Maybe since I’ve lived in the south my entire life (I know, lame) I have a different perspective? However I have done some traveling and seen lots of other cities. I think it depends on where you go in Atlanta. There are pockets of true “southerness.”

Drive down Peachtree Street on Sunday about 12:30 p.m. You’ll see church after church letting out. Folks parading in their Sunday best heading to lunch. Go to The Colonnade on Chesire Bridge. Even in Buckhead, where I work, I see lots of old Atlanta. I meet the perfumed ladies and seersucker clad gentlemen with that “old south” accent.

Generally folks down here are friendly. We’ll help someone with directions. I find that folks are open to talking and meeting new folks. I’ve found those same qualities in New York and San Francisco but you have to be more intentional in meeting folks. Atlanta doesn’t have that urban energy and heartbeat that New York or LA has. Atlanta’s pace is more relaxed, especially in the summer. Where else will you hear, “Ya’ll,” spoken so frequently?

True Atlanta has changed and is an ever-growing urban city now. Still I think that Atlanta will always maintain an air of the south. What do you think? What makes a town southern anyway? Is Atlanta a southern town or are we simply just a city now? Does Atlanta still have its southern charm?

What I want to know is does Atlanta feel like home to you? If so, why? What do you like about it? Why do you choose to stay?

hagin' by me

for zoo atlanta’s pandas that is. the lease on the giant pandas is up next year and zoo atlanta announced today it needs to raise $500,000 to reach the $2.5 million they need in order to renew the lease with the chinese on lun lun, yang yang and xi lan (mei lan is going back to china no matter what.)

it sucks that zoo atlanta doesn’t have the cash on hand to do this, but you know the drill, economy bad, corporate sponsorships are down, etc. etc. so anyway, the zoo is coming to you and asking for a membership or a donation or whatever you can do. they have set up a web site, give so they can stay, and you can check it out for more info.

i realize there are so many worthy causes hurting for money right now, but pandas, pandas are one of the things that make us big-time, in select company. and they are awesome.

you guys know how much i love these pandas. during the winter when i was going through a rough patch one of the things that got me through the day was pausing for a mintue and watching p-dizzle on the panda cam. i even bought a membership to the zoo so i could walk over there any time and see them. those animals are to me citizens of this city and part of us.

i hate this panda lease game with the chinese, but it is what it is. maybe this is the same kind of blackmail professional sports teams play with cities to get new stadiums, but damn does it work.

i think they are worth trying to keep here.

so who would come to a “keep the pandas here” party if we at the atlanta metblog were to throw one. maybe we could raise a few bucks.

who’s with me?

Photo © Sara Hindmarch 2009

As found near Twain’s in Decatur. This would’ve been the highlight of my night, if not for the vodka from a Crystal Head.

The mall and the airport are great people watching locations, obviously. Back in the day when we had festivals and concerts at Piedmont Park, that was also a great place to people watch.

What are some other places in Atlanta to enjoy all the diverse folks that live here?

One of my favorites from Goodie Mob. One of the best things about Atlanta is all the great restaurants. In this song the Goodie Mo B mentions one in particular that every ATLien must experience, The Beautiful. Without a doubt some of the best soul food I’ve ever tasted. Don’t know if JJ’s Rib Shack is still open but I bet it’s good too.

“Come and get yo soul food, well well
Good old-fashioned soul food, all right
Everythang is for free
As good as it can be
Come and get some soul food”

“Oh, Atlanta, hear me calling, I’m coming back to you one fine day. No need to worry, there ain’t no hurry, ‘Cause I’m, on my way back to Georgia, On my way back to Georgia.”

If you’re a fan of the ATL, maybe crank this as you taxi down Hartsfield-Jackson or sit in traffic on 75 north.

But I’ll admit that I’m just bitter. My wife was one of the people laid off from the museum on Monday. The story, though, will be that the High brass bravely took pay cuts. [This is where I cut some honest criticism for the sake of politeness.]

Here’s what the actual NPR piece sounded like:

“Five percent for the majority of the staff, six percent for the [department directors], and seven percent for myself.” Shapiro says five full time and 3 temporary positions will also be eliminated. The changes are effective immediately.

To be fair, I understand why an Atlanta institution is the story and not the handful of souls that got cut loose, but I want to attract a bit of attention to the faces in the statistics here. In the news, people tend to be identified by their age and their occupation. People who get laid off get shuffled into a statistical purgatory where they wait to get their faces back. When we do point a lamp at them, it’s usually to back-light a scary economy.

In our case, the jobs that drew us here and bound us to this city have given us up. The Atlanta job market being what it is, our house being devalued as it has, we’ve got to look as far and wide as we can for work now. Who knows if we’ll still live here in 40 or 60 days?

For more on the High Museum budget cuts, check out the press release after the jump:

High Museum of Art Announces $1.4 M in Budget Cuts

ATLANTA, February 25, 2009 – The High Museum of Art announced a series of budget cuts today, including across the board pay cuts and a 7% reduction of its staff. These reductions, combined with previous cost-cutting measures, will result in $1.4 million dollars in savings and will reduce the operating budget for fiscal year 2009 to $23.7M. These measures will enable the museum to continue to provide high quality and meaningful art and educational experiences to the community.

The High has instituted a series of pay cuts across the board, starting with the Director’s office. Michael Shapiro will take a 7% pay cut and other Director-level employees will take a 6% pay cut. All other employees will take a 5% pay cut. These cuts will extend through May 31, 2009. Beginning June 1 and extending through fiscal year 2010, salaries will be reinstated but employees will be required to take 2.6 weeks of unpaid leave. The staff reductions have been achieved through hiring freezes, redistribution of staff responsibilities and the elimination of five full-time positions and three temporary positions.

“As with many non-profit institutions both in Atlanta and across the country, the High Museum of Art has been affected by the economic downturn, experiencing shortfalls in income we receive through donations and membership as well as losses to our endowment,” said Michael E. Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green Jr. Director. “These are challenging times and few decisions are harder than one that involves staff reductions. However, the High needs to take these prudent steps in order to balance its budget and ensure that we can continue our role as the leading art museum serving the Southeast.”

“We are gratified by the tremendous response and record-breaking attendance for our ‘First Emperor’ exhibition; however, admission is a small piece of the museum’s overall budget. For the past fifteen years, the High has operated in the black and we will continue to operate without a deficit to ensure the institution’s long term health and stability,” Shapiro continued. “We are continuing to monitor our budgets and the economy and in looking towards fiscal year 2010, we are conscious that potential declines in corporate sponsorship, individual giving, membership, and losses to our endowment may require us to make additional reductions.”

These cuts follow a series of previous budget reductions which have been implemented throughout the past year. Working across departments, the High has taken a number of measures to trim expenses, including examining and adjusting exhibition schedules, instituting a hiring freeze and a ban on non-essential travel, reducing energy use, and strategically trimming programming without impacting the core visitor experience.

High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association, is the leading art museum in the southeastern United States. With more than 11,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High Museum of Art has an extensive anthology of nineteenth and twentieth century American and decorative art; significant holdings of European paintings; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art. The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art. The High’s Media Arts department produces acclaimed annual film series and festivals of foreign, independent and classic cinema. In November 2005, the High opened three new buildings by architect Renzo Piano that more than doubled the Museum’s size, creating a vibrant “village for the arts” at the Woodruff Arts Center in midtown Atlanta. For more information about the High, please visit www.High.org.

The Woodruff Arts Center
The Woodruff Arts Center is ranked among the top four arts centers in the nation. A not-for-profit center for performing and visual arts, its campus comprises the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art, Young Audiences and the 14th Street Playhouse.

Last night I found out that Ella Guru will be closing in a few days. As a music lover I’m saddened to hear that another of the places I go to purchased used CDs is forced to call it quits. Blame the economy. Blame the consumer who purchases digitally. Blame piracy. Whatever you blame, nothing will change the fact that it’s leaving.

Ella Guru has been an Atlanta used CD destination for nearly ten years. Until last September it occupied a storefront in the mammoth Toco Hill Shopping Center, before picking up and moving to Inman Park where it sublet some space from the now-defunct scooter store. I questioned the move initially because within a mile of its new location there are at least two other music stores selling used CDs (namely Criminal Records and Wax-n-Facts). I reasoned that Ella Guru needed the move to survive and that they might be following the same logic as automobile dealers or piano stores who also seem to cluster together.

That section of Inman Park has seen its fair share of business changes in recent times:

• Johnny’s Pizza changed owners.
• The aforementioned scooter store opened and closed.
• The Grape on Highland decided it couldn’t stay in business and closed its doors.

Ella Guru will soon join my list of Atlanta establishments that I miss (see also: Frijoleros, Tortillas, The Point, Burrito Art, Crescent Moon, Kool Korner Grocery, The French Quarter Food Market / The Stein Club, The Beer Mug (Brookwood Interchange), Bridgetown Grill, and the 1990’s version of Buckhead).

Which Atlanta establishments do you miss and would like to turn-back the clock to revisit?

People don’t feel safe. Groups like ATAC (Atlantans Together Against Crime) are getting the word out about it with their website and public rallies.

In contrast, this AJC article on symbolic flamingos describes the situation like this:

[Jason] Hatcher, an art director for a local weekly newspaper, and Johnny Castellic (a.k.a. “Johnny Hollywood”) have launched a campaign to raise public awareness of what they insist is a growing crime problem in their area.

[Emphases mine.]

That same article quotes APD Chief Richard Pennington from an earlier statement. He said:

“The community groups work closely together[.] [...] When they hear about one crime, they e-mail their neighbors and then you get a barrage of e-mails. I think they just respond to what they hear. And a lot of times, perception to them is reality.”

Those lines about insistence and perception-as-reality made some of my neighbors real angry. The implication is that citizens are being spooked by the echo chambers of online message boards amplifying every crime — that local crime has always been like this and people used to feel safer because they used to be happily uninformed. What I think a lot of locals heard in that quote was that they shouldn’t get all worked up just because a few houses have been invaded. That he knows better than the citizenry whether we should feel safe or not.

Is that how feeling safe works?

The argument on the ground is that it’s reasonable out here to feel unsafe and call for additional protection when armed gunmen are kicking in doors for televisions. The argument upstairs, in the city offices, is that stats are trending favorably and, so, we are safer even if we don’t feel safer.

I’ve stewed on this for a while, hoping I’d have some wise breakthrough. I haven’t. What I keep coming back to, though, is this: Does it matter if the stats are up or down? That’s a separate issue — a distraction.

The issue, to the people in their homes, isn’t whether burglaries and armed robberies are technically up or down, but that they’re common and frightening. People don’t feel safe. Winning the argument that property crimes are up or down, one way or the other, isn’t going to make anyone feel safer. The APD Chief isn’t really hearing the ground-level argument and the ground-level ralliers are getting distracted into a debate that they’ll lose even if they win. But the people on the blocks getting robbed need a win somewhere, and Chief Pennington and the AJC coverage are visible targets.

And now I’ve gotten distracted in all this. It’s easy to do.

I wanted to put it to y’all and hear more opinions: What does it take to feel safe? What is safety worth if you don’t believe you’re safe? How bad is bad?