Atlanta has a lot of parks. Everybody knows about Piedmont Park. In the park’s glory days it hosted all kinds of great events. With the water shortage and drought the park stopped having many of the events for which it was known.

There are other great parks. Grant Park, Woodruff Park (yes sarcasm) and my favorite, Brownwood Park. I like Brownwood park because you don’t even realize it’s there. It’s a great place to relax, meditate and even play tennis. It’s not so easy on the eyes but it’s there.

What’s your favorite Atlanta park and why?

i was chatting on the googles with ben the other day and i asked him when the last time he was actually in underground atlanta was. even though both ben and i spend a fair amount of time downtown, we both had to admit that neither one of us has actually been in underground atlanta in ages.

well the rumors of underground’s demise need to be confirmed or dispelled we decided, and since the place is still there, functioning and at the center of downtown, we decided we really need to check it out.

so we’re going on a little field trip to see what’s up at underground. shop a little, grab some lunch at the waffle house, who knows? i mean if nothing else, it appears there is an “as seen on tv” store there, and god knows i could use a new popeil pocket fisherman

one thing is for sure you can bet that one or both of us will most certainly report back here on what we find.

oh, and open invitaiton, so email me at jeherv@thearcoftime.com if you want the details. saturday afternoon sometime….

Something terrible happened around the early nineties, when the Braves were good and the Olympics were on their way.  It was a good time here in Atlanta, but those evil national MSM decided to ruin it.  Word went out, “We must humiliate these upstarts!”  Henceforth it became mandatory to refer to the city as “Hotlanta” during any live broadcast from Atlanta.

I don’t need to tell you how awful this name is.  Well maybe I do, since the Metblog is a repeat offender.  (In fairness, I think at least half of these are tongue-in-cheek references, which is sometimes acceptable.)  Just check out the first Urban Dictionary entry for the term:

The name that idiots who don’t even live in Georgia call the city of Atlanta.   Nobody that actually lives in Atlanta says this. Ever.

JohnO: So yea, I live in Norcross, right outside of Atlanta.
Idiot: Dam fool! You live in Hotlanta?!
JohnO: Please go die. Right away.

I think that about covers my feelings on this term.  I thought this thing was dead nationally, but no one cared to inform Atlanta native Ryan Seacrest.  (Seriously – he’s from Dunwoody and spent one year at UGA.)  He dropped the H-bomb multiple times last week on American Idol, prompting a local freak out on Twitter and a public shaming from the Bert Show.

In the interest of full disclosure, La Novia gave me this mug as a gift.  I expected to be very upset when I discovered the little “Hotlanta” bit, but I wasn’t.  I have a soft spot for awful puns, and well, this is a coffee mug.  My love of awful puns trumped my faux outrage over nicknames.  My boat, my rules, okay?

i had to go to a conference in macon this weekend. now usually, when i go to this conference, i basically spend my time griping about how much i can’t stand macon, going to the meetings and getting out as quick as possible.

this time however, i asked myself, could there be more to this sleepy little city than i have given it credit for. while there for the meeting, i decided to try out some local flavor and see what i came up with.

first and foremost, driving parts of macon other than where the meetings were, i realized it’s a beautiful old southern town. amazing architecture, gorgeous churches and houses are everywhere. the downtown has been fixes up and has many streets with large roadways lined with cherry trees and small parks in the middle.

i tried three ‘local’ place while i was there. i ate lunch at a place called the market city cafe and had an excellent grilled cheese with homemade potato chips. my friend that i was with had a sandwich that she described as “thanksgiving on bread” with turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce. the place was absurd inexpensive.

later that evening three of us went to lemongrass thai bistro in downtown macon for dinner. the place truly did have some of the most amazing thai food, well prepared and presented and very tasty. pricey, but good, and shockingly good for what i expect from macon.

final place was joshua cup coffee which is one of the neatest coffee shops i have been in. great spacious place with lots of art on the walls and amazing deserts.

so i gotta say, i think i need to give macon a little credit. i would like to organize a road trip down there when i don’t have meetings and actually check out what the city has to offer from a cultural standpoint. it looked like a lot of live music for sure, and the georgia music hall of fame which i think i would like to see.

okay, macon. i apologize and am now willing to give you a shot.

Sorry for the PWI (posting without introduction). I’m Tamra, a former resident of the part of the city that’s too far south to be Buckhead and too far north to be Midtown.

I just moved back to town after three years just outside the DC city limits – Hyattsville, Md., in never-a-dull-moment Prince George’s County, to be exact. Two years of that were spent in grad school at U. of Maryland, the third mostly consisted of doing temp work at law firms and government agencies on streets whose names consist only of a letter or an ordinal number.

Right now, my state of unemployeditude has me marooned in a spare bedroom in a Mableton cul-de-sac, actually missing the sound of sirens, passing Metro trains, and “música Duranguense” blasting at 2:30 in the morning.

Before DC, I lived in Atlanta for six years, in Memphis the eight years before that, and I grew up in the sprawling metropolis of Jackson, Tenn. I haven’t staked out any specific area to write about, which is just as well since I’d probably deviate from it right away.

That’s it from me. Now, back to the show.

steps up to the microphone and clears her throat

Testing 1, 2, 3…is this thing on? Sibilance, sibilance, sibilance.

Hi, my name is Stephanie and I’m an Atlanta native (well, Marietta, technically, but that’s close enough). Whew! That wasn’t as hard as I thought. Believe it or not, there are still a few of us [not necessarily] restless natives to be found in these parts. And unlike many, I’ve never really moved away either-only made it as far as Athens for a few years at UGA. I’m proud to call the Atlanta area home (some days more than others) and look forward to sharing my thoughts and interests, both ITP and OTP, with all of you.

So watch out…you’ll be hearing from me soon!

The are some local blogs that don’t get a lot of attention – one of which is Too Busy to Hate.  It is a good little photography blog that you should check out.  Today there is a great post up with a video about the Phantom of the Fox, Joe Patten.  You can check the video out on Vimeo, or watch it embedded below.

Phantom of the Fox from Too Busy To Hate on Vimeo.

On my personal blog I’ve lately been in a pessimistic mood regarding the state of the city.  There are lots of reasons to be down on Atlanta these days, so I won’t reiterate them now.  Instead, I want to focus on what I like about Atlanta.

I didn’t always plan on being in Atlanta.  When I got done with high school, all I wanted to do was to GTFO. I ended up in the great white north, in Michigan.  For a while, I thought I’d stay in Ann Arbor.  It’s a cool little town, with a lot of neat stuff going on.  It isn’t that far from Chicago, either.  When I came back to Atlanta, it wasn’t entirely by choice or plan – things just happen sometimes, y’know?  Anyway, I found my self back here at 21, once again not really planning to stay but not really having any better ideas at the time.

More than six years later, I am still in Atlanta – so there must be a reason. (more…)

longer waits during non-peak times on trains. service modifications to bus routes. whole bus routes cancelled. for me that is the legacy of the 2009 georgia legislative session.

failing to secure an alternate funding measure to ensure marta’s operations glenn richardson and jerry keen let the legislature leave town with a big f-you to atlanta commuters. keen was rumored to have quipped that he was closer to disney world than the city of atlanta (my own feelings on the majority leader can be found here.) in fairness the casey cagle-led georgia senate did pass a bill that would have sustained marta’s operations by removing the onerous reserve restriction on marta’s sales tax funding.

well glenn is gone, although jerry keen is still hanging around, and the reprehensible jill chambers, who actually seems to be anti-public transit is still leading the state marta oversight committee (ask yourself, btw, if the state contributes ZERO dollars to marta’s budget why they have any oversight) but one can hope that the new leadership in the house might consider actually trying to do something to fix marta’s funding.

let’s hope.

the people i ride with every day deserve a world class transit systems from their leaders. at the very least they deserve one not tottering on the brink of bankruptcy every six months. and before you give me the “marta is just run poorly” tripe consider two things; first, marta makes cuts all the time, spends little money on marketing or other bottom line expenses and second, reliably transports a whole lot of commuters with absolutely zero funding from the state.

look i am a libertarian, but this is one thing the government SHOULD do.

so fix it, david ralston. this is your chance to make a break with the past and show us that georgia republicans care about the city of atlanta and its residents.

begging you.

happy friday, kemosabe’s.

we metblog authors want to know just what the heck is going down this weekend. yours truly is making a trek down to macon on saturday and sunday and may even bring back a dispatch from there.

how about you? concerts? museums? new clubs? taking advantage of better weather?

what’s going down, atlanta?