Street View Atlanta

Last year, the northwest segment of the Beltline that stretches between West End and Washington Park was overgrown and nearly impossible to explore. Urban hikers were promised scratches to the legs and tree limbs to the face.

That was before volunteers and work crews cleaned up west and northwest Atlanta’s portion of theproposed 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit. Now urban hikers will find a clear-cut, 12-foot-wide walkway that offers an uncommon perspective on the city.

On Sunday, an acquaintance and I walked approximately two miles of the segment, some of which cuts behind single-family residential neighborhoods, winds past a mature hardwood forest, and passes through several bridges that decades ago served trains.

After starting at the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive overpass — now lined with guardrails and covered with plywood to prevent tumbles to the roadway below — we traveled south under I-20 as far as the old Alterman Foods warehouse (now it’s a Czarnowski location). Along the way, we encountered a family of stray dogs lounging in the middle of the walkway, asleep in the sun.

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Sarah, a self-professed crazy chick, works as a barista at the Little Five Points Starbucks, but her labor of love is party promotion.

Read about the political science major’s drug of choice, most gruesome childhood injury and what she likes to do while listening to Broken Social Scene in the Lust List Q&A.

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by Andisheh Nouraee

From the ‘All I’m Doing Is Saying’ Dept:

If you accept the principle that transit lines should be color-coded in a manner approved by various ethnic and racial indignation coordinators, then any discussion between MARTA and local Asian-American activists about the Yellow Line kerfuffle must include more black and Latino activists than Asians.

After all, the Yellow Line serves stations in residential sections of four predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

And contrary to the impression given by yesterday’s Yellow Line news stories, census data showsDoraville and Chamblee are much more heavily Hispanic than they are Asian.

Because the Yellow Line also goes through Midtown and Buckhead, it’d only be fair to include a gay man and wealthy Buckhead socialite on the committee. If, by this point, the committee was running low on chairs, maybe you could just get Elton John to represent both.

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When Frank Manley arrived at Emory University as a student in 1948, he had no ambitions of becoming a writer. “I wanted to do something that would use my life well, that would fill my life with interest and enthusiasm,” he told me in a 1998 Creative Loafing interview.

Manley died on Nov. 9, 2009, at the age of 79, and his friends and colleagues attest that Manley lived an enthusiastic life that brought out the enthusiasm of others. His poetry, prose, plays and scholarship earned Manley multiple honors, including two Georgia Author of the Year Awards; two Guggenheim Fellowships; a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship; and first prize at the 1985 Humana Festival of New American Plays for his play Two Masters, which starred Kathy Bates. At the time, the Boston Globe’s Kevin Kelly wrote, “Frank Manley has the uncanny ability to dramatize scenes that, at first, seem alien and almost incidental, only to reveal themselves as universal.”

Ironically, given Manley’s achievements, he became a writer gradually. He majored in Renaissance literary history at Emory, and after serving in the U.S. Army, earning a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, and teaching English at Yale University, he returned to Emory in 1964, where he taught until his retirement in 2000. He turned to verse in the late 1960s in response to that decade’s social and political upheaval. “I began to write poetry to create a small world of clarity and order at that time,” Manley said. He began writing short stories and plays in the ’80s, and published works such as the anthologies Within the Ribbons and Among Prisoners. His novels include 1998’s The Cockfighter and 2002’s True Hope.

Continue Reading “Emory University pays tribute to the late Frank Manley”

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THAT RETAIL CHICK: Desiree Williams (left) and Anthony David at Sound Shop in 2007

by Jacinta Howard

For 20 years, Sound Shop in the Mall West End was more than a record store. It was a place to network, learn and grow; it was a breeding ground for emerging urban talent in Atlanta.

“It was [Grand Hustle CEO] Jason Geter having a conversation with former Sound Shop manager and current Block Entertainment President Rico Brooks about retail,” says Desiree Williams, another enthusiastic former manager who worked at the location for 14 years until it closed from economic strain Dec. 27. “It was DJ Drama trying to understand how retail works and how to market in a retail environment. It was a learning experience for people that are making a whole lot of money now.”

Other local artists gained their entry into the music business working on the opposite side of Sound Shop’s counter. Singer and songwriter Terrence “Scar” Smith (Mario, John Legend), producer Chuck Harmony (Rihanna), and DJ Jelly are counted among those who got their start operating the cash register at the industry incubator. Located smack dab in the ‘hood, it was frequented by trendy college students from the Atlanta University Center, newbie promoters and industry execs alike. Most notably, it was a place for fans to purchase music.

Continue Reading “Sound Shop silenced”

(Photo by Alan Friedman)

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Just a friendly bit of advice, Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson: You might want to go ahead and make room in your inbox for all the outraged e-mails you’re gonna receive about this one.

From the AJC’s Get Schooled blog:

G.P. “Bud” Peterson, president of Georgia Tech, sat down with writers at the AJC today and made clear that he did not support the pending legislation in the Georgia General Assembly to allow guns on college campuses. (We talked about other education issues that I will write about later.)

Under a bill in the House, Georgia gun owners with conceal carry permits could bring their guns everywhere except the courthouse and the jailhouse.  The restrictions on churches and campuses would be lifted. [...]

Speaking of Tech, Peterson said there were 20,000 young people at his university. Mixing alcohol, guns and 20,000 students is a “terrible combination…I think it is a recipe for disaster.”

Peterson told the paper that the best way to deal with the recent outbreak of campus crimes was for students to be more alert — not for them to carry guns. As we said, sir, have fun with all the e-mails!

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By Scott Henry and Patrick Saunders

When Georgia’s first gay, African-American lawmaker, Simone Bell, formally took her seat in the state House of Representatives last week, the occasion marked a rare progressive milestone – for the South, anyway.

Too bad no newspapers were paying attention.

“The mainstream media, and even the alternative media, isn’t going to cover the gay community with the same level of detail that a gay newspaper would,” says frustrated state Rep. Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates, during a break in House action.

Drenner, who became Georgia’s first gay state elected official in 2000, laments the November closing of Southern Voice as a major setback for Atlanta’s gay community. Bell’s first day on the job wasn’t the only story that seemed to fall through the cracks in the wake of the sudden demise of the state’s premiere gay weekly. Just days after the 21-year-old newspaper was shuttered, Chamblee banned discrimination against gay city workers, a story that didn’t appear in the AJCuntil nearly a month later.

Also, Ed Scruggs, an 80-year-old veteran activist who’d marched in the Atlanta Pride parade only two weeks earlier, died. But with SoVo gone, there would be no print obituary recounting Scruggs’ contributions to gay causes, only a short article on the Project Q media website – a situation that concerns Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, the state’s largest gay rights group.

“If younger gays can’t read about people like Ed, they won’t understand the struggles that got us to where we are today,” says Graham, who believes SoVo served a critical role in a place that the current issue of the Advocate crowns as the “gayest city in America.”

“It’s imperative that Atlanta have a gay media outlet,” he adds, “because it helps bring the community together by covering stories, events, groups and politics that are important to us.”

Of course, it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of folks competing to fill SoVo’s shoes – and market niche.

Continue Reading “The state of gay media”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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The AJC’s Ariel Hart sends a shiver down our spines this morning, reminding us that a proposed toll tunnel under east Atlanta — an underground road that’s similar to what GOP gubernatorial hopeful John Oxendine discussed earlier this year — is still very much a possibility.

A controversial concept to link Ga. 400 to I-675 by digging under east Atlanta has for a couple of years found its way onto some policymakers’ wish lists.  But this month it found itself someplace better:  Among the state Department of Transportation’s top toll projects pitched to private investors and road-building companies.

…

“The tunnel is the one project that absolutely, head and shoulders above every other [public-private partnership program], moves the needle the most on congestion mitigation and mobility,” said David Doss, who chairs the state Transportation Board’s committee on such projects.  The reason it wasn’t listed at the very top of DOT’s project list was because of the “unknowns” involved in creating a new urban road tunnel here, he said.

One of those “unknowns” is the number of pitchforks that angry residents would shake in protestshould the Atlanta Regional Commission decide a subterranean highway — replete with ventilation ducts popping up in intown neighborhoods and spewing out carbon monoxide — is just what metro Atlanta needs. Doss tells Hart that the northern stretch of the road would be a tunnel to appease “old, established” neighborhoods and that the southern segment starting at I-20 would become a surface road. (Just a bit of emphasis: When pressed by Hart as to why the road goes above ground in an area where demographic data shows that residents are less wealthy and “less white,” GDOT tells Hart that the area there is more vacant and industrial. If they’re talking about the area directly south of I-20, they need to take a drive through East Atlanta and surrounding neighborhoods. Read Hart’s report for all the details surrounding the proposal.)

An interesting sidenote: Bob Poole, the free-market think tank Reason Foundation’s transportation wonk and a big proponent of tunnels, is scheduled to make a presentation about managed lanes at tomorrow’s state Transportation Board meeting. He’ll follow that up with a Georgia Public Policy Foundation panel discussion at the Commerce Club that’s sure to be attended by Gold Dome movers and shakers.  Don’t be surprised if Poole offers his thoughts on the tunnel proposal, as well as some other ideas that right-of-center lawmakers might find intriguing several weeks before the session begins.

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“Believe, Achieve and Succeed” … unless you’re a Georgia school principal

After an audit found cheating on fifth-grade standardized math tests, someone was definitely going to be suspended. Except it’s not the young students — it’s teachers and principals!

The AJC reports that former Dekalb County principal James Berry was sentenced today to two years’ probation and a $1,000 fine after pleading guilty to falsifying documents. Two Fulton County and two Atlanta educators await a decision today concerning their involvement in the cheating scandal. Four Glynn County educators along with a Dekalb assistant principal have already been banned from their public schools for a year.

Suspicions were raised after an unusually high number of erasure marks where found on the state’s 2008 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests where the right answer was filled in. These falsified higher scores helped schools pass the basic federal standards.

Beyond the hypocrisy of deceptive educators telling children not to cheat on tests, what’s so shocking is that these are fifth graders, not high school students. For schools to have such an issue meeting standards so early on makes it clear how deeply troubled our state’s public education system is.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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by Cliff Bostock

I lunched today at  the new Havana Restaurant (3979 Buford Hwy., 404-633-7549).  It’s the reincarnation of the old Havana Sandwich Shop, which burned in 2008, after 30 years of operation.

The menu is identical to the original restaurant’s, but ropa vieja has been added back, after several decades’ absence. Today’s was sabroso, although a bit heavy on the bell peppers for my taste.

The restaurant is the subject of some controversy since another restaurant claiming to be the sandwich shop’s successor is also opening. I suggest you not bring this up to anyone at the counter unless you’re up for a (quite understandable)  genealogy rant.

By the way, the pub next door, Pirate’s Pub, is connected to the old, much beloved Fuzzy’s. Its menu will be familiar to anyone who liked Fuzzy’s food, based on Joe Dale’s recipes.

Being in my usual fog, I walked into Pirate’s Pub and sat at a table, thinking I was at Havana. Only when the server and I struck up a conversation did I realize I was in the wrong restaurant, although I had been mystified by the lack of Cuban food.

(Photos by Cliff Bostock)

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