Tag: ohatlanta

Oh, Ratlanta #488

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox5Atlanta: Atlanta named in the top ten most rat-infested cities in the country (#10)

I’m not even going to try and defend the city, or think of any excuses to why this is.  There have been plenty of times in my life where I’ve thought to myself, or out loud, the phrase, what a fucking shithole when going around and about the city.  Short of any of the areas where the gentrification bombs have exploded, there’s lots of parts of Atlanta that are complete shitholes, that I’m not the least bit surprised to hear that the aggregate of the city breaks the top-10 in most rat-infested cities in America.

What I do find ironically offensive and laughably embarrassing is Atlanta’s ranking in comparison to supposed less-rat-infested cities that I would’ve figured to be way bigger shithole rat-infested places than Atlanta.  Like come on really, Baltimore (#11) is a less rat-infested city than Atlanta?  Seriously?  I find that very hard to believe.  Sure, it’s just a difference of one spot separating the two, but like in any competition, a one-point win is still a win.

I also heavily argue Detroit (#16) and Miami (#22) as somehow being less rat-infested than Atlanta is.  I’ve been to both those cities too, and much like Baltimore, they’ve all seemed like bigger shitholes that would have rat infestations than Atlanta does.

The funny thing is that no matter how long I’ve been down here, walked streets, and been around old Turner Field especially, I’ve actually never seen a rat in the wild.  Dead or alive.  I know they’re out there, and I’ve definitely seen places that have clearly been occupied by rats, but I’ve never actually seen one out in the wild.  I have seen rats in Baltimore and Miami though, with the latter not being more than just two months ago when I was barely in city proper for a few hours prior to the start of my cruise.

Perhaps all these other cities with surprisingly low rankings are just so plagued with squalor that nobody’s just contacting Terminix and boosting their numbers, and the rats are just overrunning these entire cities?  Seems more plausible than being ranked better than Atlanta is.

But metrics are metrics, and as much as I ironically want to cry foul and point out that there seems to be a correlation between rat-infestation and general size of markets, it’s not something worth the effort to debate.  When it comes to arguing over who’s more rat-infested it’s like asking yourself if you’d rather have herpes or the clap, because no matter what side of the argument you come out on, you’re still fucked.

Thoughts on my first MLW show

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As the consummate pro wrestling hipster that tends to favor indy and smaller promotions when it comes to watching wrestling live, when MLW announced they were making a stop in Atlanta, and at Center Stage theater no less, my absolute favorite venue to watch wrestling at, I was excited when I got some of my boys together to go watch.

Despite knowing of their existence, some of the notable names to have emerged from them, and their general hierarchy in the power rankings of professional wrestling promotions, I’d never actually been to an MLW show before.  In the past, I just wasn’t that interested, and perhaps I didn’t respect them enough, but as my general appreciation for indy and smaller promotions has grown, I was looking forward to giving them a shot.

After all, they still managed to command Center Stage, a venue historic in the annals of wrestling promotion, having hosted everyone at some point, from the NWA, WCW, ECW to smaller rackets like NXT, TNA and GCW, so it should be a considered a rub in the positive direction if MLW could promote at Center Stage.

And leading up to the event, the card was coming together to be somewhat respectable, with noteworthy names and matches assembling, featuring guys like Matt Riddle, Kenta, TJP, Satoshi Kojima and PWI’s #10 wrestler* Mistico among others; but I obviously preface with that “on paper” disclaimer, because when it comes to smaller promotions, historically a lot of workers tend to work down to the level of their show, and I’ve been disappointed more often than not when it comes to actual performing.

*I say this dripping with sarcasm, because as decent of a worker he is, Mistico is definitely no top-10 wrestler, and I feel that he’s the equivalent of a DEI inclusion onto the list, solely to represent both lucha libre and a smaller promotion like MLW

What we were unaware of, was the fact that this was a double-taping, with MLW taping some online show called Pit Fighters, where supposedly every match was some gimmick, revolving around “X region of the world” and “deathmatch” and we were exposed to this really hackneyed card of matches where it would be a Tae Kwon Do match, a boxing vs. BJJ match where Donovan Dijak interfered and rescued the segment, and in one Taipei Death Match, which was surprisingly brutal, to where I was hollering that this was a snuff film, it actually featured a worker that was actually Korean in Ikuro Kwon, whom I had to look up as actually being born in Korea, so that’s actually kind of cool.

But all in all, Pit Fighters was a real chore to sit through, and I kind of felt bad for the friends of mine whom I roped into coming with me, having to sit through the bullshit, but fortunately things picked up a little bit, when we got to the actual live-airing of the MLW FIghtland show that we had originally expected the whole thing to be.

However, much like I had pointed out, despite some of the matches on the card sounding pretty decent, it overall was kind of meh.  Kenta and TJP had an okay match, but nowhere near as good as they’ve gone up against each other in NJPW, Dijak and Timothy Thatcher also was better when they faced off in NXT, and I don’t even really remember many of the other matches at this point, it was such a forgettable card.

The one thing that really made me want to write about this though, was throughout the whole night of taping,** there was one group that kept showing up through the night, which consisted of Bobby Fish, CW Anderson, Brock Anderson and this kid I’d never heard of before in BRG – Brett Ryan Gosselin.

**it should also be pointed out that the taping I think was done out of order, so the Pit Fighters that taped before Fightland, was actually intended to air after Fightland, so there was some wonky narratives going on

And they would proceed to declare themselves “The Rogue Horsemen,” and I’m not so certain that I wasn’t the only person in the theater to audibly groan at such a grasp at relevancy, and one my friends and I kept saying and agreeing that it was the saddest looking stable we’d ever seen in our lives.

So this kid, BRG, I can respect the showmanship and the B+ charisma he has on the mic, but he’s basically a Temu version of MJF, which is funny because so many people have called MJF a Wish version of The Miz, but regardless, BRG’s schtick just seems so regurgitated and he relies too much on cheap heat and calling the audience idiots, so I guess he’s exactly where he belongs in a 4th-5th tier promotion like MLW.

In all fairness, I like Bobby Fish, but the man is not getting any younger, and the numerous injuries he piled up in his later years in NXT as well as AEW have definitely taken their toll on him, but the man really is a tag team guy, that even in a small pond like MLW probably won’t be able to handle the toll of singles.

CW Anderson, I was actually surprised to hear and see him come out, because the last time I had seen him was in like 2019 at a really raw indy show in rural Virginia, where he wrestled The Hurricane in a high school gym.  But the man literally debuted in ECW in 1999, and he looked 40 then, which means he’s actually held up pretty well to only look 60 now.

But he’s teamed up with Brock Anderson, the son of Arn Anderson, in the obvious designated tag team of the stable.  The thing is with Brock is that despite being Arn’s son, he apparently got none of his dad’s talent, and Brock looks like a guy that’s in wrestling because plan A didn’t work, but neither did plans B through F, and he’s in the business pretty much out of no better options and that his dad’s name gives him the foot into any door.  He’s out of shape and poorly trained, and it was no more evident in his talent level than when The Andersons had a tag match, it was ancient CW who started the match instead of the younger Brock.

Honestly, the most memorable things that happened in the night for me, were an appearance by Ernest “the Cat” Miller who hilarious did absolutely nothing at all when he served as a special guest scorekeeper in whatever convoluted wrestling/jiu-jitsu match that Matt Riddle was in.  Also, JBL showed up during the Andersons’ match against the Bomaye Fight Club, dropped their big guy with a short-arm Clothesline From Hell, and whispered something to Brock Anderson, which I’m hoping is not a precursor for him eventually jumping ship to the WWE, especially since Arn is back in their good graces, but it was cool to see JBL continuing his random appearing in various other promotions as of late.

Overall, being two consecutive shows in one night, the whole experience dragged on quite a bit, due to the general mediocrity of the talent.  The show started late, at like 7:20, and didn’t end up ending for about four hours, and by the end of the show, my friends and I were pretty exhausted and ready to get the fuck out of the city.

Bottom line is that if MLW comes through Atlanta again, I’ll either go by myself, or take a pass.  I’m glad I went just to experience it and learn more about what an MLW show is like, but like I said, I don’t think it’s something I need to do again any time soon.

Who would have guessed a business geared almost entirely to white guys would struggle?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Topgolf to be spun off, out of Callaway’s portfolio, owned

I don’t really know why, but hearing about the general suffering and decline of Topgolf makes me happy.  I don’t really like or care for golf, and I’ve been to a Topgolf like twice; primarily because they were work team outings, and the pressure for the optics of being present outweighed my general ambivalence for golf, plus there was free food and drink, and it was on company time, so it beat being at work, working, but for the most part, I wasn’t impressed at all, and was just as happy to leave (early) as I was getting to imbibe on company-paid comestibles.

But really, I have no stake in Topgolf, and yet it still makes me feel smug satisfaction at hearing about their company’s struggles, bad enough to where Callaway the golf company, has expressed their intent to effectively boot them out of their portfolio, and leave them hanging as a standalone company, as opposed to being part of their family.  Frankly, I didn’t know Callaway was big enough of a company to have a portfolio beyond golf clubs and apparel, but seeing as how 60% of the United States is white, I guess it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise.

I guess it’s because at the very root of things, I see Topgolf as a wholly unnecessary thing that the world doesn’t need, as well as tremendous wastes of space.  I mean seriously, in the space of any Topgolf could be an entire subdivision of single-family homes.  A moderately aesthetically pleasing condominium along with some small businesses and restaurants.  Pretty much anything is more societally efficient than some gaudy monuments to the whitest activity in history than a giant ass field, with some 250 ft. poles and nets for people to whack golf balls around on.

Seeing a Topgolf anywhere tells me everything I need to know about a specific region, and typically wherever there’s a Topgolf, I generally know that the surrounding area is going to be a really kind of douchey, overly-white people vibe, and I probably wouldn’t enjoy myself at any surrounding restaurants or businesses within a few mile radius.

Needless to say, it brings me smug satisfaction to hear that they’re not doing as financially well as their investors hope they would be doing, because what a surprise, a business that primarily caters to a really niche, predominantly white community, would inevitably begin to decline once people realized how stupid it was to whack golf balls all day long, and there being little room for business evolution or diversity in services, other than overpriced food and booze.

I’m hoping for the day in which I’ll drive through the City of Atlanta again, and the Topgolf that’s in Upper West Midtown is closed down, and probably replaced with a CubeSmart.  I don’t like CubeSmarts either, but frankly in a tale of two evils, they can at least be serviceable and useful to people of all walks of life, and not be just some niche douchey white guy thing like Topgolfs are.

Would be great if it meant we had some real Los Pollos Hermanos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: 2,380 lbs. of meth discovered in Clayton County at a farmers market by Atlanta DEA

If there’s one thing I ever learned from watching shows like Breaking Bad and Weeds is that illegal drugs are most optimally hidden in suburban, white, affluent areas, where the local law enforcement is minimal and as long as the boat isn’t rocked too hard, nobody would bat an eye to illegal activities going on in plain sight.

That said, it seems like a rookie mistake by the Mexican Cartel that they would ship their Gus Fring-caliber quantity of meth to Clayton County of all places in the state of Georgia, because I’m hard pressed to think of anywhere else in the entire state that has a higher crime problem than Clayton County.

I’d imagine that a place with higher crime rates should* have higher police presence, and that a place under such conditions might not be a great idea to move a literal ton-plus of meth; but this is why I am not a criminal, perhaps they know a lot more about crime and trafficking drugs than some inconsequential brogger who’s watched too much television.

*operative word, conversely these conditions could be precisely why there’s not enough police presence, but all I know is that people in my area drive around like the wild west because of the lack of police presence which is the case due to the low crime rates

If I were the Cartel, I’d probably have moved this giant haul over to like Newnan or Douglasville; suburban, mostly white areas that have upper-middle class demographics, but also quick access to the highway, proximity to state lines, while also not being too egregiously far from the airport.  From what I’ve observed from reading about local drug trafficking, escape routes are critical and always under consideration, otherwise I’d have suggested places like Peachtree City or Johns Creek, except they’re basically islands with no efficient escape routes.

Crime rates in those areas aren’t nearly as tragic as they are in all of Clayton County, and those areas would probably welcome giant farmers markets because white people love farmers markets since it lets them feel good about thinking that they’re supporting poor farmers and/or minorities under the illusion that the produce they’re getting isn’t just farmed in South America instead.  And where there are large populations of bustling white people, is the illusion of safety and low crime, and as a result would be low police coverage and therefore less scrutiny when it comes to moving illegal product.

Anyway, the train of thought that brought this post into fruition is that hearing about all this meth obviously makes me think of Breaking Bad, and the pathetic movement of the drugs makes me think that this is definitely something that Gus Fring would not have done.  After all, he would basically use an entire refrigerator truck to smuggle probably no more than 2-3 lbs of Blue Sky between his restaurant locations, and not 2,380 lbs of it at a time, poorly hidden under a layer of celery hearts.

And then, it makes me pine for the actual existence of real Los Pollos Hermanos restaurants, because Chilean-inspired fried chicken does sound incredible, and I wish such restaurants actually existed.  I’m not into narcotics, so there’s a part of me that might turn the other cheek when it comes to them, if it meant that we got some real-life Pollos.  It’s not like Atlanta, much less Clayton County wouldn’t be able to support yet another option when it comes to fried chicken.

Oh, Decatur, #35

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sure this will have no negative effects: City of Decatur launches “pace car” program to try to slow down motorists and reduce accidents

Let my start off by saying that I’m a fan of Decatur.  Decatur is the small town in the big city that has lots of character, good bars and restaurants.  The Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market.

More importantly, Decatur will always have a permanent impact on my life, as it is where I got married, at our courthouse wedding.

Needless to say, the City of Decatur will always hold a special place in my heart, regardless of the words that are going to come flying out of my fingertips in the ensuing paragraphs.

Although good intentioned, I can’t imagine any reality where Decatur’s pace car program isn’t going to be met with massive resistance, ridicule, and a general sentiment of resentment.  Cars being driven by people who are declaring their intention of doing one of the few things every motorist on the planet doesn’t like, in slowing them down, there’s no way that this goes in the direction that the city really hopes it will go in.

As much as I do love Decatur, the reality remains that the whole place really is a nightmare region to drive around in.  Whether it’s on Ponce, Candler, Dekalb, Scott Blvd., or any of the other main thoroughfares through the city, the roads and lanes are narrow, there’s large swaths of street with crumbled, dirt or just plain no sidewalks, and the quality of said roads and sidewalks are often as deteriorated as if the taxes were drained from their funds in Sim City, so they just start falling apart.

Combine perilous infrastructure with the general aggressive nature of Atlanta drivers, and you have the recipe that makes driving around in Decatur as generally risky to the point where they’re always looking for ways to improve safety around the roads of the city, whether from the city itself, or citizens who are trying to take matters into their own hands.

I mean, it’s really kind of their own sword that they’re falling on; as much as I like Decatur, the people within the city are this eclectic mass that takes a tremendous amount of pride in their small town feel, but want to enjoy all the luxuries and benefits that come with living close to a massive market like Atlanta, and there’s a large sense of resentment and us versus everyone from those who live there.

Getting back to the original point of this post, I can’t imagine that people who are taking it upon themselves to be the enforcers of the road; going exactly the speed limit, stopping at yellow lights, coming to complete stops and looking all directions at stop signs, aren’t going to regret it in time.  As much as Decatur-ites might not like day-traders and tourists, their little hamlet goes broke in ten seconds without their money.  Drivers from Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, Tucker, Stone Mountain and Conyers are going to be going to or through Decatur, and there’s little anyone there can do about it.

I imagine that aggro driver A will be aggro-ing down Ponce, and they see the car in front of them with a pace car sticker on their windshield; they now have visual confirmation of a car that must be passed, and has pledged to go the speed limit or less to the griefing of others, and they are undoubtedly going to exorcise their ability to do so.

Road rager B is having a bad day, and they’re sitting through three cycles of lights at Scott and Claremont, and they inch their way up to find out that some dork with a pace car sticker is the one not taking the right on red, and they go ballistic at seeing someone whom they believe is really just using the pace car designation as a means to troll others on the road.  Words are exchanged, and because Georgia has looser gun rights than abortion rights, ammunition is exchanged next, and we’ve got our top story on My Fox 5 Atlanta for the evening.

Or my favorite hypothetical, Decatur White Knight C pledges to the pace car program, and although they do god’s work while within city proper, once they’re outside of Decatur, they themselves are driving around like a dick, unleashing all the aggression they suppress while cockblocking motorists on their home turf.  Be it through getting into an altercation on their own, or pissed off rager D sees a pace car outside of Decatur and wants to start shit, they get in a massive accident, footage of a demolished car on I-285 is on WSB-TV, but with the City of Decatur pace car sticker still intact and in plain sight.

The point is, Decatur-ites who think it’s their place to be heroes and saviors and enforcers of their fair city’s streets, really are putting their own lives at risk.  It’s pretty bold of the city to be willing to throw their own citizens into the fire by basically allowing anyone to volunteer, and I just don’t see a long game where this turns out to be successful.

The intentions are good, but the program doesn’t seem to have been well thought out thoroughly enough, and I don’t have a lot of high hopes for this program not blowing up their face in some fashion(s).  And for that, I simply say, oh Decatur.

Oh, Atlanta #285

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB-TV: Georgia Department of Transportation wants to hear from the pleebs about something that they’re probably 20% already initiated into the project, adding express (read: pay) lanes to the top half of I-285

Shade aside, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned about the way the world works, is that when a big entity, be it a company, agency or local or even national government tries to look democratic and get feedback from the people in regards to a proposed project, it’s all just a formality and done for optics, photo-ops and public appearance.  I’d say probably 80% of the time, the projects are already underway, and the public is being tapped to hopefully identify and shortcomings or oversights, but with the guise of pretending like they care about the opinions of the rest of the poors.

That being said, nobody’s going to convince me that GDOT hasn’t already gotten the ball rolling in regards to adding Peach Pass lanes to the top half of 285, and that they’re tapping into the public at this juncture just to get a feel for public sentiment, with the idea of pivoting or adjusting the direction of the new lanes based on public opinion.

I’m just curious to know where the fuck these magical extra lanes are going to be built, or if they’ll just cannibalize the far-left lanes of existing I-285 and make them Peach Pass only.  It doesn’t take a genius to identify that there’s basically zero space in between the two directions of I-285, so adding extra lanes on the left doesn’t really seem realistic, unless they add them onto the right, and shift everything down, but that would basically necessitate colossal road work to probably 34 miles worth of highway, feeding the narrative that GDOT is completely incapable of leaving well enough alone, and is always working on something at any given time to all but guarantee that Atlanta’s traffic is among the worst in the nation.

Either way, regardless of if the project is or isn’t actually already started, it’s definitely going to happen if it’s already gotten this far, to ask for public opinion, and I think it’s a dumb one all the same.  It’s like city planners or GDOT schmucks have never played an iteration of Sim City at any point in their careers, and never learned that adding moar lanes of roads is never the solution, and only investing in rail or alternative means of infrastructure do cities really grow, flourish and liberate themselves from the rat race of cars and roads.

Besides, even if and when moar Peach Pass lanes are added, it’s not like the city will actually do anything about the inevitable legions of violators that use them without tags.  Last time I heard about the problem with violators is that there were well over six figures worth of violations that were left unpaid, and that was many moons ago, so I would wager that there are probably well over a million dollars by now in Peach Pass violations that will go uncollected.  So that’s kind of like a double fail that will result if and when Peach Pass lanes are added to I-285, but hey, maybe one more lane is what the City of Atlanta really needs in order to unlock the gridlock that many of us suffer on a regular basis.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: Just 17??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sós: Westlake High senior accepted into 17 colleges, amassing over $1M in combined scholarship offers

I’m convinced the only thing students are taught at Westlake High is how to apply to colleges, and once they become proficient at it, it’s all they do every day at school.  Because this is the third time this #TRYHARDSZN that I’m dipping into a story about students at Westlake High who have been accepted into a large number of colleges; all of which have made sure to mention the aggregate dollar amount of scholarships they’ve been offered, which is typically the tell-tale sign that most of the schools they were accepted to aren’t really that prestigious.

But to review, we’ve had students that cleared 63 and 50 acceptances, and then one who cleared 50+, so a student “only” being accepted into 17 schools seems kind of booty in comparison, especially seeing as how in their insufferably terrible senior wall where all students humblebrag or be ashamed of how many or how little schools they’ve been accepted into, there were more than just a few that probably had 17+ acceptances posted on the wall.

However, doing the math, and clearing $1M in combined scholarships out of just 17 acceptances blows the fuck out of water compared to the other TRYHARDs of the SZN who needed 50+ schools to clear the $1M mark.  Which means that she’s gotten some substantially heavier ride offers from fewer schools than her peers at CollegeApp High.

One thing that is a little different about this #TRYHARD’s story is that she actually has a pick named, and isn’t just being mum about where she’s going to go because they’re still phishing out a free ride from somewhere; and it’s of all the schools in the country, she’s picking Notre Dame.

I respect the ambition and the absolute get-the-fuck-out-of-the-hood mentality she’s taking, but I have to imagine it’s going to be a tremendous amount of culture shock going up to South Bend.  Especially from southwest Atlanta, going to lily-white Indiana where the winters are going to be brutal and the number of black people is going to feel like she’s going to Norway.

But considering her successes with #TRYHARDing, she’ll probably be alright in the end.  Good on this one for actually stating intent to go somewhere remotely prestigious, and not just doing it for humblebragging attention.