Tag: ohatlanta

New names don’t always equate to new beginnings

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

File this under “shit nobody but me will really give two shits about” – the fairly, newly formed City of South Fulton has voted on its official name moving forward: Renaissance, Georgia.

I don’t hide the fact that I’m extremely guarded on the internet when it comes to stating anything that discloses my general locations, but I have openly disclosed that my previous place of residence was most definitely on the southern side of the Metropolitan Atlanta area.  I’ve also said that this is a mistake that I vow to never make again, and that I’m confident that I could not even be given money to live down there again, and it would be a safe bet that it would be a snowball’s chance in hell that such ever happens again.

However, despite the fact that I no longer live on the south side, I can’t help but still be somewhat interested in the happening that occur down there.  Sure, most of it is usually crime related or other things that are tragically ironic, but now that I don’t live there, I can witness the things that go down there in something of an anthropological manner, because it really is fascinating to me the sheer disparity in quality of life the south side is privy to compared to just about all other reaches of the Metropolitan area.

One of the hot topics in my fleeting days in the south side was the proposal that the southern chunk of Fulton County, so ironically endeared as simply “South Fulton,” was trying to attain unincorporated city status.  And with just cause too, because it’s about as secret as sexual harassment in Hollywood that the allocation of Fulton County resources was like 65% to the northern half, 25% to the area surrounding the airport, and a paltry 10% towards South Fulton.  South Fulton had the worst infrastructure, the most promises that went broken and unfulfilled, and a general sense that nobody gave a shit about the south end of the county.

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Awareness is pointless without action

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this interesting article that brought up the topic that if Atlanta’s Jesus Sidewalk AKA the BeltLine, continues to grow without much regulation, then it will effectively re-segregate the city, due to the aggressive gentrification that’s it’s bringing in spades as it churns merrily along.

The funny thing is that this isn’t the first nor will it be the last time articles like this emerge, but it is admittedly one of the more data-driven articles, as it links to a 60+ page case study about the effects and repercussions of the gentrification which is a pretty good read in its own right.

The harsh reality about all this information is that just about everyone paying attention knows this is going on, and no amount of awareness of the situation is going to change the fact that it is happening, will continue to happen, and be a potential reality, because in spite of all of the information, nothing is happening to stop it. 

But that sounds about right as far as the objectives of the BeltLine are concerned – beautify, gentrify, and then profit; repercussions of any failed promises of affordable housing or the guerilla eviction of existing residents can be suppressed and brushed under the rug later, preferably one that exists in the lobby or the ornate dining area of one of the expensive buildings built along it at a later date.

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Didn’t see this coming not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker of the century: a Publix supermarket built in the ghetto is having crime problems

I used to pass by this place on a routine basis, but when it was still under construction.  However, the signs were up, lauding the future arrival of a brand-new Publix supermarket, and I remember thinking “they’re building a Publix, here??”

“Here” was basically in the epicenter of a very ghetto area.  The corner of Marietta and Moores Mill is an area where one cross street is a pretty substantial truck route, on a road with lots of industrial companies, flanked by several buildings enshrouded in razor wire.  I get that the side opposite Marietta from the Publix is the notorious west side that is predominantly African-American but also unfortunately mired with the most substantial crime rates, but it doesn’t absolve everything east of Marietta Blvd. from being squeaky clean and safe.

I get that the some of the backbones of gentrification are strong and prominent anchor entities like major grocery stores like Publix, but there’s always a tremendous amount of risk when it comes to being the first ones to the party, because they’re almost always the sacrificial lambs when it comes to the process of trying to improve a rough area.

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Now that’s what I’m talking about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Complain about there being nothing noteworthy to write about, and the world shall provide – a truck carrying 40,000 lbs. of chicken manure tips over on busy Atlanta highway

Yes, a truck full of literal chicken shit has spilled onto the highway, and that’s apparently far more interesting to me than the usual dregs of well-beaten topics in the news otherwise.

No, this does not get added to the highway buffet of things spilled onto Georgia highways, because what kind of sick fuck would remotely consider eating the dung of chickens?  For the matter, why does chicken shit require the necessity to be transported in the first place?  Shouldn’t the farms or plants in which the chickens are producing it have some way to dispose of it?

Is it like bats, where if there’s so much shit present at once it can essentially become toxic?

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Same shit, different sport

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Continuing the tradition set by all of the other professional sports teams in the city of Atlanta: Atlanta United gets bounced from the MLS playoffs with a loss to Columbus Crew SC

Prior to me writing this, I had thought about writing about how I really hoped that Atlanta United would have pulled the ultimate miracle of all expansion teams, and somehow managed win the MLS Cup.  Not only would it have been an unprecedented performance of winning a championship in their first year of existence, but there would be something so gratifying about the expansion soccer team, breaking the “curse” of Atlanta sports, and being the first team to deliver a championship to the city since the 1995 Braves, especially after the uber-meltdown of the 2017 Falcons in Super Bowl Lee.

I had a plan to twist my choice of words to ironically talk about how it probably had everything to do with the fact that ATLUTD had gargantuan fan support since their arrival, and getting into their games turned into Dragon*Con hotel registration, every single game, they were that hot of a ticket to get into throughout the season.  And how ATLUTD was demonstrative of the power of fan support, attempting to shame the fairweathered Falcons, Braves and Hawks fans who only come out to support only when they’re good.

In fact, I was all ready to start writing the night prior, but because I don’t really follow MLS or have any inkling to how their scheduling works out, by the time I sat down at a computer and prepared to write, I discovered that the playoff game had already happened, and Atlanta United had already lost.

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Having logo ≠ entitled success

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

People seem to like having logos.  Logos for themselves, logos for their businesses, companies or other identities that they feel necessitate some sort of visual symbolization so that they can hope to one day be easily identifiable by an image and not even need words.

However, for every single Nike, Honda, Target and even Chili’s that have successfully ingrained their visual identities with the people for so long that they don’t even have to use actual words in their branding anymore, there are probably a million failures of logos in the world for people, businesses and other entities that in all likelihood, abandoned their ideas not long after concepting their logos in the first place.

It’s like logo design always seems to come first, and then people think they can build around it, or so it seems, based on the frequency in which this tends to occur.  Coming soon businesses announce their presences with nothing more than a generic press release and a logo often way too abstract to interpret.  Restaurants that haven’t opened yet unveil logos, signs and the visual identities of their menus before they’ve even served a plate of food.  And then there are the thousands of pleebs who think they have a great idea for a project, but before they launch anything, they make themselves a logo, share it on social media to farm likes, but then the drive to actually do anything with their project, it runs out of steam and then they log into Steam and play video games, but not after a poor logo is left and abandoned on the internet for others to witness their fleeting false dedication.

Anyway, I’m sidetracking here which is nothing out of the ordinary since I have a tendency to poorly veil rants about other things in posts that initially are spurred by a slightly relevant topic.

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Yet another reason #57

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Should I start arbitrarily numbering these?  At this point, I don’t see why I shouldn’t considering that it really doesn’t feel like more than a day goes by where I don’t pat myself on the back for unloading my old house when I did.

But anyway, my old stomping grounds is now the City of South Fulton, which at first was supposed to be something of an interim name, but considering they just spent $1,500 tax dollars to “design” a new crest for it, it looks like it just might be for reals.  Normally this wouldn’t really be worth mentioning, because it’s not uncommon for towns and cities to want to brand/re-brand themselves, so that they can try to establish some semblance of an identity.  But because I’m mentioning it now, obviously there’s got to be something ironic, cringe-worthy or really stupid to warrant mention.

For reasons completely unknown to the vast majority of South Fulton residents, the city’s new crest features imagery and symbolism of the Egyptian sun god Ra, some ankhs, and for more unknown reasons has some Swahili word around the crest as well.

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