Tag: ohatlanta

Apparently the law is kind of a suggestion

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve heard of these bike/ATV swarms that have been seen around Atlanta, and I’m really thankful that I’ve never come across them before.  I’m pretty sure I’d lose my shit if I knew that I was missing several green light cycles at an intersection and be stuck waiting for a swarm of like 200 guys on dirt bikes and ATVs to passing like a bunch of unwanted locusts.

But yeah, these group(s) exist, and it seems like Sundays seem to be the days in which they tend to go joyriding throughout the city, occasionally clogging up roads and disregarding the fact that other people on the roads actually exist and might actually have things they need to go and places to get to in a timely manner.  As I said, I’m lucky to have avoided ever seeing them, much less get stuck in traffic on account of their illegal and selfish behavior, but with that being said, I’m pretty much destined to get stuck in traffic because of them sooner rather than later.

I came across this story about how the City of Atlanta is pondering whether or not they should crack down on them, which seems like a pretty obvious answer, but the fact is that the city doesn’t really know what course of action to take, be it impounding, arresting, destroying or all of the above, not to mention the cost of manpower and resources necessary to enact such a decision.

But the fascinating thing about the article is the accounts of those who are a part of the “club,” and how they (partially anonymously) try to justify their behavior, and how they try to spin in it a manner that what they’re doing is positive for the urban and black community, because when they’re riding, they’re not robbing or killing.

Wonderful justification.

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So long, southside

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I’m feeling a little blue about having just sold my house, when the day was over, it was still a massive achievement in unloading, and opening up the doors to the various paths that the future has in store for me.  For every melancholy memory that makes me a little depressed that I’ve said goodbye to my old house, there are at two things I did not like about the area in which my house resided, which contributed to the general notion that I really wanted to get out of the obligation of the house.

For a long while, I’ve always thought of the reasons why the area in which my home resided was not a good place, but I often neglected to notate any of them, and eventually I’d forget some of them, inconvenient, for when I wanted to channel my frustrations with long commutes, or the feeling of despair of living in an area that did not have a whole lot of hope for the future.

I started a Google note file on May 28, 2016, simply entitled “reasons south of Atlanta is not a good place,” and told myself to add to it whenever I had something new to add.  The thought was that eventually one day when I successfully succeed in unloading the house and moving forward, I would have some notes to look back onto for my eventual post about saying farewell to my old area.  It’s a little surreal that that time has finally come, and despite the fact that I’m still feeling bummed about unloading my house, I am in a way relieved that it’s an area that I won’t really see myself going back to any time soon if I can help it.

Because of my general paranoia of the world, I never was very specific to where I lived.  Even now, I won’t get too specific, but I will admit that my old house was on the south side of Atlanta.  The half of the metropolitan Atlanta area south of I-20 that doesn’t get much acknowledgment or credit for anything, and the half of the metropolitan Atlanta area that pretty much has no hope for the future.

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Greetings from Chokelanta, Georgia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Where choking isn’t just commonplace, it’s a way of life.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach when the Falcons failed to even secure a field goal, after a game-defining Julio Jones catch followed immediately by some negative plays, taking them out of field goal range and resulting in a punt.

The sinking feeling sunk even more when Julian Edleman made the catch of the game, where he managed to secure the ball amidst a deflection off of a hand and a leg while surrounded by and getting pelted by three Atlanta players while simultaneously managing to keep the ball from hitting the ground.

The feeling completely sunk when the Patriots scored the game-tying touchdown and subsequent two-point conversion.

And I threw the in the towel as soon as the coin flip landed heads and the Patriots would start the first overtime in Superb Owl history with possession of the ball.

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Respect is earned or the beatings continue

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I told myself that I wouldn’t write anything about Superb Owl Lee until it was over, because I am the controller of the entire universe and the words I choose to put onto a brog post will guarantee control the entire outcome of the game.  But I’m in a little bit of a rut lately, and there are few things that help get me out of a rut than writing about sports.  Not to mention that every now and then, I’ll come across something that I guess the correct response would be that it triggers something of an emotional synapse where I feel that words typed out is the appropriate reaction.

But every now and then whenever the Atlanta Falcons, or any Atlanta-based sports team, but mostly the Falcons, find a modicum of success, they inevitably become motivation for some bigwig sports writer to take a cheap shot at not just the team, but inevitably the city itself, along with all of its denizens.  That Atlanta teams are all pretenders, have yet to win anything (except them ’95 Braves!), and then that the fans are all fair-weathered bandwagon riders that only cheer for winners when they’re not going bonkers over college football.  That Atlanta is the worse sports town in America.  That Atlanta is pretty much the new Cleveland when it comes to sports championship droughts.

None of these allegations are incorrect, but they’re revisited and flung around so many times that they’re completely unoriginal and stated so many times that the only appropriate response is usually “you’re right, what’s your point” with an annoyed eye roll.

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Oh, Atlanta #1,017

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Shell casings found in various Atlanta locations indicate a concerning number of incidents on New Year’s Eve involving celebratory gun fire.

You know what’s a great idea to celebrate things?  Discharging lethal weapons.

I mean seriously, I’ve heard of plenty of incidents of there being celebratory gun fire in parts of the world before, but usually they’ve been like, Islamic terrorists firing AK-47s into the skies, screaming Allahu Akbar or some shit.  Or like rednecks really celebrating their second amendment rights, in the backwoods and/or their white supremacy compounds.

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lol Curbed hipsters

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Occasionally, I like reading Curbed.  Sure, the writing is a little biased, the commenters are amongst the most pretentious on the planet, but sometimes, it’s a nice way to see other neighborhoods and parts of town that I might not be so aware of.  At the end of each year, Curbed does this thing called The Curbed Cup, and they like to poll readers to determine, what the best neighborhood in the region is.

Previous winners in Atlanta aren’t any real surprises; Inman Park, Old Fourth Ward, Kirkwood, Reynoldstown; these are areas rife with pretty successful gentrification and are appropriately densely packed with hipsters, new money, and hipsters with new money.  Last year’s winner was a little bit of a head-scratcher; the West End, which to anyone who isn’t familiar with the area, it’s basically the region of town that is literally on the other side of the tracks, that is full of blight, crime, unoccupied and dilapidated homes and more crime.

There’s no denying that the potential of the West End is grandiose if it could ever actually be successfully cleaned, reset, and developed appropriately, as it sits on a lot of prime real estate that the burgeoning Atlanta real estate market would salivate over, if it were remotely usable.

But anointing it as the best Atlanta neighborhood of 2015 was quite the head-scratcher, and I would wager money that bloggers and snarky internet commenters could write essays on how great the West End is in their opinion, but they wouldn’t be able to say NO fast enough, if they were asked if they would actually live there.

That’s the kind of place the West End really is.

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Those hurtful, hurtful words

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Somehow this is news: Avondale Estates to change the verbiage on park signs, because they seem too mean

Avondale Estates is an interesting part of town.  They’re technically within Metro Atlanta proper, because they’re within I-285.  But they’re also in Decatur, which is often known as practically something of a liberal hippie commune, so absorbed in their own want to not be associated with Atlanta, that they almost take a sadistic pride in how difficult it is to get in and out of their little segment of town and how much the traffic sucks.

Needless to say, exclusion and exclusivity is a concept that isn’t lost to Decatur on a regular basis, so it’s amusing to me that there’s controversy over a sign that promotes even more exclusion and exclusivity within an individual neighborhood within Decatur.

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