Tag: ohatlanta

City hiking at the Cascade Springs Nature Preserve

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, I went on a little hike.  One of my closest friends has been going on hikes on almost a weekly basis for a while now, and it’s piqued my interest in wanting to do some hiking on my own, despite the drastic difference in quality of hiking trails between Georgia and Virginia.

After doing a little bit of searching, and finding a few comprehensive lists of hikes in the remote Atlanta/North Georgia region, I found a trail oddly-located within the city limits that seemed like a good idea to try, that wouldn’t eat up my entire day driving to get there, and keep my afternoon free for things I needed to do.

The Cascade Springs Nature Preserve is located almost in the middle of the city, leaning towards the Southwestern region of the Perimeter.  Typically, the words “Southwest Atlanta” is synonymous with crime and shootings on almost a daily basis, but it turns out that this chunk of land sits a little bit further out from those sketchy neighborhoods, and is apparently protected greenspace that continues to exist as this juxtaposed oasis of nature surrounded by sprawl.

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lol MARTA #188

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Short story shorter: MARTA bus caught on video being completely engulfed in flames on the shoulder of I-85.  Nobody was hurt.

I don’t know why this amuses me so much.  I mean, I also had great amusement in all the chronicled stories of New York’s Fung Wah buses spontaneously combusting or being engulfed in flames in their own right, too.  I guess there’s something inherently entertaining to me about entities known for incompetence actually showing extreme displays of incompetence, like somehow managing to catch their vessels completely engulfed in flames on the highways.

Either way, I’m admittedly a little surprised when I probably shouldn’t be, that MARTA has devolved to a point of failure seemingly only capable of being reached by a hack-job racket like Fung Wah.  I mean, MARTA, for better or worse, is Atlanta’s equivalent to METRO, the T, the L, SEPTA and MTA; it’s a city-wide transport system meant to get people from point A to point B, somewhat reliably, if not always necessarily comfortably.  But then to go and act like a shady counterfeit transit authority like Fung Wah and catch your buses on fire?

How embarrassing.  gg, MARTA.

The Racial Map

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: based on 2010 census data, an interactive map was created that displays a dot for every single person that participated, which is color-coded to what they entered as their ethnicity.  The result is what is being called the most comprehensive racial map ever created.

I have to say that this thing is really cool to tinker around with.  I don’t hide the fact that my interest is often piqued at the topic of race; some of it happens to do with the fact that despite my American upbringing, my Korean heritage technically makes me a minority, and then there’s the fact that I live in Atlanta, where in spite of the general perceived progression of the rest of the world, is a place where the topic of race and inequality is still a topic on almost a daily basis.  The race card is still flung around here like Gambit credit cards, in a far-fetched stretch to incorporate this analogy.

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The carnage continues!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Another day, another truck full of food overturns, crashes, and dumps its contents all over the place.  First, there were hams, then there were chickens, and then beer, and now we’ve got eggs.

I’m not sure why this fascinates me as much as it does, but I guess I think it’s hilarious to see the roads and surrounding area covered in food.  I know it’s horrible that so much food goes to waste, and that these incidents have tons of collateral victims from the drivers themselves, the GDOT people who have to investigate and clean things up, and the thousands of commuters who get slammed in traffic as a result, but the visuals amuse me regardless.

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We’re number two!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Atlanta drivers are the second-least courteous drivers in the United States. Such assessment based on a survey claiming statistics of “road rage” characteristics.

Although I don’t refute that Atlanta is a city that most certainly fits the bill of being full of discourteous drivers, and its share of bad and/or idiot drivers, I don’t necessarily agree with AutoVantage’s criteria of what is considered road rage. When I hear the term “road rage,” I’m picturing people demonstrating acts of retaliation when they’re cut off, or people getting so angry with one another that they mutually seem to agree to pull off to the side of the road, and get into an actual physical altercation. Some of the things that AutoVantage surveyed people on, well, aggravating or foolish as they may be, not all of them I’d agree are necessarily acts of road rage. Rage-inducing, sure, to some capacity, but definitely not contextually correct.

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Discussing an issue with no possible solution

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: for whatever reason, Curbed Atlanta posted an “article” about the ugly parking garages of Atlanta.  Thinly veiled was the subjective commentary that Atlanta has too many parking garages, and that the presence of these colossal concrete dungeons of car storage were inhibiting growth, clogging up space for commerce and potential business and were just plain ugly.

The thing is, they’re not entirely wrong in their claims, but the fact of the matter is that it’s not like Atlanta doesn’t need these parking garages.  Every single one of the parking garages that are being vilified for simply existing are for the most part essential and often used on a regular basis.  If Curbed Atlanta got their wish, and these lots magically ceased to exist, and were immediately replaced with overpriced pretentious boutique shops, overpriced pretentious boutique restaurants, or extremely small parks that provides a tiny bit of aesthetically pleasing green space that will be filled with people who walk their dogs but don’t pick up their shit, where would people park their cars?

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lol MARTA #156

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of these days, I really should actually keep count of how many times I make a post based on the ironically humorous failings of MARTA, and have an accurate number, but for the time being 156 seems like an accurate enough number of the times that I’ve found humor at the expense of MARTA.

Long story short: MARTA Police has decided to look outside of the city and outside of the state to recruit. They have decided to visit Detroit, Fort Lee and possibly Puerto Rico. MARTA Police cites that they have very stringent requirements that they are looking for as justification for external candidate search.

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