no news on the marta web site yet, but the austin business chronicle reported several days ago that cap metro (austin’s excellent transit service) would be losing their coo and evp, dwight ferrell, to atlanta.

from the article it seems that ferrell is highly regarded and this appointment is just the kind of proven executive that atlanta’s system may need.

as a public service i thought we would open up comments here on what you would like to see marta’s new coo focus on. i know i would like them to get the darn led displays working properly.

you?

Just doing my part to make sure folks know about some of the new & interesting blogs in the Atlanta local.

•  ATL Malcontent moved recently.
•  Grift has a new group blog.
• SpaceyG is watching the (new) media.
• Someone (not me) is watching the (old) media.
• Local pig blogs (new to me).

Happy Surfing!

apparently the revolt is on after the thrashers were eliminated from playoff contention

check out this season ticket holder burning his promo pack for next season.

(i have tried like hell to embed that video, but i just cant make it work :-O)

yikes.

btw – the hawks? still alive, still vying for the playoffs.

h/t to the falconer for the find.

i figured that the attempted ban on saggy pants had died an appropriate death, but apparently it has not.

from this morning’s ajc comes this:

Councilman C.T. Martin introduced a bill in August banning clothes that expose underwear. The City Council created a citizens’ task force to study the idea and make recommendations. The council will decide whether to accept the recommendations.

apparently the task force is preparing to make it’s recommendations in a meeting tonight at 6 pm at city hall. i am honestly a tad bit bummed i am busy tonight, because i can only imagine just how much fun this hearing would have to be.

and seriously, when the mayor is looking under couches for quarters because of a budget deficit, how much money was spent on this task force?

just curious.

I found this snippet on one of my Flickr groups (props to mister wombat) and since I’m a hippie at heart I figured I’d share. You know. Because if you don’t comply, I’ll be silently judging you. Not that I don’t already.

Atlanta is one of more than 20 cities participating in a worldwide turn-off-the-lights event called Earth Hour.

“Black is beautiful” is a phrase from the 1960s that reflected ethnic pride. More than 40 years later, “black is beautiful” is about to be a part of a movement for environmental responsibility — a movement that includes Atlanta.

Atlanta’s nighttime skyline is a beautiful sight; the lights sparkling in the glass of the tall buildings. To some a monumental waste.

“Turn the lights off,” said Darron Collins of the World Wildlife Fund.

Turn the lights off. That’s what the organizers of Earth Hour want everyone to do — on March 29, between 8 and 9 p.m.

“Earth Hour is a way to bring focus and attention to how we might save energy,” said Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. “It gives us an opportunity to participate in a worldwide event to highlight the necessity of all of us to save energy.”

The city of Atlanta is an official Earth Hour participant.

“Through this cooperation we can demonstrate that there are ways to cut our energy use,” said Franklin. “And that this is one way to bring attention to the issue, and we’re hoping in Atlanta that people will begin to think about the amount of energy that they use.”

In Atlanta, lights for health and public safety will remain on.

Atlanta is representing the Eastern US time zone in the event. It is one of 20 cities worldwide participating — including Chicago, Phoenix, San Francisco, Copenhagen, Sydney, Australia and Bangkok, Thailand. Governments and businesses will be participating in Earth Hour in Atlanta on March 29.

(as seen on 11alive.com)

So what do you think? Gonna do it?

I will assume silence is indicative of full support by those too annoyed by the new “log in to comment” feature to respond.

For more info, visit the Earth Hour site.

continuing with all things tornado;

doing some reading this morning i cam across this excellent map of the track of the downtown tornado.

(i was going to embed the map here, but we are still working through getting embedding to work, so i really encourage you to click the link. if we get it fixed, i will go back and embed it)

looking at it, i realized just how lucky i came. the tornado crossed over i-20 less than 1/4 of a mile from my house. instead of having no roof today, i am only missing some shingles, some siding and some flashing.

i am in toronto for a couple of day, but i am interested in how the cleanup is coming?

One of my trusted friends lives north of me near Cartersville, GA. He owns a large track of farm land in the vicinity.

Just after one of the major storms that rolled through the North West Metro area last week, he went outside to grab a quick look at any damage to his property. While outside – for just a moment – he looked up at the sky and thought he saw a bird. The bird seemed to be getting larger and larger. When “it” hit the ground, it turned out to be a 2×4 piece of lumber. Then he saw something else and it was a mattress in the air and it hit the ground not too far from him. Very quickly, a ton of stuff began to fall from the sky on to his property. Needless to say, he took cover.

No joke, he is for real and this was serious. A few moments later, other more “personal belongings” fell from the air. It turned out that the remnants of other people’s destroyed homes started raining down on his property – all sucked up by a tornado. Just amazing!

I thought his story was really out there and then I saw this story online: Tornado Blows Photo 130 Miles

It’s just all so amazing to me. I’m really hoping the Spring and Summer weather season is not going to an image of this incident. If so, we all need to dig bunkers NOW.

A customer at Parkgrounds said that there were signs going up in Cabbagetown. These signs read things like What’re You Looking At? and Thanks for Gawking. None of these signs appeared in any news reports I saw, despite all the coverage of the Cabbagetown damages.

Saturday morning, the Ides of March, the day after the tornado, the streets were dotted with people with cameras. Little amateur cameras, big digital SLRs, cameras with long lenses, cameras aimed out car windows, cameras in cell phones. Some folks drove around, popped open their car doors, snapped a shot, and moved on. Some walked from East Atlanta Village, where trees were laid across a handful of streets and an empty lot had become a graveyard for worn-out trunks, to Cabbagetown, where houses had become timbers and cars had been crumpled. They captured the honesty, the hurt, the shock, the confusion, the startling vulnerability of our homes and lives, the brutal unpredictability of the world’s impact on our illusory invulnerability.

It’s my feeling that un-doctored photography is, on some level, honest. It captures and reproduces; it doesn’t translate or imitate. It doesn’t render. It’s not a shameful thing to take a picture of someone else’s woe. It’s not crass to capture suffering on camera, because suffering is genuine and real and thus fair game for an honest medium. It happens, and so it can be recorded.

Saturday morning, I thought maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe it’s more than awkward or un-neighborly to photographed a smashed home. Maybe it’s worse than rude. I’m still undecided.

What do you think?

(Photo by Elemess)

well, as i write this it appears that another strong storm is bearing down on douglasville and moving due east.  okay, THIS STORM IS HEADED TO DOWNTOWN IN TWELVE MINUTES.  LARGE HAIL AND ROTATION.

it is official. the national weather service confirmed that vine city, downtown and cabbagetown were hit by an f2 tornado with max winds of 120 mph. i certainly wasn’t exaggerating in the post i wrote from my blackberry last night. all the areas i thought were hit were.

andisheh at clfreshloaf must have had access to power and his camera with him, because his post is much more extensive than mine. check it out, he also has links to several pages of flickr photos.

one thing i will say having driven down dekalb avenue a few times today is that the city and it’s citizens seem to have their act together.  the king marta station is getting picked up (several of the big floor to ceiling windows blew out) and the trains were running.  it looked like work was going on at the cotton mill loft.  the post office near lenny’s was already being worked on, and the southeast auto warehouse, whcih imploded, was being picked up.

i am going to write about my personal experience over on my personal blog when i can get around to it, but right now it looks like i may need to go hide again.

how did the rest of you survive the storm?

I am writing this from my blackberry since I have no power. My girlfriend saw it coming from the dining room. We ran and hid downstairs and it looks like I just missed it.

About 20 minutes ago we ventured out to check her place. It does not look good. Memorial Drive between Boulevard and the new Triumph lofts has trees and building and power poles down. Cabbagetown is ruined. There are trees down everywhere, roofs off of houses, cars with windows out.

We could only see the Cotton mill lofts from across the tracks on dekalb ave but it looks like part of the top floor may have fallen in.

Dekalb ave itself is pretty bad. Fences are down, street signs bent over, billboards have been ripped down.

If you have loved ones on cabbagetown, edgewood, east atlanta, inman park or grant park you should probably call them.

I am not trying to be alarmist but I swear I saw all of this with my own eyes. Several streets were unpassable due to knocked down trees and buildings.

Everyone is in my prayers.