Tag: marta

Happy trails, Virgil

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lonely no more: Mike Jones, better known as former WWE wrestler, Virgil, passes away at the age of 61

I know it seems like every single wrestler from yesteryear that passes away was a favorite of mine in some way shape or fashion, and after twenty years of brogging, there’s no shortage of wrestler eulogies that I’ve written in my own way, at this point.

But Virgil, this guy, was truly a guy that I can’t say was necessarily a favorite of mine, but he was something of an icon in his own way, that I was fixated with, pretty much from the time I learned of his existence until the day he passed.

When I first got into wrestling, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I actually got into a WWF video game first, the arcade version of WWF Superstars, before I actually parlayed it into indulging in the real life variant of the game on television, into the life-long fandom that still maintain today. 

In the game, the final bosses were the tag team of “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase and Andre the Giant; but before you actually started playing against them, there’s like a 12-second cutscene prior to the match where you see “Mean Gene” Okerlund interviewing both DiBiase and Andre, but also standing with them was a jacked black guy in a shiny tuxedo counting money.

When I started watching wrestling, and the first time I laid eyes on the real-life Million Dollar Man, sure enough, there was the same jacked black guy accompanying him, holding the money, and that was when I first learned of the existence of the real-life Virgil.

Little did I know that he was named Virgil, as a personal attack from Vince McMahon to rival promoter/booker/wrestler Dusty Rhodes, whose real name was actually Virgil, and in only a manner that could come from Vince McMahon, he slapped basically a slave persona onto a black man and called him Virgil.

But throughout the years, it became quickly apparent that despite Virgil’s imposing stature and menacing scowl, he was tantamount to the WWF’s punching bag to the stars, and in just a few short years of getting into wrestling, I’d seen Virgil get his ass beat by Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man Randy Savage, and Hacksaw Jim Duggan among others.  He was a jobber before I even knew what a jobber was, a term I wouldn’t learn until like 12 years later.

Continue reading “Happy trails, Virgil” →

Oh, MARTA #699

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: apparently retired train cars can be cleaned and dumped into the ocean to create an artificial environment that can eventually grow into reefs

When I first came across this story, it was actually brilliant; the headline was something along the lines of MARTA trains to be dumped into the ocean, and I could already feel the gears grinding at just how such a story can write itself, with less thought to how Metro Atlanta Rail Transit Authority trains go from Atlanta to like, Savannah.

How it surely sounded like some sort of catastrophic fuck-up that only a company like MARTA would be capable of doing, to where trains from the city end up in the ocean, and just the thought of MARTA trains being unceremoniously dumped into the ocean would have to be quite the visual.

But then I come to learn that MARTA is just jumping aboard a program that’s apparently been around for a while, the practice of dumping retired train cars into the ocean, so that they can ultimately be grounds for reef life to grow and become artificial reefs for marine life to inhabit.

Honestly, once I started looking into the whole thing, it really does sound kind of cool, and I can understand the logic of how an old and busted dead train car could still serve a purpose, 20,000 leagues under the sea.  And as much as I love to clown on MARTA, I do have to give them a tip of the cap to participating in a program that’s progressive, creative and resourceful.

However, upon further reading something did catch my eye and pique my critical ire:

The cost to dismantle, clean, and transport the eight cars is just over $2.1 million.

I’m no expert, but those numbers seem pretty high.  I’m going to imagine that the vast bulk of expenses have to be in logistics and the costs to get these train cars on a tanker to boat them over to their eventual final resting spots, but I’m still hard pressed to believe that $2M bones is still what it actually costs to clean and dismantle and transport eight trains.

This, is where it all seems to make sense why MARTA is doing this, so they can create a smokescreen to (falsely) justify blowing $2M on an activity that looks like they’re trying to do good, but really just pad some peoples’ pockets as is the customary norm for an agency like them.

No laughing matter

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: MARTA CEO Jeffrey Parker dies by suicide after stepping in front of a MARTA train at the East Lake transit station

Honestly, I don’t even know what to write in regards to this.  But I’ve said so many things about MARTA over the years that I just feel like I can’t let this go by without some effort to write something about it.  It’s definitely not something that I can inject personal opinions into or try to spin this in a manner that makes MARTA look stupid or be something to laugh at. 

Suicide isn’t something to laugh at, because although it may end the suffering from those who feel they are, they’re opening up a world of it for those who have to pick up the pieces from their abrupt departure.  And as I’d be willing to wager, many of us who have no idea who Jeffrey Parker is aside from being the MARTA guy, this news probably caught a lot of people completely out of the blue.

Make no mistake, running MARTA definitely has to be one of the most thankless and seemingly fruitless jobs in the city.  It’s a joke to many, endlessly handcuffed by bureaucracy and red tape, and intertwined with all sorts of racism, which leads to this hopeless package of a private company where people take the jobs primarily because they’re jobs, and not because anyone believes in the good and betterment of the agency and expects there to be any substantial growth; the entire Metro Atlanta area has seen to it already to ensure that such doesn’t happen.

But Jeffrey Parker hasn’t really done a poor job of running MARTA; granted, in one of those ironic twists, the pandemic and peoples’ general inclination to avoid crowds and crowd-inducing things like public transit has probably helped a little bit to reduce negative numbers, but Parker’s name hasn’t popped up routinely with some embarrassing MARTA or Atlanta-ey meme associated with.  No news is good news when it comes to associating with MARTA, I’d theorize.

All the same, outside of those who actually knew the guy, nobody has any idea to the demons running around in his closet.  To the point where they actually succeeded at getting the body to believe that it was a good idea to throw himself in front of one of the train that he and his occupation oversaw.  It’s definitely something a little bit ironic, and a lot bit fucked up, and leads to little else than all bit sad.  No news is good news, but this news is fucking horrible.

In the past, I remarked that Jeffrey Parker had a lofty task to live up to the bar that predecessor Keith Parker had laid down for him.  But MARTA was running fairly comfortable since the transition, so all too soon, it will be time for yet another successor to step into shoes with dismal expectations, and hope to keep the ship steady and afloat, but for completely different reasons.

Looks cool, but will they perform?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I really wrote anything about anything other than me being depressed, fatherhood, jobs, sports or wrestling, and if there’s ever a topic that gets me all amped up to write, MARTA would definitely be up there.

When I saw this article about how MARTA unveiled new trains, my knee-jerk reaction was to get my clowning shoes on, because just from the text description alone, I figured that there had to be ample opportunities to get back up on the horse and do some clowning.

Honestly though?  After actually taking the time to read the article and see the proposed designs and functionality of the new trains, I don’t really have that much room for clowning.  Although the face of the trains look like a cross between Daft Punk and like a Cerberus shock trooper from Mass Effect, they still look pretty cool, and I think the dynamic light function to indicate the route they’re on is a cool idea.

The interior of the trains have finally come into the modern era, with their being truly connected trains, and no longer there being physical doors leading to exterior access as beggars traversed from car to car.  There is still a lot of room for error when it comes to if people have specific needs for which car they need to get into because of strollers, bikes, or wheelchairs that will have to have some training applied, but at least it’s a start that the cars are actually going to have some variety and not feel like they’re the leftover train cars from the 1980’s DC Metro.

So as ready as I was to get ready to rip this concept apart, I actually don’t have much fuel to burn.  MARTA’s trains have desperately needed updating for nearly two decades, and it appears that it’s finally happening.  Sure, their stations need a lot of attention too, and the general perception of the service and brand seem irreparable, but finally upgrading the trains is a step in the right direction.

However in spite of the upgrades to the hardware, the real question is going to be if MARTA’s actual performance improves, with new trains?  The trains might be shiny and new, but the people running them, and the people riding them, and the stations they’re stopping in and out of aren’t going to be changing that much, and those are the variables that are going to come into play as far as trains remaining on time, hopefully dependable, and not too much the breeding ground for World Star videos.

If so, great.  If not, then still great for the brog, because it’ll be good fodder seeing photos and videos of these brand new fancy trains in the news, where petty crimes, stupidity and some very Atlanta-centric behavior gets the spotlight all the same.

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.

Continue reading “It’s not like they had a few years to prepare” →

Oh, MARTA #666

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yeesh: MARTA bus full of passengers runs over a person, killing them

It’s been a while since I posted anything about MARTA’s fuck-ups, and it’s not to say that there haven’t been any since the last time I did, it’s just that they’ve never really been anything worth talking about, or the fact that I hardly have the spare time I once did, and simply didn’t get to them.

But I guess if there were ever a time to bring one back out, running over a guy seems like good as time as any to bust out the ol’ point and scowl at what MARTA did now trope.  Not that it’s ever really truly funny whenever lives are lost, but given the Darwinian manner in which this occurred, it’s still something that piques my interest enough to put some words down about.

So whenever the notion of someone getting run over by a vehicle is mentioned, I have to imagine most people envision a moving vehicle approaching a human being, and running them over.  But in this particular instance, a human being managed to get run over while tailing a vehicle, moving away from them.  I’m not entirely sure how someone behind a moving vehicle somehow ends up underneath it, but if it was ever going to happen, naturally it involves a MARTA bus.

Initial reports say that a possibly drunk person was chasing after the MARTA bus as it was pulling away, slapping it, trying to get them to stop so that they could presumably get aboard.  It’s a murky picture to imagine, because either the guy was really fast in spite of their inebriation, or the bus was going the perfect speed to where a human being could keep up and slap at it while simultaneously having enough momentum to drag someone into a wheel well, run them over and kill them.

Regardless, it still ends up with a perfect storm of ironic chaos that results in a fatality, with MARTA’s name attached to it, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t their fault, which feeds into the narrative that MARTA can’t do anything right, except Ride or Die.

MARTA pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Atlanta Magazine recently interviewed the new CEO of MARTA, and a couple of things caught my attention.  Primarily:

Most recently, (Jeffrey) Parker was vice president at infrastructure and design firm HNTB Corp.’s Atlanta office, where he ran the company’s Georgia practice. His base salary with MARTA is $350,000.

$350,000??  For running MARTA?  AKA installing some wi-fi hotspots on trains, putting up some signage to report bad behavior, but otherwise doing jack shit towards the grander spectrum of, y’know, expanding, or growing the network?

I don’t discount the grandiose accomplishments of former CEO Keith Parker, as it must have been true yeoman’s work getting MARTA’s books into the black.  But as far as Jeffrey Parker is concerned, a massive undertaking has already been taken off of his plate.  He’s not going to have to start in the red, because Keith had already brought the entire agency out of it already.  But at the same time, that means the microscope will be even more magnified, because Jeffrey won’t have the cushion of “well, I need to stabilize financially” to fall back onto when he inevitably does absolutely nothing, for years, and banks $350,000 per, along the way.

This bothers me more than the story of Kasim Reed blowing $500,000+ of taxpayer funds on his way out the door on crony bonuses (including five figure prizes for an ugly sweater karaoke contest).  I mean, most everyone already knew Reed was incompetent and a stooge of a mayor in the first place, so flagrantly blowing taxpayer money isn’t really that big of a surprise.  For the matter, most everyone already knows MARTA is a joke of a transit authority, but at least I didn’t, know that the CEO was making fucking $350,000 a year.

Continue reading “MARTA pls” →