For no particular reason other than to start a bunch of flame wars and stoke conversation, I thought I’d make a list of what I think are the more underrated and overrated spots in town.  Leave your comments or your own under/over rated list! 

Underrated spots

These are the places that may slide under your radar, or that you take for granted.  Give ‘em some love:

• Orme Park – this is a nice little neighborhood park that is shielded from most of the city because it is smack in the middle of a bunch of single family homes.  There are no busy streets that run by it, which means it is nice and tranquil.  There is a little creek that runs through the middle of the park, and one of the best things about it is the large tunnel out of which the creek originates.  Growing up, it was a great place to hide out and avoid the adults.  I haven’t been there in a while, but there used to be some decent graffiti in the tunnel. (more…)

i just got a “breaking news alert” from the atlanta journal-constitution that zoo atlanta has named the latest panda cub xi lan, or “atlanta’s joy.” this to complement sister mei lan.

leaving aside for the moment the ajc’s rather loose definition of what consists of breaking news, i have a question. are we required by virtue of contract to have to name these pandas with chinese names?

surely we could do better. maybe something highlighting atlanta’s rich hip-hop tradition, like “young pandizzle.” or “shawty pandah.”

or we could highlight atlanta’s rich sports tradition, maybe “the highlight panda” or “john rocker.”

i’m just sayin’.

That weekend is here again: The Decatur Book Festival is upon us. Last year, my first year, I spent the whole thing hanging out around the tents and craftspeople on the square, where my wife was hawking wares, so I missed out on things like authors and readings and signings. This year we’re skipping the tent and I’m heading out to Decatur just for the authors.

>> Click to read more

You know how you don’t really appreciate something until it’s gone? Let’s not let it get that far.

Wordsmith’s Books, just off the square in Decatur, is a rare and wonderful thing: a lively local bookstore. I’ll admit, I don’t take advantage of having a store like it around, because I don’t get to spend as much money on books as I’d like. But seeing that we might lose our only Wordsmith’s Books—the only Wordsmith’s Books—has me wanting to make the place a part of my regular existence. I’m going to start tonight, and so can you. Help us out.

(I would’ve mentioned this earlier, but I just found out about it third-hand through the grapevine of area robot-makers. Seriously.)

Tonight, the store is hosting a reading, a musical performance, and a silent auction in an effort to raise enough money to keep the place in business. What’s being auctioned? Robots. Robots, people! How can you not want to get in on that?! These are handmade, locally crafted robots, each one (to the best of my knowledge) unique. Plus, local darlings, the Sealions, will be playing their music when Jack Pendarvis isn’t reading from his new novel, Awesome. Don’t let this opportunity slip by. Read more about this weekend’s Wordsmith’s-saving events at the Wordsmith’s blog.

More to the point, don’t let Wordsmith’s Books slip away. The place has a reputation in the book business—a rep from one of the country’s major publishers mentioned it to me as a great local bookstore, and he’d never been to Atlanta. Wordsmith’s is alive with signing and reading events, local poetry, and special events. If we let it get away then we will just be one more city that doesn’t cherish its independent and local booksellers. Instead, let’s be a city with a noteworthy one-of-a-kind bookshop. Let’s save Wordsmith’s.

Today’s example (seen during my morning commute): Commercial Refrigeration Gasket Replacement Company Inspector Gasket versus DIC’s animated syndicated superhero Inspector Gadget.

Inspector Gasket:

Inspector Gadget:

Have an example of local appropriation of a licensed character, trademark or copyright? Suggest a story or leave a comment.

Seen on a bumpersticker on the way to work this morning: “Put that anta back in Atlanta”.

Opposition to airport codes, a dig at ATL Open/Brand Atlanta or subtle race-baiting in the local music scene?

Maybe everyone is just down on The ATL?

SI.com has a new feature article/report on fan experiences at MLB stadiums and Turner Field, home of the Braves, ranks 19th out of 30 venues.

I’ve never been a huge fan of “The Ted” but I don’t dislike it either. It just seems to lack some of the character of an older stadium, the neighborhood feel of some of those same stadiums and it comes off a bit vanilla.

Don’t get me wrong. The old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was as cookie cutter as they come, but isn’t “The Ted” just a newer version, following a different trend.

Sure, this trend is better, but it just lacks character.

Of course, cheap ticket prices and a winning tradition make any experience above average, but on the whole, I think ranking solidly in the middle seems about right to me.

What about you? How does “The Ted” stack up against other ballparks in your mind?

For the record, I like Wrigley Field, but I have roots in the Midwest and I saw my first game their at age 6. I also watched a game at the old Comiskey Park in it’s last season, but was unimpressed.

When the weather gets like this—warm but not hot, sunny but not humid—I think about dashing out to small towns in the country and looking for farmer’s markets. I think about driving around rustic roads with the windows down and the music up. I think about jarred honey and vegetables with dirt still on them.

In the Midwest, I have a good idea how to run out and find those places. Out here, I’ve only done it once, but to great success. Last autumn, the wife and I spent a weekend perusing old houses and buying fresh food in Washington, Georgia, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be driving back this spring to do it again. (See what I wrote back then.) It’s a good distance—away but not far—and a pretty drive, depending on how you do it.

When we were out there last fall, we decided to spring for a night in a local B&B, which I’ve actually never done before in the States. (I think of B&Bs as Something You Do In Europe and New England.) My advice? Do it. Go forth and spend even just one night in a small town this spring.

The B&B we chose was the Washington Plantation (pictured here), and we will absolutely go again. Just having the nice weather here has me thinking about it. The place is charming, but both big and cozy. You get rooms with fireplaces, but also cable, for the best of both worlds. Plus, it’s got a three-legged cat, which is always good.

I don’t have a fireplace or cable at my house, so that’s almost reason enough to seek out a night away right there. But, of course, a B&B is half bed and half breakfast. Our bedroom was a claw-foot-tub and candies-on-the-pillows kind of place, good for the history buff in me, but good also for the guy who wants to sit around and watch a Dirty Jobs marathon for two hours. Breakfast, I recall, was awfully good, with fresh fruit and French toast, but aside from the grits (terrific, but I’m neither Southern nor a purist, so my opinion may not be worth much), what I really remember is the conversation.

In my opinion, the hidden reason to stay at a B&B—and what makes it a trip in its own right—is the chance to chat with new people over breakfast. Every time I’ve done it, in the UK or the US, I’ve thought “it’s going to be awkward,” but it never is for long. At the Washington Plantation we talked politics with strangers and it wasn’t tense or vitriolic or fake. It was pleasant, thoughtful, reorienting. It was an exchange of ideas, like you read about. Even as somebody addicted to the Internet for it’s supposed ability to facilitate communication, I pine for happy conversations with strangers. You know, in person.

It said a lot about the place, to me, that it was the pinnacle of a long search for the perfect B&B-worthy home. The funny and welcoming Yankee couple that runs the Washington Plantation, Tom and Barb, drove up and down the old Colonies looking for a spot to live out the dream of running a B&B, and they landed here. It’s easy to see why. The house seems built for slowing down, for sipping at Saturdays, for breathing deep, for sweet tea and sunshine. By the end of breakfast, and maybe some kind of crazy-delicious sausage grits I can’t forget, you’ll probably start thinking about moving outside the Perimeter and opening a B&B, too.

Of course, you won’t go through with it. But that’s the point, right? We don’t have to. We can go and live inside somebody else’s dream house for a weekend, drink wine on a wraparound porch, chase a three-legged cat, and browse the local real estate, without giving up our lives ITP. We can get away, and come back. Good deal.

Next week, why Birmingham, Alabama’s Sloss Furnaces are a great photographer’s daytrip.

I’m surprised they still let me post here at Metblogs. See, I spent the last month-plus living about two hours outside of Atlanta (that will have to be a whole ‘nother post) while we moved out of our East Atlanta home and waited to close on our new house in the burbs. I had no internet access at home. It was truly harrowing.

There. I said it. I can no longer say I live intown. I live in the burbs. OTP. Outside the fence.

I have written numerous times about my love for our old neighborhood. When it came down to it, though, I love my kids more. I just wasn’t ready to send my kid to a school with abysmal test scores and where he would be a less than one percent minority at that school. I know. Many parents send their kids to schools where their child is in that small a minority, but I wonder how many of them send them to a school where their child is in that small a minority and test scores are bottom of the barrel. My guess? Not many. I am thinking that parents might overlook the lack of diversity at a school if it meant a child would be surrounded by kids who are more successful.  We weighed the options and the issues, and it came down to the realization that sending my child to that school would simply serve the purpose of proving a point, rather than striving to give my child the best educational opportunities I can manage to give him.

When we made the decision not to send our children to the public elementary school in our neighborhood, we started looking at other options. Charter schools? Not an option for us in our area of unincorporated Dekalb. Private schools? Yikes. Even at the more affordable end they were going to cost us five to seven thousand dollars a year (and some of them cost much more than a year of public university tuitions!) Sure, we could swing $7000/year if I went back to work. Oh, wait – Our daughter will start school in four years. Then we’d be paying almost 15,000 dollars/year tuition. Not to mention the cost of after school childcare and for the summers, when they aren’t in school.

We searched for homes inside the perimeter in better school districts. (I dare anyone to start researching schools and not start going gray – It is as if someone didn’t want me to compare test scores and other information for schools in different areas and different school districts, much less for different states. Try to compare public and private schools and your head will explode.) We’d either be downsizing (and we already lived in a three BR), or paying so much for a house that, again, I would have to go back to work and then the daycare costs until both kids started elementary (and again, for summers) would barely make the back-to-work option worth it.

We slowly started discussing the possibility of moving outside the perimeter, at first laughingly, then in whispers, as it became a more real possibility, and finally we resigned ourselves to it. We started looking at homes in the school districts we had identified that had what we were looking for: Decent test scores, diversity, in a neighborhood we could afford, and not so far from town that the commute would suck my husband of any semblance of a meaningful life. We finally found an area we liked (ish), where houses are in our price range, the kids would have other kids to play with, and that we didn’t find too lacking in character. We bought a house here a few weeks ago.

When it came down to it, I cried when I left East Atlanta. I hated leaving the place where I met my husband, where I met friends and wonderful neighbors, and to which I brought two kids home from the hospital. I had been there long enough that I couldn’t go anywhere without at least seeing one person I knew from the neighborhood.
In the end, I know that it is for the best. The kids love the new house and neighborhood already, and my husband and I are laughingly giving in to a quieter way of life, and at the same time cracking up at what we have become. I do think, though, that we are not alone. I have already met four sets of neighbors with kids close in age to ours. They always ask where we moved from and then nod knowingly at our answer. Turns out they moved from Ormewood, Kirkwood, and East Atlanta themselves. As one girl told me, “We are city folk.”

I wonder how many people all over Atlanta have struggled with the same thing, forced by poverty, job location, housing prices or failing schools to make the same difficult decision that we made. Our decision is made, though, and we do not regret it. I just see it as an adventure, a challenge to find what is interesting and colorful, and special about the new area we live in. I’ve already been thinking a lot about it, and exploring this new frontier, and you can bet that you will see some Metblogs posts about it. I think that intown readers might be surprised at a few of my observations. I know I have already found a few things that surprised me.

What is it about Variety Playhouse? It’s right there. It’s a terrifically relaxed venue. Yet I almost never go. Except last night I did.

There was a time—not a long time, but a time—when I was bothered by the little scraps of light from cell phones and digital cameras held up from the standing room in front of the stage. It made me think of jack-necks with microphones and two-bit mini-disc devices held together with electrical tape, secretly recording shows back in Chicago. These weren’t keepsake bootlegs or peer-to-peer consolation prizes for folks who couldn’t make the show, back then. They were like clandestine surveillance experts looking for secret messages in the lyrics and, failing to find them, selling off the harmless recordings under the table. These guys were resellers, smuggling in mics and smuggling out contraband—bootleggers of the old-school variety, more Capone than Robin Hood.

>> Read the rest of this review