Gas Food and Lodging: Progressive Dinner

Three free shuttles will travel throughout the evening from venue to venue, making a loop from the Marriot Marquis Hotel, to the Rialto, to Georgia State University Galleries, to Agnes Scott College, and back to the Hotel.

Park at any one of the venues, take the shuttle tour to the rest.

Shuttles leave every twenty minutes.

Transportation is made possible through a donation by the Forward Arts Foundation.

5-7 p.m. Hors d’oeuvres @ Rialto & School of Art & Design Gallery
6-8 p.m. Main Course @ Eyedrum
7-9 p.m. Dessert @ Agnes Scott College

This event is a highlight of the 2005 College Art Association
http://www.collegeart.org/conference

CAA Members and the general public are invited to this free event.

…I’ll be there. Look for the scruffy guy in an AHRC tee shirt.

Continuing in a similarly maudlin vein, I thought of other places I used to know and used to go to which aren’t around anymore:

Tortilla’s - once everyone and his dog started making burritos, Tortillas evidently decided to get out. For my money, Willy’s and Burrito Art couldn’t hold a candle to Tortillas (and some folks would say that Tortillas was nothing to Frijoleros on Peachtree).

Across the street from Tortillas for a couple of years was the noble attempt at a cybercafe, Innovox lounge. Innovox was way cool, but was always just hanging on to existence.

For ten years I lived a block away from Ken’s Tavern on Piedmont, a dive’s dive with a relaxed atmosphere, where college frat pledges would attempt to steal the barstools. It’s gone now, and some cajun joint is in it’s place. Whatever.

Other bookstores: The Old New York Bookshop, now (I think) a restaurant, and the Ansley Mall bookstore of my youth, now Chapter 11 (and still decent). The Science Fiction and Mystery bookstore closed recently and geeks everywhere are saddened - I was one of the folks who pitched in some cash to try to keep it open during it’s last few years. A Capella books still rocks, and thank God for the Atlanta Book Exchange - let me insert a plea here to everyone to please please do your part to keep independent booksellers open!

It’s part of the natural cycle of things - places come, places go, and one day you look up and you don’t recognize the landmarks anymore. What places do you miss?

It’s a small camp, I’d say an individual or perhaps a couple, no more. By bridge-living standards, it’s a neat and well-run, indicating that the resident is fairly settled in.

Atlanta has a large homeless population, in spite of consistently being ranked as one of the meanest cities in the U.S. for the homeless. This isn’t too surprising, really - we’re a large city with a mild climate, but so sparsely built out that there are lots of nooks and crannies to hide in, and the cost of living is relatively low.

Proposals for fixing the homeless problem have come and gone — the most recent effort being Mayor Franklin’s commission on homelessness — but the only thing that people really seem to agree on is that they don’t want homeless folks around. Sadly, the homeless can’t stop existing for our convenience.

Now, I honestly believe that we have a good mayor who is actually concerned about homeless folks — after all, her own father was homeless for periods of time. But, politically speaking, it’s hard to generate public support for a group that most people associate with nuisances such as aggressive panhandling and public urination, and it’s not like the homeless themselves are a powerhouse voting bloc.

What can be done?