Tag: ohatlanta

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?

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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.

Atlantans would rather have a ghetto hole than a city?

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TL;DR: protestors try to convince the City of Atlanta to not go forward with a $2 billion dollar proposal to develop the Gulch

For those of you who don’t live in Atlanta, or live in the metro area and are clueless anyway, the Gulch is this giant parcel of land that currently exists as a big empty parking lot that sits two stories lower than the rest of Downtown Atlanta, because long ago the city decided for some reason to build above everything, or maybe they just wanted to keep the streets nice and level.

The bottom line is that the Gulch is a gigantic eyesore of space that exists really, really close to some major Atlanta landmarks, like Centennial Olympic Park, Mercedes Benz Arena, the CNN Center and Philips State Farm Arena.  It’s basically where cars park to get broken into, or where the drivers get harassed, buy drugs, assaulted, murdered or all of the above.  It’s undesirable, looks like shit, and is in desperate need to be taken over by developers and actually developed.

So when some smarmy hot-shot California developers come into town and propose some $2 billion dollar idea to develop the Gulch, you’d think there would be people that might actually be excited by the promise of the City of Atlanta gentrifying yet another shitty area and trying to make it look nice, right?

Fuck no, of course not.  Much like the Beltline, Mercedes-Benz Arena, ScumTrust Park, there are a ton of people who show up, all up in arms, about how it’s a bad idea, and how it’s going to price people out and how some rich developers are going to get richer at the expense of the poor.  Now in their defense, the city most certainly didn’t need Mercedes-Benz Arena or ScumTrust Park, but the Beltline most definitely succeeded in both beautifying the areas it’s been developed in AND pricing out the poors while the rich got richer.

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I give it five minutes before it’s used inappropriately

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: the City of Atlanta announces the launch of Fix-It ATL, a website where people can report issues such as potholes, beautification needs, and other infrastructure problems in need of attention

Here’s the thing – if they had pretty much said that it was specifically for potholes, this might actually not be used inappropriately.  But since they use the phrases “beautification” and “other” in the description of how this service could be utilized, that’s why I give it five minutes before Fix-It ATL is going to be used inappropriately.

Because people are trolls, dicks, racists and just a whole bunch of generally terrible people.

I’d love to be on the receiving end of the computers that are in charge of Fix-It ATL, when people start reporting things such as like, “too many black people on the Beltline,” or “a pothole on Ponce de Leon… next to all the illegal Mexicans waiting outside of Home Depot,” among many other terrible things that people are going to report, because they’re terrible people, they know they can get away with it, or all of the above.

But if it were just potholes, then the potential for terrible shit is somewhat mitigated, but I wouldn’t put it past people to figure out ways to make things as corrupt as possible, because the world is full of shitheads.  The idea is good, and I certainly hope that among the fifty pounds of crap that is bound to flow into their inboxes, there are some actual constructive reports and requests that might actually make Atlanta just a little bit nicer.

The flipside is that the corrupt city doesn’t really have the ability for deniability anymore.  With a service like this firmly in place, when people report issues like potholes and things that need repair, the city can’t play dumb or deny it was ever received if a service like this is launched, which will create a nice little digital paper trail for things to be requested of the city.  The idea is really nice, but now the pressure is on for the city to actually follow through with their claims, lest this become yet another bullet in the list of broken promises that the city continues to claim is going to happen.

Different Braves, same shit

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Honestly, I’m just glad that the Braves won a game.  I’d have been very not mad, just disappointed had the Braves gone into the playoffs and gotten swept and embarrassed like the Rockies or Indians did, and at least they can hang a single laurel that they put up a modicum of a fight before the inevitable Atlanta tradition of getting bounced from the playoffs came to fruition.

I haven’t really written much, if anything about the Braves (baseball team, not ownership) this season, because really there wasn’t really that much to talk about.  Sure, the team of the future arrived a little bit earlier than schedule, and jump started life into the franchise, powering them to a surprise division title and an actual playoff berth.  But there was one part disbelief that the team would actually achieve success and that between the Nationals or Phillies, they’d have gotten upended in September and miss the playoffs, and there was another part that simply didn’t want to tempt the laws of fate and risk jinxing anything, when the team was going so well.

But either way, when the race for all the divisions were settled, and it was apparent that the Braves were in, I can’t say that I was really at all that excited, and this just might be the sentiment of all fans of sports that live in the Atlanta area.  I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I can’t help but feel that the curse of Atlanta sports is just too strong, and as exciting as the 2018 Braves were, were just too young, and really achieved as much success as they did, heavily on the notion that their divisional rivals were all just that bad.  I didn’t just predict that the Braves were going to get bounced in the first round, I’d have put actual money on it, because that’s simply what the Braves do.

Seriously, the Braves haven’t made it out of the first round of the playoffs since 2001, and they’ve made the playoffs eight times since then.  That’s eight times getting bounced in the first round, and almost always, by a team that was seeded lower than they were.  And that’s just the Braves; as far as other Atlanta and Georgia sports are concerned, most of us here remember the epic historic Super Bowl 28-3 collapse of the Falcons.  The Georgia Bulldogs proceeded to lose the National Championship in similar fashion months later.  The Atlanta United soccer team made it to the playoffs in their first year, only to get bounced in the first round by the lower seed, and even the Atlanta Dream WNBA team made it to the WNBA Finals, only to get swept.

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The news acts like this isn’t the oldest trick in the book

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Hardly news: East Cobb mom busted for smuggling in alcohol through her kid’s sippy cup and getting blackout drunk during a matinee

A long time ago when I lived on the south end of town, I remember having lunch at a Chili’s in Peachtree City. While there, the adjacent table was occupied by a mom and like three kids, all of which were different ages, ranging from like 1-4 years old, and naturally, they were loud and rambunctious, with mom having pretty much no control over them whatsoever.

There was a great feeling of relief when they got up and left, because finally there would be some peace and calm to eat to; but not even a full five minutes after they had left, did mom come rushing frantically back into the restaurant, and to the table. The way she was scanning the table made me wonder if she had perhaps dropped her keys or cell phone or something of any actual value based on the urgency plastered on her face.

But then she grabbed one of the plastic kid’s cups that was still on the table, emptied its contents into a nearby water glass, and then promptly grabbed what was left of her margarita and poured the remnants of it into the kid’s cup, replaced the lid and walked out the restaurant as cool as the cucumber in the back of the crisper closest to the refrigeration coil.

It was a true veteran maneuver I’d witnessed, because the savvy in which she pulled this off, there’s no mistaking that this was something that she’s done numerous times.

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