This is Atlanta in 1951. The Lowes Grande on the left? Today, that’s where you’ll find the Georgia-Pacific Building. This photo and a handful of wonderful other images of our fair town can be found in the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection at the University of Indiana University. (Found via MeFi.)

seriously, there seem to be a bunch of you in the metro area, so here goes.

btw – before i ask this, keep in mind that i went to a division iii school, have no school spirit and care about college football as i do about a microsoft press release.

why is it that auburn fans festoon their cars with so much crap?

seriosuly, every other team’s fans seem to content themselves with one sticker, or maybe a license plate, or a livense plate holder.

not auburn fans.

they have multiple stickers, license plates, tiger tails hanging out of the trunk, flags, on and on and on.

i am not being snarky here, i am seriously curious about why this seems to be so centered on auburn fans.

any ideas?

does anyone know why piedmont road was closed at north avenue this morning. from 8 to 9. in the middle of rush hour??

i mean seriously. what in the world could convince someone that it would be a good idea to close down one of atlanta’s 3 main southbound surface arteries in the middle of the morning rush.

it was absolute chaos.

i spent 40 minutes getting from glen iris to the connector.

and in preparatory response to a certain commenter on this site, yes i know it would have been much better on a bike. i am not biking to alpharetta.

that’s it.

rant over.

From my daytime perch just off and six floors above the connector, I have the delicious option of looking out the window to see what traffic is doing before I leave every day. Most days, I neglect to look because I know I’m headed the other direction (West siiiiide) and away from the chaos. That’s all about to change. There will be no escaping the wrath of the DOT if you’re in the Midtown/Tech area.

Behold:

GDOT Announces New Construction Schedule for 14th Street Bridge Project

The Georgia Department of Transportation has released an updated project schedule for the replacement of the 14th Street Bridge. The new schedule will allow the department to reduce the amount of time that residents, employees, and visitors will be affected by construction activity.

Current Schedule

· Starting next week (October 1), Williams Street between 10th Street and 16th Street will be reduced to one lane until June 2009. Motorists will be encouraged to bypass Williams Street at 10th Street by using West Peachtree Street.

· In March 2008, Techwood Drive will be closed to traffic between 16th and 10th Streets. The roadway is expected to reopen by September 2009.

· In fall 2008, the 14th Street Bridge will be closed to traffic and will not reopen until summer 2010. Motorists will be detoured to the 17th Street Bridge during this period.

Additionally, in March 2008, DOT crews will begin resurfacing the Downtown Connector between University Avenue and 10th Street. During construction, interstate lane closures will occur at night – Monday through Thursday from 7:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. – with continuous closures on weekends starting Friday night and concluding Monday morning.
(more…)

Get your Halloween groove on early. It’s HorrorFest time in Atlanta. A four day festival of independent horror films, bands, and special events, October 4 – 7. Official Site Here. This looks like it could be a lot of fun.

Okay, now you tell me something… Any scoop, at all, on anything new on the Halloween Event scene? I’m looking for something really new to cover or attend this year. It doesn’t have to be a big event – just something new, different and interesting. Well, we can add “fun” as well but, what is fun for one is not always fun for the other.

Anything thoughts?

forbes magazine recently did a ranking of the top cities in america to be single in. the rankings are in and atlanta happened to come in at #4. you can read the whole methodology here, but basically forbes ranked cities on a whole host of factors ranging from ‘coolness’ to number of online dating profiles.

when it was all said and done atlanta came in fourth behind san francisco, new york and la. honestly, i don’t think you can complain about being in that category.

having been single in both atlanta and washington dc, i agree that atlanta is definitely a better place to be single.

interestingly though, atlanta only ranked #28 on forbes list of america’s most drunk cities, i guess meaning you don’t need beer goggles to have fun as a single?

anyway, i am curious what you singles think? is atlanta a good place to be single? how does it compare with other places you lived.

discuss, please!

I wrote a while back about an exceptional soccer team in Clarkston. Their story even piqued the interest of the New York Times, who wrote an article about them. Well, the Times are back in Clarkston. This time it’s a story about how Clarkston’s immigrant population has change the face of a local church congregation.

As a white southerner, I know i am probably not alone in often feeling that the world at large thinks we are all bigots and racists. It is nice, in the shadow of stories like the Jena 6, to hear about southern towns putting their differences aside and welcoming one another as neighbors and friends. It does make me wonder, though, why it seems easier to cross church boundaries when the people on the other side are immigrants, than it is when we are talking about black and white Americans. It saddens me that we have so much baggage that we have trouble looking past our shared history.

It also kind of bugs me that the author of the article referred to 285 as “The Atlanta Beltline.”

yup. i’m back. sorry, i know there are a few of you who were wishing the guy who refuses to use capital letters had finally flown the coop, but if you have been following my saga then you will know that things have been a little hectic in my world.

none of that has anything to do with this post though, which is simply to inform you that a group of my favorite indie rockers manchester orchestra just announced the date for their final headlining gig in atlanta for 2007.

you can see them on october 26 at the drunken unicorn.

if you have yet to catch them, you should, it’s well worth it.

plus they are blowing up everywhere (yes i used that slang, ugh, what is becoming of me) as evidenced by this picture taken at easy street records on my recent trip to seattle.

via an email from a friend today:

Be on HGTV redesgin segment – for free!! (Atlanta)

HGTV’s “Decorating Cents” is casting a redesign segment in Atlanta. This is your chance to have your room professionally styled and be on a TV!

We’re looking for owners or renters who live in Atlanta, ages 20s-40s who want their living room transformed. The designer works with the furniture and accessories you have in other rooms to redesign your room. There’s also a budget to buy you new accessories to make your room come to life. No painting is involved.

If interested email: Avelino Pombo

1)List your phone number
2)age
3)occupation
4) city you live in
5) photo of yourself

For the last several weeks my head has admittedly been up my ass in the sand when it comes to what’s going on in the world. If it isn’t discussed on WABE between 5:45 and 6am on my way to the office, I know nothing about it. 12 hour work days and the busy social season are providing unwanted shelter from reality.

Case in point – yesterday at lunch I bumped into a few girls from the office in the lobby of our building. One of them joked as I passed about how she called and told me to wear black, and I agreed, but then paused to dig in – since they were all wearing black.

One of my colleagues went on to tell me about the Jena 6, and I quickly turned into a mouth breathing, astounded and disgusted by the behavior of my countrymen.

For those in the same position I was yesterday, The Jena 6 are young men in the town of Jena, Louisiana. At the high school there in Jena, there was apparently a tree on campus. A tree called The White Tree, beacuse only the white kids at the school could/did gather around it. One day, some young black men stood under it, and the next day there were six nooses hanging from its limbs.

You might think this happened in 1956, but it didn’t. It happened in 2006. Here. In our backyard.

So the young men went back to the tree. I would have. They waited. They challenged the backwards thinking redneckness of it all, and it came. Those white boys came back, and what ensued was a school yard scrap. Nothing worse than what you or I saw in our days of lockers and letter jackets, but with much better cause than the justification for the fights of my youth.

The next chapter is where it gets really mind boggling and perverse: the black youths were arrested and charged with Attempted Murder. One of them, 17-year-old Mychal Bell; remains in jail.

Link love to stories about it on CNN here.

I continued on my day more and more aware of all the folks I crossed paths with wearing black. I was inspired by the unity and the support they presented without saying a word. I heard that Morehouse and Clark sent busses of folks to Jena to participate in the protests. I also hear that since Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was tied up here in Atlanta, he sent representatives to Jena.

Now it’s your turn. What are your thoughts on the situation? Based on a CNN.com online poll, most CNN readers see this as an issue of race, though some of the folks in Jena say otherwise.

Did you wear black yesterday? Did you notice it but didn’t know why? Tell me. I wanna hear.