Fresh Loaf

That’s how bad the economy is!

According to the AJC:

Smash-and-grab burglars struck a Buckhead clothing store before daybreak Friday.

The burglars broke out a window at the T.J. Maxx store on the Buckhead Loop shortly after 4 a.m., Atlanta police spokesman Eric Schwartz said.

Schwartz said the store manager told investigators that the suspects stole 30 pair of blue jeans and 50 Polo shirts.

Geez, smash-and-grabbers. You could at least leave the affordable designer jeans alone. Thanks alot.

(Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

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If so, you’re screwed.

A frightening story in today’s New York Times explores the toxic toll on families who — unbeknownst to them — moved into former meth houses.

“The meth lab home problem is only going to grow,” said Dawn Turner, who started a Web site, www.methlabhomes.com, after her son lost thousands of dollars when he bought a foreclosed home in Sweetwater, Tenn., that turned out to be contaminated. Because less is known about the history of foreclosed houses, Ms. Turner said, “as foreclosures rise, so will the number of new meth lab home owners.”

It can cost $5,000 to $100,000 to decontaminate a former meth house. One Texas woman lost pretty much everything after buying one such home:

“It makes you crazy,” Ms. [Francisca] Rodriguez said. “Our credit is ruined, we won’t be able to buy another house, somebody exposed my kids to meth, and my dog died.”

Only one state, Colorado, provides federal funds to help innocent property owners clean up meth-infested homes. As for the Peach State …

In other states, like Georgia, landlords and other real estate owners have fought a proposed cleanup law.

Thanks, Georgia.

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1. Atlanta’s doin’ it and lovin’ it, says Trojan study (We’re No. 1 in the nation for sexual satisfaction and No. 2 for frequency of sex. Yeah, right.)

2. Washington City Paper’s Marion Barry story = gold (Speaking of surprising sex stories, the City Paper’s doozie on former mayor Barry was such a hit it crashed the paper’s website. What do you expect from the headline: “He put me out in Denver ’cause I wouldn’t suck his dick”?)

3. Filthy Rich: Best of Atlanta 2009 kicks off today (There are 18 days left to vote for the city’s best bands, restaurants, galleries, music venues, artists, shops and cultural attractions.)

4. Peachtree Streetcar vision isn’t dead yet (But it ain’t exactly called desire.)

5. GDOT, Beltline strike deal on vital track segments (City now controls roughly half of the right of way along the Beltline’s 22-mile loop.)

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Atlanta author Paul Hemphill, a celebrated columnist for the Atlanta Journal and the author of a popular biography of Hank Williams, died today at the age of 73, from cancer that had spread from his mouth to his lungs.

According to his AJC obit:

As a columnist and author, Hemphill entranced readers chronicling the blue-collar South. He wrote about stock cars and country music, church burnings and church evangelists. His 15 books, including nonfiction work and novels, reverberated with all the twang and tears of a Hank Williams tune.

UPDATE: JKelly writes in the comments that Hemphill’s “memorial will be [held] at A.S. Turner & Sons in Decatur. Visitation is Tuesday July 14 from 6-8PM, and the service is Wednesday July 15 at Noon.”

In a 2005 profile of Hemphill, former Creative Loafing Senior Editor Doug Monroe opened with a moving anecdote of the talented writer:

Paul Hemphill lifts the chewed-up piece of Nicorette gum out of his mouth and sticks it in a paper napkin. This is a man who used to fire up 20 of those mean little nonfiltered Camels a day and now he chews pellets of doped-up gum. It is an indignity.

Hemphill is at Manuel’s Tavern on a Tuesday night — government-in-exile night — with Democratic politicos, cops and ex-newspapermen. He’s at a big round table with his wife, Susan Percy, and a circle of friends. They’re passing around an early copy of his new book, Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams. They’re all pulling for it to be a hit.

Hemphill is 69, recovering from a stroke, his face pale and gaunt. But you look at the book cover and then at him. You can see a bit of the late Hank Williams in his new biographer. The resemblance is uncanny: Two boys rising up out of blue-collar Alabama, born 13 years apart, both with big ears, both 6-1, 150 pounds, with a tendency to shrink into the 130s when the booze kicked in. And, boy, did the booze kick in.

Continue reading “Hemphill’s return” …

(Photo by Jim Stawniak)

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Have you been wondering why your employees are 19 percent less productive this year? Could it be because of this:

The number of Facebook users in the Atlanta area rose 142 percent the last six months, from 535,000 to nearly 1.3 million, according to a digital marketing firm called iStrategyLabs.

Peter Corbett, a 2003 Emory grad who founded iStrategyLabs, said he has no solid theories to explain the Atlanta surge. He’s analyzed Facebook usage for two years using data Facebook publicly supplies to its advertisers.

Los Angeles (97 percent) and Houston (71 percent) saw the next highest increases.

According to the AJC story story quoted above, 72 million Americans are now spending countless hours every week on Facebook — which means they’re filling out ridiculous polls (”If you were a dog, what breed would you be?”), sharing inconsequential details of their lives with virtual strangers (guilty!) and hoping that their “friends” don’t tag them in unflattering photos (thank the social-networking gods for the “remove tag” option).

One more thing: Facebook is no longer for the young and hip. The biggest group of Facebookers are now the 35-to-54-year-olds. (Admittedly, many of them are still hip, but definitely not young.) Yikes.

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1. Video: Midtown Atlanta parking deck collapse aftermath (Weirdly, this ain’t the first collapse tied to Hardin Construction.)

2. Inman Park Properties implosion leaves neighborhood landmarks in limbo (UPDATE: Foreclosure of Inman-owned Clermont Hotel has been delayed.)

3. Profile: Matthew Cardinale, editor of Atlanta Progressive News (Cardinale isn’t one to shy away from controversy. Just read the comments to this post …)

4. Atlanta tax hikes: Profiles in cowardice (Best chocolate eclair analogy ever.)

5. Tiffany Brown joins mayoral race! (We heart ironic punctuation — and mediocre GPAs!)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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1. Congress debates, votes on cap-and-trade energy bill (Good news: The House passed the monumental energy-conversation bill. Bad news: Georgia Congressman Paul Broun has embarrassed the entire state.)

2. Clermont foreclosure is tip of the iceberg (The plot thickens.)

3. Michael Jackson tributes in Atlanta (Atlanta celebrates the King of Pop. Twitter crashes. And Perez Hilton weeps.)

4. Coolest contest ever: Redesign the Clermont Hotel (The contest would have been a lot cooler if the seedy hotel wasn’t in danger of foreclosure. See No. 2.)

5. Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter told to vacate building (In the end, surprisingly, the homeless prevailed.)

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This just in, from Amnesty International’s media relations director, Wende Gozan Brown: The country’s highest court has postponed its decision on whether to hear the appeal of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose innocence claims have caused an international outcry.

Although a decision was expected today, the U.S. Supreme Court has opted to wait until it reconvenes in September — which will ward off a death warrant for Davis.

Davis already has had three execution dates set over the past three years, and once came within hours of execution before a last-minute stay was granted.

We’ll be updating this as the story develops. Stay tuned.

Here’s a statement we just received from Amnesty International:

“This delay is an indication that the Supreme Court is concerned by the gravity of Troy Davis’  innocence claims,” said Laura Moye, director of Amnesty International USA’s Death Penalty Abolition Campaign.  ”We will continue to call on all authorities, including the Supreme Court, to finally hear the evidence that has motivated hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to raise their voices and demand justice.”

(Photo courtesy Georgia Department of Corrections)

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Thomas Wheatley’s kick-ass cover story about his battle with alcoholism, “Sober,” was named the second-best feature story in the country at the Association of Alternative Newsweekly’s annual conference this past weekend. Yay Thomas!

The AAN awards are the most prestigious for the nation’s altweeklies.

The other winners in the Feature Story category for 2008 were Westword’s “The Good Soldier” (first place), Westword’s “Father of Invention” (third place), Houston Press’s “Mental Anguish” (honorable mention), and L.A. Weekly’s “From Silver Lake to Suicide” (honorable mention).

Our sister papers Washington City Paper and Chicago Reader took home a whopping five and two AAN awards, respectively. Congrats, guys!

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Rank of Atlanta rapper Soulja Boy Tell ’Em’s Twitter page on a list of “businesses” with the highest number of Twitter followers: 9

Rank of CNN: 1

Total number of Twitterers following Soulja Boy: 892,491

Total number of “tweets” the rapper — or his handlers — have posted on his Twitter site: 4,412

Estimated number of tweets worldwide that were related to the Iran protests, following the country’s June 12 election: 79,000

Estimated percentage of tweets that referenced Michael Jackson in the two hours following the king of pop’s death: 30

Total number of Twitter members worldwide: 37 million

Number of other major social-networking sites that have grown faster than Twitter over the past year: 0

Number of jobs that MySpace was forced to cut following stiff competition from Twitter and Facebook: 300

Sources: Twibs.com, twitter.com/souljaboytellem, WashingtonPost.com, ColumbusDispatch.com, Mashable.com, NYTimes.com

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According to a story on Savannah’s WTOC.com, the country’s highest court will decide — perhaps as soon as tomorrow on Monday, June 29 — whether it will hear the case of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose execution has been delayed three times based on claims of his innocence.

According to WTOC, the U.S. Supreme Court will have a conference today to decide whether to take Davis’ case. The story also states: “Davis’ sister, Martina Correia, says the Supreme Court could have a decision by Friday or Monday or it could be as late as this fall.”

Seven of nine trial witnesses who helped convict Davis in 1991 have since recanted their testimony. The courts have consistently ruled against considering the recantations and other new evidence that suggest Davis might not have killed Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

The U.S. Supreme Court delayed one of Davis’ execution dates, but ultimately declined to hear the case. The latest appeal is based on a different legal claim.

More to come …

UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme Court is considering an unusual — and longshot — habeas corpus petition filed directly to that court. According to June 19 story on Savannah’s WSAV.com:

Davis’s lawyers have filed a habeas petition before the U.S. Supreme Court, but many assume that because of past rejections by the high court, that Davis’s last option may be a new trial at the local level.

Also, check out this L.A. Times story on Davis from earlier this month for some of the political complexities surrounding the case.

(Photo courtesy Georgia Department of Corrections)

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From an AJC story about an uptick in burglaries near Tech’s campus:

More police will hit the streets to help combat a spike in crime targeting Georgia Tech students, officials said.

Georgia Tech and Atlanta Police have scheduled a press conference for 3 p.m. today to announce the steps they are taking to stop the crime spike.

Funny, when a bartender was murdered in January at his place of work on Memorial Drive — following a string of burglaries and robberies in the area — I don’t remember a press conference being called by police. (Only after detectives caught one of the bartender’s killers did the Atlanta Police Department hold a press conference.) Nor was there the promise of more patrol officers working the street.

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UPDATE: This might NOT be the coolest contest ever, because the Clermont is facing foreclosure. More to come. Stay tuned!

Atlanta’s favorite den of iniquity is calling “all designers, architects, students, creative geniuses, butlers, bell boys, photographers, tourists, bartenders, dancers and engineers” to try their hand at redesigning the iconic Clermont Hotel.

But it’s not the hotel’s infamous basement lounge — where boobs obliterate beer cans and strippers strut their sometimes sagging stuff — that needs a makeover. No way.

Rather, it’s the hotel’s lobby, rooftop and guestrooms that are dying for a new look. (And, in the case of the rooms, a new set of sheets.) The real estate brokerage firm that’s attempting to sell the hotel — while preserving the lounge, of course — is offering $1,000 (rad), a weekend at the Clermont (sorta rad, as long as you bring your own linens, air freshener and earplugs) and a year’s supply of Whynatte energy drink (a seemingly unappealing but reportedly tasty latte in a can) to the winning design.

Second prize is somewhat less desirable: a PBR tall boy and a lap dance.

According to the submission form:

Candidates are requested to submit design concepts that visually convey the re-birth of The Clermont Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. The Clermont Hotel is a long standing icon just to the east of Midtown Atlanta and home to the nationally renowned Clermont Lounge which opened in 1965. Submissions should capture the uniqueness and funkiness the Clermont is known for. … Candidates are encouraged to work within perspective views (supplied on web site) and provide a concept statement.

The deadline for entries is July 22. Might I suggest this for inspiration?

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A Georgia Department of Natural Resources meeting

1. Atlanta city infrastructure best in country? (The list-generating business consultants at Mercer say Atlanta has the best city infrastructure in the United States. Um, what?)

2. Blog: Rep. Bearden, R-Glock, paid by Carrollton — but for what? (Carrollton city manager told CL that the lawmaker often leads programs and initiatives and assists with some matters “you can’t talk about.” Well, that settles it.)

3. TEAM COVERAGE: Piedmont Park pool poo spill lead story on AJC.com (Atlanta’s daily newspaper: No. 1 for No. 2 news!)

4. Parking scofflaws, your free ride will soon be over (Illegally parked cars with unpaid parking tickets will soon be booted. Oh crap.)

5. Coyle makes Atlanta City Council bid official (Neighborhood activist who fought to preserve the integrity of the Beltline makes a go at politics.)

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Evidence of an offense Zach Higgins committed at age 14 later came back to haunt him.

Editor’s note: It is CL’s policy to withhold the name of a victim of sexual assault.

The young woman was in trouble. Her father was on his way to Atlanta to pick her up and bring her back to their Fayette County home. He had just found out, through her roommate at Georgia Tech, that she’d been hanging out in her dorm room with her boyfriend. That wasn’t allowed. More importantly, the woman’s family deeply disapproved of him.

Once she was back in Fayette County, the woman got into an intense discussion with her parents. They wanted to know why she continued to see someone they didn’t want her to see.

“My parents were asking me why I was acting that way,” the young woman later told a Fayette County jury. “And I just told them because I felt like I wasn’t worth anyone better. And they kept asking me why, until it finally came out.”

She told her parents that her insecurity stemmed from another boy and an incident that occurred almost three years earlier, at the beginning of her junior year at Sandy Creek High School. The two had worked together at a local pizza place, and she admittedly had a crush on him. He showed up at their house one night, while her parents weren’t home. She said at first, they were watching TV. Then, after they started kissing, he forced himself on her.

Upon hearing her story, her parents drove her straight to the police department, where she hand-wrote a statement, dated April 21, 2008, describing the events of that night in 2005:

“I told him that’s enough, he should leave, and I’ll talk to him another day,” the young woman wrote. “But he ignored me and said, ‘I’ll take my pants off, and then you.’ So he unzipped his pants and pushed them down. And that’s when I froze, and I kept telling myself there’s no way he’s going to do that.”

Continue reading “Was Zach Higgins convicted of rape based on the evidence?” >>

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1. Mayor’s rebuttal of Atlanta crime rankings misleading and incomplete (How’s that for a thorough headline! No wonder this post was so popular.)

2. Suspected Holocaust museum shooter identified as Holocaust denier James Von Brunn (Octogenarian authored idiotic prose, including the book, Kill The Best Gentiles!)

3. Ga. drought ‘is over,’ water restrictions eased (Environmentalists hope residents will continue conserving water. Unfortunately, Georgians have very short memories.)

4. Atlanta schools, ADA strike deal over TAD funds (Atlanta Development Authority will return $18 million to the cash-strapped school system.)

5. Buckhead coalition pushing for end to Ga. 400 toll (Two-decade-old promise vowed to shut down the cash-cow toll booth in 2011.)

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1. The word is a ‘ghetto’ (We posed a question to readers — Is the word “ghetto” so off limits it’s become, um, ghettoized? — and y’all had some interesting things to say. Thanks!)

2. Atlanta: America’s ’second least safe city’? (The stats suggest that could be the case, but some aren’t so sure.)

3. Roy Barnes: Tanned, rested and ready (Barnes is baaaaaaaack! And the governor’s race is about to get a helluva lot more interesting.)

4. Biden to Perdue on rail funding: ‘Georgia gets nothing’ (VP: Just joshin’, Sonny!)

5. Less-than-fond memories of Barnes’ first term (Not everyone is enamored of the former guv and his bid to get his old job back.)

*This blog post has been edited to correct an error.

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Um, I’m at a loss for words over this one. How about you check out an excerpt from the press release that just landed in my inbox:

The press release goes on to state: “GERRY claimed that the molds were for him to make tofu babies to serve at dinner parties.”

Have fun in federal prison, Phil!

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1. Injured cops video Shirley probably doesn’t want you to watch (What’s going on in the video made one man so mad, he said he wanted to hit Mayor Shirley Franklin with a baseball bat. Bad idea.)

2. Brenda Lee forcibly removed from Obama press area (Macon reporter — and not the ’60s songstress — makes a spectacle of herself while being dragged away from Air Force One.)

3. Perception of Crime watch (According to the mayor and police chief, Atlanta isn’t experiencing a crime wave — it’s experiencing a perception of crime wave. Have you been a victim of a perception of crime? If so, please fill out this form.)

4. Vindictive, thin-skinned mayor acting vindictive, thin-skinned (Franklin wants the feds to investigate the police union president who made the bat statement. See No. 1.)

5. State Sen. John Wiles confuses MARTA with car wash (Lawmaker so frustrated with transit agency, he says he wouldn’t let them wash his wheels.)

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Rank of Atlanta among 10 cities when it comes to the highest percentage of arrestees who tested positive for drugs last year: 6

Rank of Atlanta when it comes to the highest percentage of arrestees who tested positive for cocaine, specifically: 1

Percentage of New York City arrestees who tested positive for cocaine: 27

Percentage of Atlanta arrestees who did: 40

Number of cities, besides Atlanta, that had more arrestees test positive for cocaine than marijuana: 0

Percentage of Chicago arrestees who tested positive for marijuana: 48

Percentage of Atlanta arrestees who did: 39

Number of cocaine packets found last week on a man in the Turner Field parking lot: 118

Number of cocaine and money-laundering counts filed in late May against a Georgia criminal defense attorney: 40

Sources: U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, WSB-TV, Fulton Daily Report.

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Newt hearts Twitter

Newt’s bringing his unique brand of sanctimony to the Twit-o-sphere.

Via AJCer Jim Galloway’s Political Insider blog:

Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich just twittered the following to his closest 344,357 friends about five minutes ago, never mentioning U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor by name:

“White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.” …

The aide said the “tweets” are genuine, which makes Gingrich the most prominent Republican yet to take a hard line against Obama’s nominee for the high court.

Newt Gingrich, defender of “white man racists” and traditional marriages. We Georgians should be proud.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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1. The Cheetah, one of Atlanta’s favorite strip joints, is a patriot (More patriotic than the National Museum of Patriotism? Maybe.)

2. Georgia is South Korea (At least when it comes to sizing up human development. And yes, Georgia ranks above Mississippi and Alabama — and even Florida!)

3. CL’s Thomas Wheatley is a finalist for national journalism award (Wheatly’s on the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ shortlist for “Sober.” Hooray!)

4. Ga. GOP primary: A sad and soul-crushing spectacle (State Rep. Austin Scott apes McCain at the state GOP convention.)

5. Huey Lewis — err, Mike Evans — calls for Pelosi’s resignation (Congressional wannabe issues unexpected and hilarious press release. U.S. House Speaker doesn’t blink.)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Jonathan Redding, who along with three other gunmen is suspected of killing Standard bartender John Henderson, was indicted today for Henderson’s murder, the AJC reports.

Redding, who is 17 and remains jailed without bond, is believed to be a member of the Mechanicsville street gang 30 Deep.

According to the AJC story:

Police are asking the public to help identify the three other suspected gang members who participated in the Standard shooting and other crimes, said Yvette Brown, a spokeswoman for the Fulton County district attorney’s office. The only description available is for three teenage males.

A $50,000 reward is being offered for info leading to the arrests of the three suspects.

Redding is not believed to have fired the fatal shot at Henderson, 27, during a January armed robbery of the popular Memorial Drive restaurant and bar. But under state law, Redding doesn’t have to have directly killed Henderson to be guilty of his murder.

According to Georgia’s felony murder statute, a defendant is guilty of murder as long as the homicide occured during the commission of another felony (in this case, armed robbery). Felony murder carries a mandatory life sentence.

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The AJC reports that more than two-dozen former judges, justices and prosecutors are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that a lower court should hear new evidence in the case of longtime death row inmate Troy Davis:

Among those signing the friend-of-the-court brief were former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Larry Thompson; two former state Supreme Court chief justices, including Norman Fletcher of Georgia; nine former U.S. attorneys, including former Georgia congressman Bob Barr and former FBI Director William Sessions; three former judges from the federal appeals court in Philadelphia; and former state attorneys general from Florida and New Jersey.

Davis has received eleventh-hour stays of execution three times in the past two years and is on the verge of exhausting every available appeal. To date, no court has heard evidence that seven of the nine trial witnesses to testify against him have since recanted their testimony, many of them claiming police initimidation.

Photo gallery of the May 19 rally held at the Georgia state capitol for Troy Davis

(Photo courtesy Georgia Department of Corrections)

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Anyone who’s read “Sober,” Thomas Wheatley’s gut-wrenching account of his battle with alcoholism, knows that the story  does a beautiful job describing the horrors and rewards of overcoming a common — and often unacknowledged — disease. (If you haven’t read it, you should. Now.)

The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies has taken notice. “Sober” has been deemed one of the top five feature stories published by the country’s largest-circulation alt-weeklies. Other finalists for the AAN Award in the Feature Story category hail from LA Weekly, Houston Press and Denver’s Westword. The ranking of the finalists will be announced in late June.

Our sister papers, Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper, earned nominations in another six categories. Congrats guys! And congrats, Mr. Wheatley!

In other awards news, CL Photo Editor Joeff Davis is a finalist for the Atlanta Press Club’s Journalist of the Year Award in the Photography category. Go Joeff!

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