunks, in costume, can get old. PG has not been back.
Two years later, the Grateful Dead was playing at the Omni, and the camp followers were in the parking lot. PG would go on his lunch hour and observe. A young lady walked by, and PG said Happy Mardi Gras. She gave him a string of beads.
Five years after that, PG had a boss from New Orleans. He looked like the Grinch who stole Christmas. He also hated Mardi Gras. PG did not know this, and greeted him Tuesday morning with a cheerful Happy Mardi Gras. If looks could kill, PG would have dropped dead. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Narco State Rag
This feature was written July 13, 2010. The situation in Afghanistan is little better. If we leave, the country falls into chaos. If we stay, we spend money we don’t have. It is a bitch.
Some people euphemize bitch by saying that something is a bear. Across the frontier from Afghanistan, the Russian bear is dealing with a heroin epidemic. Some say the United States suckered the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan in 1979. The disastrous war that followed led to the fall of the Soviet Union. We are still dealing with the karma.
Tom Dispatch has an audio feature about Afghanistan, and the many unanswered questions about our war there. We invaded Afghanistan to get revenge for 911, and looked for a reason later.
At the 3:06 mark on the tape, when Tom makes a comment Afghanistan being a narco state. PG had a flash of understanding about the reason behind this war. This may even have been powerful enough to ignore the reports about a terror strike in September 2001, and let 911 happen.
The rumors of CIA involvement in drug trafficking are wide spread and long term. When planes went to Central America in the eighties to bring arms to the contras, they came back to the United States loaded with cocaine. There are stories of collusion with the government in Cuba. There are many, many more stories about connections between the US government and the drug trade.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they cracked down on the poppy farmers. Much of the raw opium for heroin/morphine/opium is grown in Afghanistan. This was not a pleasing for the CIA.
Could it be that the real reason for our involvement in Afghanistan is to ensure the flow of narcotics into the hungry world? This would be a big cash cow for the CIA, although not enough to justify the amounts of money being spent on the conflict.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
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