Tag: ohatlanta

MLS is clearly the preferred white people sport

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Driving around Atlanta, there are often a lot of tells on peoples’ cars that indicate the race of the people driving them.  Some are pretty blatant, like how white people all love to have shit like stick figure family stickers, black people have big flashy rims or the content of Africa silhouetted in some way shape or form, or Hispanics having pictures of their trucks airbrushed onto their trucks, while being looked over upon by the Virgin Mary.

However, some tells are more subtle, but no less obvious to those who see them.  Like blackout license covers or (likely) illegal shades of tint or a box of Kleenex wrapped in an ornate satin box cover sitting in the back window.  But there’s no more obvious tell that a car belongs to a white person in Atlanta, than an Atlanta United sticker or emblem on it.  Because there’s nothing short of Ponce City Market and talking about gentrification and urbanism that white people in Atlanta like more than Atlanta United soccer.

And then it got me thinking beyond just Atlanta United, and about soccer in general, specifically MLS.  And how it really seems like MLS has become the de facto preferred spectator sport of choice for white people, even above the NFL, NBA and MLB.  The more cursory internet glancing I do, I’m seeing that in major cities like Toronto, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia, if you take snapshots of the crowds, they’re unmistakably overwhelmingly white.  It doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s really all the justification I need to make my snap judgments; I’ve been to enough cities to watch sports, and despite being in different states, they really aren’t that much different from one another.

Ultimately, I think white people loving MLS really boils down to two very obvious white people traits: racism and a lack of commitment.  A low-key third would be the fact that so many are hipsters, so naturally, they gravitate towards a lower-tier popularity sport, especially if it meant that there were fewer minority fans to have to mingle with.

But frankly, upon thinking about it, it kind of makes perfect sense why white people love MLS so much. Go to any NFL or NBA game, and it’s abundantly clear that black people love football and basketball.  And the average white person is often times afraid of the average black person, so it stands to believe that white people don’t like going to these sporting events, because it puts them in too close proximity with those that intimidate them.  When the home team does well and the black people get excited, it scares the white people.  But when the home team loses and the black people get butthurt, it scares the white people then too.  This isn’t to say that white people avoid these sporting events outright, but typically they tend to go when they have privileges like corporate box seats, or are in large enough numbers to where they manage to feel safe, but even still it’s not the same white safety as an MLS game would be.

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I will never understand people who leave guns in their cars

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A trend I’ve noticed in the general metro Atlanta area over the last few months is the sheer rise of car break-ins happening all around city proper, and the seemingly hopeless south side of the city that I once lived in myself but just a few years ago.  And not just any ordinary smash-and-grabs, where thieves are looking for whatever free shit that happened to be in sight which compelled them to break-in in the first place that they could flip for some quick cash, but thefts where thieves are searching out, and way more often than I thought should be considered normal, stealing guns.

My old neighborhood’s Nextdoor, that I’ve admitted to not being able to unsubscribe to for the sheer amount of unintentional entertainment I get out of it, has seen way too many threads over the last few months of people detailing all the cars that have been broken into, where among other things, guns were stolen.  Not just at their homes, but when they’re out at dinner, or out at Publix, or any of the nearby shopping areas where people would park their cars in public.

But it really boils down to the fact that I have to ask, why so many people even bother keeping guns in their cars in the first place?

Personally, I have no real qualms with the second amendment.  I do question why ordinary citizens would need SEAL team grade sniper rifles or assault rifles, but ultimately I don’t have a problem with people getting firearms with the intent to protect themselves.  It’s only when things go dark and people are using legally obtained weaponry to do bad things, is where I raise my eyebrows, but we can’t control the rest of the world no matter how much we’d like to be able to sometimes.

Back to the topic on hand though, I’m not so much flabbergasted at the repeated instances where people are having guns stolen from their vehicles, as much as I am curious to why people are bothering to leave guns in their cars in the first place.  License to carry, I get that, but that also implies that you’re actually carrying, and not leaving your firearms in vehicles that are one locked door away from being obtainable by absolutely anyone.

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I was hoping it would smell delicious outside

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unfortunately, it did not, even with forty thousand pounds of chicken on fire not that far from where the office is.

It’s been a while since there’s been a good story of food getting spilled onto Atlanta highways.  I think the last time I wrote anything about the subject, it was the kind of self-conflicted incident where cows got loose on I-285 and I-75 where at first I wanted to make jokes about how there was free beef on the roads, but felt sad and empathetic for the actual living cows that were probably just scared beyond measure, wandering wildly around in search of safety.

In this time, it’s not a new realization, but I’ve found plenty of evidence that I’m far from the only person fascinated by the topic of trucks overturning on roads, spilling their cargo all over the place, although I try to keep it mostly local to Atlanta or just Georgia if I can.  I don’t have my own (still defunct) site to refer to for stories about trucks overturning, as much as I’d like to be an authority on the topic.

But this also isn’t the first time that chicken has been on the menu on the roads of Georgia.  However, this is still somewhat fascinating in the simple fact that there was just so much of it.  I mean, 40,000 lbs. of frozen chicken – that’s a whole lot of god damn chicken.  I can’t imagine the sheer number of chickens necessary to get 40,000 lbs. of it, much less the fact that that’s probably factoring in the lack of weight from the parts that aren’t meant for average consumption.

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Go home, Atlanta’s full – really

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every now and then there will be some article about how the traffic in Atlanta is amongst the worst in the country or the world, or an article about how the housing market within the city proper is gradually climbing into San Francisco-like ascensions.  And then inevitably, like people flocking to the supermarkets for milk, bread and toilet paper at the news of oncoming snow, there will always be someone whether it’s through Twitter or any social media outlet, or in a comments section who says “go home, Atlanta’s full” or something of the like.

But then on the eve of the Super Bowl, which is being played in Atlanta this year, the city actually did become full; to the point where even the local NBC news outlet had no choice but to drop a headline that, Atlanta was full.  The meme became reality to where it had to not just be acknowledged by the media, but integrate it into the headlines.  And to prove that Atlanta was full, 11 Alive provided time-lapse video evidence of the clusterfuck of humanity that converged into Downtown Atlanta.

It looked like a more ghetto version of Shinjuku Station whenever the lights turned green and suddenly hundreds of people would cross the streets, filling up every inch of space in the process.

Frankly, when I knew that the Super Bowl was coming to Atlanta, not that I have a tremendous amount of business in the city anymore now that I’ve moved back out to the ‘burbs, but I knew that anything within two weeks of the Super Bowl was a definite no-fly zone for going remotely anywhere near the city if it could absolutely be helped.  And seeing video evidence of just how full Atlanta became, just a night prior to the Super Bowl justified everything I thought was going to be the case, and made me very glad that I no longer worked or lived remotely anywhere within city proper limits.

Needless to say, it’s still hilarious to me that the meme became reality, even if it just reached critical mass on one of the numerous nights in which people flooded the city.  But it’s official, Atlanta was full; now everyone go home.

Snowpocalypse 2019, Super Bowl Leee, etc.

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I find myself in a position where I suddenly have some down time, and for lack of better things to do, I kind of feel like I should feel like writing.  Meetings are still consuming the vast majority of my work days, but for some reason, my afternoon meeting(s) have been pushed back to a later time, so kind of out the blue, I’ve got this patch of time, and I’ve already exhausted my usual rounds of internet surfing during my morning meeting(s), so I guess I’ll try to help the time pass by writing about some things that I don’t necessarily want to spend an entire post writing about, but aren’t so bad consolidated into a singular post.

So, earlier in the week, the City of Atlanta for the most part, shut down.  On Monday, the news was that an unavoidable snow storm was converging onto the southeast, including Georgia, and that by Tuesday morning, snow was all but guaranteed.  Mind you, all of Monday was around the high 50’s, and by the time I left the office, had topped out at 60F degrees.  It was such a beautiful day, I went home and threw the ball for big dog, since if the weather were to come true, there wouldn’t be another chance any time soon for ball time to occur.

As night rolled in, the temperature did start to drop, and I could feel that thickness in the air that typically seems to come with snow, but I couldn’t help but think in my mind how funny it would be if Snowpocalypse was some massive false call, and that nothing was to occur.  I had already taken contingency plans as far as work was concerned, and made sure to collect numbers from my employees, just in case I had to let them know that the office was closed in the morning.  The news kept pushing back the arrival of the impending snow from 11 pm to 3 am, and by the time I went to sleep, it was around 5 am.  I went to bed, expecting to see snow on the ground by the time I woke up.

And naturally, there was none.  I’m glad I didn’t alter my routine and stay up late because snow was all but guaranteed, and fuck myself from waking up.  I texted all my employees and made the day optional on account of the updated news that by 10-11 am, SNOW WAS GOING TO COME, but otherwise went into the office myself.  Went ot the gym, ran cardio, showered, and then went upstairs to my desk, where I had a pretty routine day; and since I’m seated next to the window, I had a front row seat to the small amount of misting that occurred, but no snow actually fell.

The picture above is a pretty accurate representation of what Snowpocalypse 2019 looked like in Atlanta.

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The implications of this are not good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Get ready for Cryme Tyme: the City of South Fulton passes the “Ban the Box” ordinance which no longer makes job applicants have to disclose if they have a criminal background

Shortly after New Years, I hit a freshly formed pothole, and blew a flat.  I was not pleased about it, since ultimately it’s an incident that nobody is really held accountable for, and I was out $500 in order to replace all my tires, since they were pretty much due for a change.  Regardless, I went on the internet and tracked down the protocol for reporting the pothole to the county, and within two days, I got a message stating that the pothole was resolved.  I drive on this stretch of road regularly, and I can confirm that it was patched pretty immediately.

I’ve stated that I’m still on my old neighborhood’s Nextdoor, since I can’t bring myself to walk away from the source of unintentional trainwreck entertainment, especially since it’s a subscription that not just anyone can get access to unless they live (or lived) there.  One issue that has been fairly persistent in my old hood (aside from theft, vandalism, celebratory gunfire, ordinary gunfire, bodies being found in the trunks of abandoned cars outside of Publix), is potholes.

They’ve been so problematic, it’s gotten to the point where it’s even been on the local news, with hopes that public exposure will shame GDOT into fixing it immediately, to which I’m not actually sure if it’s worked this time, because this tactic has been employed so many times.  Otherwise, this is an issue for the City of South Fulton, because its within their jurisdiction and they’re responsible for the infrastructure of themselves.

Needless to say, the response has not been swift, probably not been addressed, and I’ve seen numerous threads about all the cars that have fallen victim to the same potholes.  Sure, maybe they all shouldn’t be on 22” low-profile wheels more susceptible to blowing out on potholes, but that’s another story, but frankly people shouldn’t expect their tax-paid roads to be completely pocked with deep and detrimental potholes in the first place.

The point of all this introduction is that if people thought living in the City of South Fulton was bad before, imagine what it’s going to be like when anyone who ever wants to work for the city, will no longer have to disclose any criminal offenses they’ve had on their records?

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Man, fuck NCR

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: stuffy Fortune 500 company NCR settles agreement with neighboring longstanding mainstay gentlemen’s club The Cheetah, to remove their iconic rotating sign, presumably so it wasn’t so obvious that their fancy Midtown offices wasn’t practically right next to, a strip club

NCR is a company in which just hearing the name would probably elicit crickets from most people.  But NCR is also the company that makes products that all around the world, people have seen their products: card readers, ATM components, and all sorts of POS equipment.  Yeah, NCR is vastly responsible for the majority of that crap all across the globe.

They’re also a company that I have personally dealt with at a previous place I worked, and they were what I would describe as a problem child of a business to work with.  Nitpicky as all hell, demanding, inconsiderate of both time and resources, I spent many extra hours of my life working on their shit, and with each round of corrections, they demanded fresh hard copies of their training materials to review, no matter how small or inconsequential the changes were. 

No lie, I must’ve used at least two boxes of letter paper for just their training manuals alone, and that was just to develop them.  I can’t imagine how many trees had to die for these fucks to actually produce them after they were finalized and approved to send to the printer.

Frankly, I have no love lost for NCR.  I resent them as a company and I can’t help but twitch when I use a card somewhere and I catch a glimpse of their logo on the POS equipment that I have to use in order to finish a transaction.

But that was just how they affected me; and now they’re affecting the landscapes of our fair city, Atlanta?  By forcibly having removed, one of icons of the city, that was here long before they even had any consideration of coming into Atlanta?

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