photo by Chris Nelson (click pic for link)

we love you here in atlanta. for the last two years i have watched you battle with heart and grit and determination. i watched you give up a starting slot to al horford with nary a complaint. i watched you stare down kevin garnett and almost come up the better.

sure, i know the arenas are empty sometime. i remember one game against the t’wolves last season where i thought we were at a minor league hockey game. but, we are building something here. finally, here in atlanta, we are building a winner.

and we love you. here you are ZAAAAAAZAAAAAAAA PACHUUUUUUUUUUULLIA. fans stand on their feet and scream when you come in. go to another city, you may just be another east european big guy with a funny name.

i know the hawks are talking to you. sekou smith told me so. i hope you really, really think hard about their offer. this is going to be a great basketball town. and i know from your tweets that you love the city. i also know from your tweets that you are in new york. do you think those knick fans will love you like we do? do you think anyone in nyc would name a blog after you like hawks blogger drew d. once did?

i’ll take you for ice cream, i’ll petition the city council to have zaza pachulia day. i’ll sit on a downtown billboard in a zaza jersey.

so please stay. let’s get it done. tell me what us hawks fans need to do to keep you here. because we want you to. of that i can assure you.

please.

yours,

james

The Beehive on Peachtree has been Atlanta’s premier location for locally-made apparel and products for the cool crowd since 2004.  But what if you want to create the “locally-made apparel” yourself?  What if you want to be the cooler kid who upstages the cool kids?

Then you visit Atlanta’s sewing lounge and in-town fabric store:  Whipstitch*.  Whipstitch is co-located with the Beehive and opened June 26.  There are classes for beginners, intermediates, and whatever you call advanced people without saying “advanced people.”  Experienced?

Featured recently on Good Day Atlanta, Whipstitch fabric and sewing lounge is where you should go if you tire of packing food and gassing up the SUV to go OTP.  It’s where you can get chic fabrics and learn how to piece them together into a usable medium.  All the while, you’re supporting local merchants and designers and decongesting the connector.

That’s what Devo would do.  And don’t we all want to be more like Devo?  I thought so.

*My wife totally owns Whipstitch.  But that doesn’t detract from its awesomeness even remotely.

Beef the pig

I saw the most interesting thing a few weeks ago along Freedom Parkway.  A guy walks his pot-bellied pig there.  I ignorantly always thought pot-bellied pigs sounded small and cute.  Not so.  This is a big pig, folks.  About 180 pounds of pig, which is bigger that I am.  Some friends of mine have, as well, and well, a pig that big in the city gets people talking.

One of the things I love about Atlanta are the recurring characters I see around town.  I’ve begun to hear about the pig enough that I’m elevating him to tier 2 status, below my old stand-by characters: the dude with the cane at Ponce and Moreland, and Ron aka dual-dred.  This puts Beef on par with Baton Bob (who I haven’t seen in ages) in my book (your mileage may vary).

Turns out the pig’s name is Beef.  Some Facebooking with my friend Jeanne turned up fact that the local PBS station did a little asking around about the pig.  His name is Beef, and he’s about five and a half years old.  Go listen to the short interview with his owner, and hear Beef say hello.

not to long ago, we brought you the news that zoo atlanta had organized the “give so they stay” campaign seeking to raise $500,000 to keep our wonderful pandas, lun lun, yang yang and xi lan (known of course to the readers of this blog as p-dizzle) form having to take a slow boat back to china.

well some business have responded and at least one near the zoo, stella trattoria, is having a panda benefit night this tuesday. i haven’t eaten at stella’s yet (though the yelp reviews look decent) but for 10% proceeds to our furry not-so-little friends, i will certainly give it a try.

there is of course a facebook event set up you can rsvp on, or just show up and eat this tuesday.

dining for pandas
stella trattoria
563 memorial drive
atlanta, ga