Word on the street is that Mulligans – home of the hamdog and the Luther burger – is closing it’s doors in the next month or so.

I have no other details to provide, just sadness to spread.

See releated Metblogs post by Scott Partee posted last year, with thanks to slingerdoo for the heads up.

Thanks for turning my morning into a test of how well I can edge my way into adjoining lanes and detour around “all lanes closed” highway traffic.

Shouldn’t she have slept in this morning, anyway? I don’t understand the motivation to get up early and stand on a bridge, unless the whole rush hour thing is part of the cry for attention. And I guess the jumpers have found a new favorite spot on the 17th St. bridge—this wasn’t the first, right?

[EDIT: Apparently she jumped out of a Greyhound bus' bathroom window before sitting on the bridge. Weird.]

I am not a huge fan of the Indigo Girls, but I don’t dislike them either. I know they have tons of Atlanta fans, though, and I would hate for one of their local faithful to miss out on this very cool opportunity. Criminal Records has them playing an instore on Friday, September 22nd at six o’clock. I don’t think I would try to park there if I were you, and I would forget about Friday night dinner at Savage or Vortex.

If you’re interested, Metroblogging Bangkok has on-the-scene information on the happenings in Thailand.

Mark Taylor, Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate, claims that if he becomes governor he will introduce legislation giving juries a death penalty option for repeat child molesters as part of his “Child Protection Act of 2007.” You can read more about it here.
As a parent, and a voter who feels that we are far too lenient on violent criminals in our state and in our country, I am all for this. Sure, it is only an election-year retaliation against Perdue’s claims that he will increase GBI manpower to seek out criminals preying on our children. But you know what? This is just the kind of stance that will buy my vote. Okay, to be honest, I think Taylor was probably going to get my vote anyway, but this really is alluring. That’s right. I said it: I think the death penalty for repeat child molesters is a good thing.

I wonder, though, what it means for a Democrat to take such a surprisingly uncharacteristic stance on the death penalty question. Is this an example of a candidate grasping for votes? Is his campaign in its death throes? Most importantly, if he wins will he follow through with this promise?

Most of you weren’t too thrilled about the new Georgia license plate design. I thought about it, and perhaps the reason I kinda like it is because I spent much of my childhood in Europe, where the license plates are anything but inspired.

Well, Gov. Sonny Perdue plans to put alternate plate designs up for public vote. I’m not sure exactly how it will work, but since I’ve been disappointed many a year by the winning Peachtree tee design, I’m not going to get my hopes up.

The AJC is holding a design contest and vote, just for fun. Upload your drawing by 6 p.m. Wednesday to be included in the action.

was thinking as i was driving out to work this morning that this city has some notoriously horrible interchanges and intersections. i know a ton of studies, like this one, have been done on the worst bottlenecks, but its really more that time isn’t it?

i mean the really bad ones are frustrating, dangerous, obnoxious and seem to bring out the worst in people. i’m curious based on everybody’s experience, what are the worst interchanges in atlanta.

my top three after they jump.
(more…)

Maybe. This study came out in May and I was alerted to it by reading the September Discover Magazine (another report is here in Business Week). In an attempt to quantify urban sprawl by comparing satellite images of the United States in 1976 and 1992, University of Toronto economist Matthew Turner and colleagues have determined some pretty interesting things. First, the country is growing – nearly 2% of the country was paved by 1992. Second, the percentage of growth that is sprawl is not increasing. That is, sprawl, based on their measurements is not increasing.

In fact, according to their “sprawl index,” Atlanta’s sprawl is decreasing. The Atlanta Sprawl index for 1976 was 57.77. For 1992 it was 55.57. This measures the percentage of undeveloped land in the square kilometer surrounding an average residential development in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Of course, this still makes Atlanta one of the highest in the nation (number 2, in fact), but this is after Pittsburgh and right before Charlotte.

The picture above shows the change in sprawl in Atlanta. The red areas are new development between 1976 and 1992 and the yellow areas are old. Note – it may look like it has grown, but read the methodology of the authors before judging. The original paper is located here and the raw data can be gathered here. Also, remember that the latest data is from 1992 and, well, things could have changed.

For our second wedding anniversary, the missus and I went out in search of brunch. One of our favorite places is West Egg, over on Atlanta’s west side. Apparently, it’s now everybody’s favorite, because fully half the joint was apparently being used as a waiting room for the other half. The parking lot sure didn’t make it look that packed, but it was pretty nuts. So we went off in search of something else.

We ended up at Roman Lily Cafe, which I’d heard about but never actually been into until today. The good news is, the place has a nice, quaint atmosphere and a modestly adventurous menu. The bad news is, if you want to make use of it you’ve got to get in there before September 30th, when Roman Lily closes its doors forever. (I recommend the Santa Fe eggs, as did my waiter.)

The skinny is this: The rents on the block over there are skyrocketing (actually, doubling) and lots of places look like they just can’t keep up. Roman Lily’s retiring, the craftsman-style decorating place is moving out and the gifty shop across the street is shutting its doors. Sounds like Atlanta’s one-millionth tapas place is going into Roman Lily’s spot.

Here’s something I can’t quite figure out, though: Is that stretch of shops over there in Inman Park or Old Fourth Ward? I thought the Johnny’s over there was the Inman Park location, but Roman Lily (at the other end of the same block) is apparently in Old Fourth Ward. We drove around a bunch of little streets around there that I’d never been down before, and eventually came out on Edgewood east of the Inman Park MARTA station (not quite where I thought I was).

This is one of the things I dig about Atlanta, stumbling on little areas I didn’t know about the day before. But where the heck was I, technically?

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I don’t know.

Found an article on TechCrunch just now that a new site called Citizenbay is being launched.

Citizenbay is a city centered citizen journalism project that will pay users whose contributions are voted the ten best by readers each day in 60 cities around the US and France.

Hmmm. Sounds familiar. Come to think of it, not only is that the idea of this site, it’s half our tagline.

I dig the idea of voting on posts, but I’m still not subscribing to the adage on this one.