Tag: ohatlanta

Oh, Atlanta #877

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

To quote an internet commenter who was quoting any brand consultant:

the best diversion to consistent mediocrity is new branding and messaging.

That being said, you know what that means!  A new logo was made for something that didn’t need it!  And not only was a new logo created for something that didn’t need it, it also cost $590,000 to “make!”

Man, I am absolutely in the wrong business.  I totally need to find a way to get back onto the agency side that somehow has entire cities in their back pockets, to where they can charge over half a million dollars to rip off the Airwalk shoes logo, and then package it in 75 words of fluff and bullshit that could sell water to the ocean.  Because I’m pretty sure I could plagiarize one thing a year and be completely satisfied pulling in six figures for doing such and then calling it a year.

I mean I don’t even know where to begin with this perfect example of federal waste and in all likelihood crooked Atlanta politicians spoon-feeding their bedroom buddies.  But I think the most succinct place to start is with just the symbol itself:

  • The shapes that form the “star” in the logo are a series of “A’s” – or arrows – that spiral around a central axis, “symbolizing the freedom of movement provided to the region.” 
  • The arrows point toward and away from the center, “creating pulse-like movement.” 
  • The shape is reminiscent of a star, “and stars have provided guidance to travelers for thousands of years.” 

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The epitome of owned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know that I concluded that Atlanta United winning an MLS Cup “counts” towards the city getting a long awaited championship, but if you ever wanted more proof that MLS doesn’t get any respect, look no further than the fact that the reigning MLS Champions won’t be able to play its CONCACAF Champions League home games, at home; due to a scheduling conflict – with Monster Jam and Supercross.

AKA the Grave Digger white trash redneck monster truck show and a bunch of dirtbikes pretending like they’re Excitebike.

So despite the fact that Atlanta United accomplished the impossible in getting the cursed monkey off the city’s back by winning a professional sport championship, they’re still denied the opportunity to represent the United States to a likely packed home field against Costa Rica’s Herediano fútbol club.

This is what I liked to declare, owned.

It’s really kind of silly too, because anyone who lives in Atlanta has probably seen just how maniacal it gets in the city whenever there’s an international friendly featuring one or two Latin American squads.  Mexico vs. Venezuela easily filled 65,000 at the Georgia Dome, and Honduras vs. Mexico easily matched that. 

If Atlanta United drew 73,000 into the Benz for the MLS Championship game, imagine just how easily it would draw another 73,000 featuring the heroes of the city versus, a Latin American squad?

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Does an MLS Cup break the Curse of Atlanta Sports?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No, serious question.  Don’t get wrong, I like soccer and I can sit down and watch a match and understand what’s going on, but the truth of the matter is that soccer doesn’t get a fraction of the respect and acknowledgement of The Big 3 sports (MLB, NFL, NBA) when it comes to general recognition, at least in America.  I feel like hockey and the NHL took a serious ding from their last strike and lockout, and they’ve fallen to a second-tier of prevalence where it only matters to the people whose teams are actually in contention, but it’s really difficult for those outside of those fandoms to actually care. 

And that’s where I get the impression that MLS is at, in spite of the fact that Atlanta United just won the top prize in the organization, the MLS Cup.  Personally, I don’t know how many teams there are in MLS.  I don’t even definitively know how many teams are in New York.  Obviously, I know Atlanta’s got a team, and I know for a fact that there are teams in Toronto, Seattle, Portland, Orlando, Los Angeles, and I think there’s one in Kansas City.  Otherwise, I don’t know much else about MLS as a whole, and I indulge in a lot of sports, be it on television or partaking in sports news on the internet.

That being said it brings me back to my original question, does Atlanta United winning the MLS Cup actually break the Curse of Atlanta Sports, the superstitious mythos behind the sheer inability of Atlanta sports teams to win any championships?

When sports media started coining the discussions about “cursed cities,” it almost always started with Cleveland, since for the longest time, the Browns sucked at football, the Indians sucked at baseball, and the Cavaliers sucked at basketball.  An NHL team lasted there for two seasons, a WNBA team for just six, and they’ve never had an MLS club.  Needless to say, they were undoubtedly the worst luck sports city in America, until LeBron James gave the city a second shot and basically willed the franchise to an NBA championship in 2016.

But ever since the debate of cursed cities came into existence, it really wasn’t hidden that curses and droughts really referred to championships in The Big 3; this was never made more prevalent than when the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2014, and for the ensuing weeks, there were all sorts of statements flung around about the first major sporting championship brought to Seattle in history, completely ignoring the fact that the Seattle Storm had won two WNBA titles prior to this.  The Kansas City Royals’ World Series win ended the drought in 2015, despite the fact that Sporting KC won the MLS Cup in 2013.  And Washington D.C. often ignored that D.C. United won four MLS Cups before the Capitals “broke the curse” with a Stanley Cup win just this year.

And the last two instances are prime examples of just how ignored MLS is in the grand spectrum of professional sport organizations, and why I pose the question on whether or not Atlanta United’s MLS Cup win actually breaks the Curse of Atlanta Sports.

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Don’t look now but…

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

…an Atlanta professional sports team is playing for an actual championship.  Caveat?  It’s Atlanta United, the city’s soccer team, playing for the MLS Cup.

Don’t get me wrong, I think soccer/futbol is great.  I enjoy watching the game, and I understand the vast majority of the rules, and think a 0-0 game that ends in a shootout is a marvelous thing.  It’s just that there’s no secret that it’s often perceived as a second-tier sport to most ‘Muricans who think real sports are limited to fat guys in pads who call themselves athletes crashing into one another, or who can slam dunk a basketball to make black people get out of their seats and overreact the colorfully.

When people think about which team is going to bring some championship pedigree to Atlanta, most of the time people are often thinking about the Falcons, or the Braves first; but never the Hawks, because the NBA is busted as hell and the Hawks suck lol.  But the vast majority of football americano fans probably don’t even consider the idea that Atlanta United just might do it first, and I get the impression that it would be as met in the same manner as the Washington Capitals did for DC; initial surprise, but then immediate bandwagon embracing as if the Caps held the entire fate of Washington on their shoulders, and not the Redskins, Nationals or Weezards.

Regardless, the very young Atlanta United club, two years removed from their introduction into MLS, are on the cusp of immortality, and have one more team to overcome to get there, the Portland Timbers.

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It’s not like they had a few years to prepare

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

About as shocking as political corruption: some MARTA employees believe they’re not ready for the Super Bowl

When it was announced that Atlanta was going to get the Super Bowl in 2019, I remember telling myself to absolutely avoid going anywhere remotely near the city at any time remotely near then.  Not that I have nearly as much business inside city proper anymore these days, but in case I want to go to some restaurant in town or someone might be visiting, I just need to remind myself to stay the fuck away that entire week and especially day of game.

But yeah back to MARTA being ill-prepared for the Super Bowl – is this really any surprise?  Like really, is absolutely anyone on the planet surprised by these anonymous admissions from inside?  MARTA is about as reliable as a fat person at Golden Corral, or my dog left unattended in the kitchen; put them in circumstances where failure is inevitable, and failure is a sure bet to happen.

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Did Atlanta really lose the HQ2 sweepstakes?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In case you missed it, Amazon finally ended their year-long goose chase of deciding on what city was going to win the privilege and exalted honor of being home to HQ2.  And because contests don’t really need to have rules or hold true initial claims anymore, not just one city, but two, were picked to split HQ2 into what I guess might be HQ2 and HQ2-2 or HQ3 or whatever they choose to call it, but the bottom line is that there wasn’t just one winner, but two co-winners: Crystal City in Virginia, and Long Island City in New York.

Admittedly, in the start of the whole HQ2 saga, I was actually hopeful that Atlanta would end up being the winner, especially after it made it past the first few rounds of cuts, and bettors were actually placing odds on the whole thing, placing Atlanta along with Austin, Texas, as the odds-on favorites to be where Amazon decided to go.

I think a part of that was just kind of the sports fan in me, that is pretty eager to see Atlanta, or the state of Georgia get any sort of win, that even a competition like where a major corporation is deciding to go, would’ve been sufficient enough to be able to declare that Atlanta came out with a major win.  And the knee-jerk thoughts of what a company like Amazon would be capable of doing with its arrival, like jettisoning property values, infusing the city with fresh new people that might be able to break the norm and shape something new, and the outlandish thought that being home to HQ2 might just supercharge Prime deliveries for the hometown immediately came to mind.

But then as time passed, and the saga drug on and on and on, with more cuts and more bullshit happening, where Atlanta kept moving on, but kept dumping more and more money into trying to impress Jeff Bezos and Co. to come to Atlanta, it began to get old hat really fast.  Skeptics were quick to point out that a place in the DC/VA/MD would have the inside track, since Bezos owned the Washington Post, and why wouldn’t he want to base his primary business near the major media outlet he owned?

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Pretty sure we’ve done this before

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Add it to the list… or not?  Truck overturns on I-285 ramp to I-20, spilling eggs everywhere

I’m fairly certain this exact scenario has happened before.  Same location, same contents, same results.  Without an operational site, I can’t run a query to find out, but I’m like 90% sure that this isn’t the first time that a truck has overturned in Metro Atlanta, spilling eggs all over the place. [2020 note: it did]

If that is genuinely the case, get your shit together, Atlanta.  Start spilling some more unique things on the road, and not a rerun of something that happened in the past.

If I’m wrong, then I genuinely apologize for not glamorizing this incident as I would have done for things I definitively knew were brand new incident types, like when entire hams were tossed all over I-85 south.  But like I said, I’m pretty sure eggs have been done before.

Ultimately, the bigger issue is that truck drivers feel like Atlanta highways are their own personal Gran Turismos, and such assessments continuously bite them in the ass, based on the frequency in which trucks keep tipping over, regardless of what happens to their cargo, food or not.

This specific location where I-285 and I-20 meet on the east end of the perimeter has been the place where the vast majority of these maladies have occurred, and it makes me wonder if the Georgia Department of Transportation is going to consider any sort of action to reduce all these costly and wasteful mistakes, or if the onus really does remain on all these dumbass truck drivers who keep going too fast and crashing their shit all over the place.

Either way, try again trucks.  I demand some new shit to be spilled on the roads, like a Breyers truck, or maybe some Coca-Cola trucks, for the non-drinkers to have something to drink that isn’t one of the numerous times beer trucks have crashed on Atlanta roads.