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Ever since I moved back out to the \u2018burbs and no longer have a job in Midtown\/Downtown proper, I don\u2019t miss the city one bit.\u00a0 I have little to no business going into the city anymore, and I don\u2019t miss it one iota.\u00a0 I used to feel like I was missing out on the pulse of Atlanta if I didn\u2019t at least work inside city proper, but that ship of importance has long since sailed a couple times around the planet by now.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t give a fuck about what\u2019s going on in the city, nor does it actually matter to me anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n However, #2\u2019s recent baby modeling engagements have required us to go back into the city, and as a once-in-a-while kind of thing, I was looking forward to seeing just how much has changed over the last few years.\u00a0 And gee, by golly, how things have changed a lot since I used to have frequent business there.<\/span><\/p>\n Sure, there are a few new skyscrapers that I had no idea sprang up like they were dropped in from the sky like in Sim City<\/em>, but that\u2019s not what I\u2019m here to talk about.\u00a0 I\u2019m here to talk about the bomb of gentrification that seems to have plopped itself on the western edge of the city, and they\u2019re all too eager to let you know about it.<\/span><\/p>\n West Midtown was definitely becoming a thing when I still worked in the city and when mythical then-gf was living within city proper.\u00a0 Basically starting at around Georgia Tech, everything west and going north of campus was developing rapidly, especially off of the Howell Mill and Northside Drive corridors.\u00a0 Going away were dilapidated lots and ram shack buildings, and all these mixed-use apartments with bougie restaurants on the ground were appearing.\u00a0 The gentrification wand was definitely shaking its fairy dust all over this area.<\/span><\/p>\n But going back into the city on South Atlanta-Marietta Blvd to avoid the usual bullshit traffic of I-75 and the connector, I drove through Upper <\/em>West Midtown, which was definitely hit by the Albert Pujols baseball bat of gentrification.\u00a0 As soon as you cross the Chattahoochee where Atlanta Rd. becomes Marietta Blvd, Upper West Midtown becomes a thing, and all sorts of new businesses and apartments have appeared where there were none the last time I really had any business going down this route.<\/span><\/p>\n It started with a Publix that was predictably victimized by the general area at first, but apparently the neighborhood has soldered through, and the gentrification bomb appears to have done some work over the last few years.\u00a0 Now I have no idea if the heat map of crime has actually changed in that area, but generally with gentrification comes the pushing of riff-raff out the door.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the biggest transformation, I would have to say was the generally industrial neighborhood that is along Chattahoochee Ave.\u00a0 In<\/em> my days, <\/em>this area was a generally undesirable area that I favored tremendously, because there were some real gems of restaurants amidst the off-beaten paths, but it definitely looks like the secret is out, and this place too was hit hard by the gentrification bomb.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously, fewer things are whiter than microbreweries, and as mythical wife had pointed out, there are no fewer than 4-5 independent breweries that have emerged within a 1-mile radius in this area.\u00a0 But while mythical wife and #2 were at the agency studio doing their baby modeling thing, #1 and I had the opportunity to explore the newly gentrified area, and I came upon a true monument to gentrification.<\/span><\/p>\n Christened \u201cThe Works,\u201d this is basically a shopping center full of ridiculous businesses that I\u2019m amazed to stay in business because they\u2019re all galleries<\/em> and use words like curated<\/em> and rustic<\/em> to describe their wares, and I don\u2019t even want to go in because I feel like I\u2019d drown in arrogance and pretentiousness.\u00a0 But the biggest reason to come in was the food court, which in today\u2019s gentrified vernacular must be referred to as a food hall<\/em>, because all of the vendors are local and independent proprietors, and not like Panda Express, Popeyes, or Chick Fil-A.<\/span><\/p>\n As I was hungry and needed to feed my other child, #1 and I managed to drop $27 on a sandwich and a slider, and then another $12 on three<\/em> fucking cookies because I wanted to treat my wife and my mom to some locally-sourced goods, but didn\u2019t know the price before purchasing them which I\u2019m sure is deliberate because they\u2019re preying on people wanting to avoid the awkward scenario of refusing something upon finding out the cost.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I mean, the quality of the lunch and cookies were definitely good, and I\u2019m not beneath dropping $40 on such a seemingly low quantity of food, but I\u2019m also not going to deny that it\u2019s expensive and a little pretentious.<\/span><\/p>\n All the same, I would take pretentious gentrification monuments over shantytown abandoned plots of land.\u00a0 As much as I want to clown on The Works and their Food Hall, it actually is still a lovely place that I\u2019d like to fantasize about bringing the wife to for a no-kids date night in a fantastical scenario that will probably never happen.<\/span><\/p>\n But it\u2019s just all too amusing to see all the very white tropes and tendencies that happen to an area when the gentrification bomb is planted and explodes.\u00a0 At least all of the eateries that I remembered fondly all appear to still be there, and hopefully they\u2019re benefitting from the newfound traffic that all this gentrification is bringing to the area.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ever since I moved back out to the \u2018burbs and no longer have a job in Midtown\/Downtown proper, I don\u2019t miss the city one bit.\u00a0 I have little to no business going into the city anymore, and I don\u2019t miss it one iota.\u00a0 I used to feel like I was missing out on the pulse … Continue reading Gentrification Station, what\u2019s your location?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,56,83,143,89,190],"class_list":["post-48539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-cashmoney","tag-food","tag-observations","tag-ohatlanta","tag-racism","tag-white-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48541,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48539\/revisions\/48541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}