not to long ago, i wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about the renaming of simpson road to joseph e. boone boulevard*.

nothing tounge and cheek about this recent article about “boone avenue” in the ajc though. according to the article the 1300 block of simpson road is the deadliest block in the city of atlanta.

Three killings occurred in a recent 31-day span. Demetrius Holt, 25, was killed and four others were shot Dec. 7 when an unidentified man opened fire in the American Legion hall. Ronnie Hill, 46, was shot to death Nov. 28 after an altercation that began at the Tasty Dog. Paul Martin, 19, was shot to death Nov. 6 while in his car outside Ruby’s. No one has been arrested in connection with any of the slayings.

i’d like to sit here and rant about how the city and law enforcement should get serious about cleanig place like this up. the article says they have tried and failed and many things.

beats me what the answer is, though in the us in 2009 there ought to be one. at least better than just changing the name.

anyone got any thoughts? nothing our leaders come up with seems to be working.

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If you’ve ever wanted to come out of your mommas basement and meet some of the folks you’ve been reading in the bloggosphere, now is your chance. Guess what else? It’s for a good cause. I shit you not.

Drive A Faster Car, MailChimp & Atlanta Web Design are hosting something called “Unwrapped” at The CW /

Deets follow:

We know what you’re thinking. It’s the day after Christmas and you are sick of the holidays. Unwrapped is your chance to let loose from the family and drink, mingle, network, dance with others in Atlanta you may have seen around the internet. Bloggers, designers, developers, and Facebook addicts alike are all invited.

Half of all proceeds are going to One Laptop Per Child to help create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

Friday, December 26
8pm - 2am
Vinyl @ CW Music Complex
1374 W Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309

Official Event Link: here.

Our very own newbie author Ben will be in attendance and writing on it, as will the famous Will Hindmarch. Stop out, give up the green and mingle. The c’mon back here to see how your experience matches up with that of Ben and Will.

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this weekend i was driving home from picking the kiddo up. she lives in indiana so we approach the metro area from the north on i-75.

i had the same question i always do? when am i back in atlanta? i know the actual atlanta metropolitan statistical area is the 28 counties in that map, so technically i am back in atlanta when i cross the border into bartow county?

but am i really?

i know plenty of itp’ers who would say no. i think most people that live in canton in cherokee would say yes. but what about cartersville? as i mentioned bartow county is in the altanta msa, but is cartersville really part of atlanta?

for me at least, when i am driving i consider myself “in atlanta” when i cross into cobb county on 75 and when i cross into gwinnett on 85. this certainly puts me at odds with the msa but that is how i see it.

what about you. what is the metro area? does it go all the way to south carolina these days? has it made its way all the way up to dalton?

and what about the southside? i don’t go down there much, but i know plenty of atlantans have made their way to newnan and peacthree city.

it seems to me that the metro area is growing, but the sense of identiity that goes with the city is too. i work with plenty of people that live in cherokee or forsyth, work in alpharetta and never venture south of holcomb bridge road.

food for thought anyway.

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If you’ve ever found yourself in your car a bit before 8:30 on a weekday morning, tuned to NPR and weeping despite yourself, you’re already familiar with StoryCorps.

I was fortunate enough to catch wind of Isay speaking this evening at The Margaret Mitchell House where he spoke of the project and book, played some of the two minute pieces we’ve all enjoyed with watery eyes and made a made a pretty significant announcement for Atlanta.

Five years and one month ago, StoryCorps started with one booth in Grand Central Terminal and since then, they’ve recorded 24 thousand stories. The news for Atlanta readers: they’re planning to open their second permanent booth in our fair city.

The details are still being worked out but according to both Dave Isay (founder and president of Story Corps) and WABE leadership, the temporary booth will be located in Studio 3 of their offices on Bizmark road. They plan to open the permanent location in the Center for Civil and Human Rights in 2011.

Atlanta was chosen in part due to The Griot Project, a special initiative launched in Atlanta to document African American voices including that of Morehouse School of Medicine professor Dr. Lynn Weaver. Dr. Weaver is one of the Atlanta residents whose story is featured in the book Listening is an Act of Love - A Celebration of American Life From the StoryCorps Project.

The success of the The Griot Project combined with the work of three women Isay and WABE referred to as “the league of extraordinary gentlewomen” we have won the privilege of being a part of StoryCorps and CPB history.

Soooo wonderful. I don’t know about you, but I’m already making a mental list of the friends I want to take to the booth and spend forty minutes sharing stories with.

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since i decided to adopt the atlanta hawks before last season i have become a pretty rabid fan. i love this team and i absolutely love going to phillips arena (aka the highlight factory) to see games. in fact i’ll be heading there tonight to see the hawks play the grizzlies and hopefully catch the return of star forward josh smith (who had been out for more than a dozen games with an ankle sprain.)

i’ll be blogging a bit about my hawks-love (inlcuding big man-crushes on al horford and joe johnson) here but i am by no means a savvy basketball writer. so if you want to catch hawks fever with me, i figured i would take a brief moment and direct you to some places where you can pick up some really good hawks analysis and news.

to start with, the blog of ajc hawks beat writer sekou smith is the most important. sekou is one of the best beat writers i have ever read and if it is going down in the nba and it realtes to the hawks, sekou will report it.

continuing on with the official blogs to read, micah hart writes the hawks basketblog on hawks.com. as the team’s official “blogger” hart has lots of access to players for interviews, practice sessions and other behind-the-scenes goodies. well worth reading.

on the unofficial side i highly recommend peachtree hoops a dedicated hawks blog. peacthree hoops carries a preview before each game as well as a game report after each game with very good insight, analysis and other links. well worth reading.

i also really like zaza’s playground. it may not be as technical as p’tree hoops, but the author’s passion for the hawks is evident, as is his basketball i.q., and he can just be downright hilarious. if he gets on a mike woodson rant, watch out.

i also just start reading heavy koncak. it seems to be updated much less and i don’t have an impression of it yet, but with that name how can you go wrong?

so there ya’ go.

happy reading and LET’S GO HAWKS!!!

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Much thanks to James and Maigh for getting me set up to write here on the Atlanta Metblog. My name is Ben, and I guess for my first post I’ll just tell y’all a little about myself. I normally write over at my own blog, Terminal Station. There, I tend to focus on real estate and local politics. I probably take myself too seriously. So for the Metblog, I’m going to try and focus more on the things about Atlanta that I love.  I figure the audience should be a lot wider, so I’ll get to introduce folks to a few things. We’ll see how it goes.

I am a native of Atlanta, and grew up in Virginia Highlands, where I still live. I’ve also briefly lived in Peachtree Hills and Grant Park. I am mostly a product of the Atlanta Public School system, although I finished my last three years at a private school. My father’s side of the family has roots in the South that go back to the Revolutionary War, while my mother’s family came to this country as a result of the Mexican Revolution.  Currently, I am getting an MBA at GSU.

I didn’t truly fall in love with Atlanta until I moved away to go to school in Michigan. At the time I was probably like most teenagers – I wanted to get as far away from home as possible. I was tired of hot summers and mild winters. I wanted to see real snow. There was nothing to do in Atlanta, anyway. I wanted to be an architect, but there was no way I was going to Tech. Besides growing up a Georgia fan, my general feeling about Atlanta was, “Get me out of here.”

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Well, with the support of numerous folks, I finished the half on Thanksgiving. All in all, it was a great experience. Who woulda thought running thirteen miles could be so fun? Not me. Read more

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on thanksgiving i was headed over to my buddy’s place for thanksgiving. he lives in grove park, just past the intersection of bankhead highway and west lake drive. as i was driving up west lake to his place i noticed that the city of atlanta had renamed simpson road to something silly like joseph boone avenue.

is atlanta the only place that does this thing? i wonder if they really think that by renaming street with a reputation for crime and decay that anyone is going to get fooled.

how many of you are now willing to roll down bankhead just because it is now called donald lee hollowell parkway?

a short list just off the top of my head -

stewart ave becomes metropolitan parkway
lakewood freeway becomes langford parkway
bankhead highway becomes hollowell parkway
hightower road becomes james jackson parkway
simpson road apparently becomes boone ave

any i am missing?

oh and do you ever wonder who the poor saps are that are having these streets renamed after them?

the other thing this got me to thinking about is this: if they keeping renaming all of these streets over on the westside, how is poor t.i. going to be able to find his way around atlanta? if you have no idea what i am talking about check out this map of t.i.’s classic ‘ride wit’ me’ that i made in google maps whilst bored one night.

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Okay, I might not…but I’ll think about it, and shame on you for making me.

You know who you are. You pack of people who piled out of the MARTA station at Lenox like ants from a hill that had been kicked. You who followed the young woman in the red high heeled boots, trailing her by 15 paces out into the intersection when the flaming hot hand on the digital pedestrian sign screamed DO NOT WALK at you with its solid illuminated signal. You who stood in front of my truck when I had the green light, then waffled about what to do like a squirrel on a country road causing me and the cars behind me to miss it entirely. And specifically YOU, schlubby wannabe rebel boy with your shaggy hair, horrible posture and 70’s sunglasses, who smacked the hood of my truck with a fist and yelled “pedestrians!” at me.

You give us a bad name.

I’m a pedestrian. I love walking around this city, I love that I get to live in a place that affords us mobility options (in some neighborhoods, anyway), and I love that we have the right of way. That does *not* mean you should abuse it by hiding behind the law (that you’ve conveniently misinterpreted) and it does not mean that given the chance, I won’t pull over and Nancy Kerrigan your ass with a tire iron.

I won’t, but you shouldn’t put it past me.

Seriously, thanks, to all you negligent pedestrians for giving us all a bad name, and for giving the people at organizations like PEDS one more hurdle to jump. I really appreciate it.

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Atlanta’s much anticipated summer classic film festival, Screen on the Green, hosted by Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. and Peachtree TV, in conjunction with the Piedmont Park Conservancy, will return for a ninth season, May 29 - June 26 in Centennial Olympic Park. At sunset each Thursday, Screen on the Green will present a free outdoor showing of a classic film on a 45-by-24-foot movie screen.

I feel (not the good kind of) funny about SotG being a) in COP and b) not brought to me by TCM.

I’m sure I’ll get over it.

The lineup:
Thursday, May 29th– Jaws
Thursday, June 5th – Big Mama’s House
Thursday, June 12th – Chicago
Thursday, June 19th– E.T.
Thursday, June 26th – Viewers’ choice of Back to the Future, Footloose, or Rocky

Other fine print from The Man:
The films start at sundown (approximately 9PM)
Come early to reserve your space, bring a picnic dinner, your family and friends.
ABSOLUTELY no pets, alcoholic beverages, or glass containers allowed!! Please leave all high-backed chairs, grills, umbrellas home. Bags will be searched (help! I’m being oppressed!)

Screen on the Green plans to return to Piedmont Park once drought subsides.

Soooooooooooo…are you going this year?

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