Thomas Wolfe was right

[germdoc]

I used a meeting in Atlanta as an excuse to revisit old haunts and friends in Atlanta and Chattanooga. While I visit my mom in Chattanooga every couple of years, I have only been to Atlanta once since I moved to DC in 1993. MY HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED...

On the positive side, both Atlanta and Chattanooga have cleaned up their downtown areas and especially the projects that were so blighted. Chattanooga now has a vibrant downtown that was so busy on Fri. night I could not find a parking place. Tourists were literally being bused in from hotels to enjoy the nightlife. Quite a change for a place that you wouldn't have been caught dead (or alive) in in the '70's. Atlanta's downtown area is not charming in any sense of the word, but at least I didn't get offered crack on Peachtree as I did in 1978. (The neighborhoods, like VA-Highlands, are still hoppin'.)

On the down side, development in both cities has created incredible crowding and traffic, in the process paving over a lot of history and culture. A lot of places I used to hang out at are gone or transformed beyond recognition. One example: Little Five Points Pub, near where I lived in Atlanta, now no more. The Rainbow Restaurant across the street, where a classmate of mine had a schizophrenic break (true story), gone. The Agora Ballroom, where I saw everyone from REM to Talking Heads to U2, history.

My old neighborhood in Chatt./Rossville, GA where I grew up--decaying, lots of riffraff moving in, lots of cheap-ass commercial development. Don't know why my mom's still there.

Not to mention all my friends on both ends of I-75 are grayer with less hair and more body fat than last time. The ones who are still alive and not in rehab. Couldn't find any old girlfriends, they're all MIA. Maybe they heard I was coming.

Saddest and strangest moment: driving on Brainerd Rd. in Chattanooga, I checked out an old movie theatre that I used to frequent to find out it was now a HARBOR FREIGHT! OK, I love tools, but that's where I had my first real kiss, in the back row (about age 14). Can't remember the movie, but I remember that her lip gloss was flavored grape...

I was so confused and upset I couldn't buy any tools.

Tommy boy was right--you can't go home again.

[gsmittle]

Saddest and strangest moment: driving on Brainerd Rd. in Chattanooga, I checked out an old movie theatre that I used to frequent to find out it was now a HARBOR FREIGHT! OK, I love tools, but that's where I had my first real kiss, in the back row (about age 14). Can't remember the movie, but I remember that her lip gloss was flavored grape...

I was so confused and upset I couldn't buy any tools.

Wow....Musta been SOME kiss....

g.

[MilDoc]

Yup. Born & raised near Pittsburgh, Pa. Totally different city now. Now I live in "small town" Texas. Nothing much changes here.

[cabinetman]

Fourteen? Wow. what a sheltered life. I always carried miseltoe around, cause you never know. I returned to my hometown to visit relatives almost 30 years after leaving at age 5. I drove by my childhood home that was a two story brick home that I remember as huge. What a letdown, it shrunk terribly. My conception of distances to different places like the elementary school was also way out of whack. The surrounding area had developed from a wooded residential area to commercial about 4 blocks away. Very disheartening.



"I'M NEVER WRONG - BUT I'M NOT ALWAYS RIGHT"

[wardprobst]

Yup. Born & raised near Pittsburgh, Pa. Totally different city now. Now I live in "small town" Texas. Nothing much changes here.

Oh Doc, how I wish that were true! Lived in Texas all my life and it has really changed since the 1950s. Way too many people here now....ask Pappy, he knows what I'm talking about.
DP

[SARGE..g-47]

Yep.. things have changed in both cities, Jeff. Being a native of metro Atlanta you wouldn't know just how much unless you had a longer visit. I'm guessing I might be a bit older (I just turned 59) but the Bottom of the Barrel is gone.. the Stein Club.. the Brat House.. Manuel's on Highland is still there but Manuel Maloof is now deceased. Highland Hardware is still in the Virginia Highlands district which really has kept most of it's flair with Blind Willie's going strong as to my last knowledge.

Most have made it to the surburbs to avoid the sprawl. That congested the suburbs so you have a never ending cycle of sprawl there now also. Those that can afford just keep moving father out that results in some actually driving a 45-60 commute one way. I had rather sell pencils from a cup than have to negoiate traffic on the perimeter (belt-way to some of you) each day. Not my cup of tea for sure.

What is the solution? Birth control would be a good first step! ha.. ha...

Regards..

[jackellis]

I went to college in Atlanta (North Avenue Trade School) and stayed on a few years before accepting a "temporary" assignment in California. There's good and bad. Lots more traffic, lots more people, suburban flight on the bad side. But the once-blighted area between midtown and downtown is being cleaned up and the economy appears to be doing well.

Times change. Places change. I spent some of the best years of my life in Atlanta and I like to think that on balance, it's a better place than when I left.

[germdoc]

Oh, Atlanta!

We had my fraternity pledging celebration at Manuel's. I don't remember much about it except that thank god I didn't have to drive home. The Majestic nearby--where you'd go for coffee and pie after the bars closed--is still there on Ponce and little changed from its early '80's renovation. Plaza Drugs is gone--no more transvestites and crazy preachers hanging out at 4 in the morning. Wax'n'Facts is still there in Little 5 Points, as is Wuxtry's near Emory--I spent many an hour and about half my disposable income buying records at those 2 places. Almost everything else in L5P is different, however--still trendy and edgy, but different.

The Clermont Lounge is I guess still going--didn't check in to see if it's changed, but if Blondie's still there I wouldn't want to know--the effects of gravity on the 38-D physique would be unfortunate.

Re' Highland Hardware--great place! These days I would spend half my disposable income there.

I visited my old alma mater Emory: wow, what a difference a couple of hundred million in endowment makes. My gym was an old converted airplane hangar that didn't even have air conditioning. The gym there now--where they had some Olympic events (swimming?)--looks like a Mayan temple. Marble, marble everywhere. My old dorm (unairconditioned) about to be torn down for some huge new structure.

In the Emory Village Jagger's is gone--how many late-night debates (fueled by endless pitchers of beer) on religion, politics, the meaning of life did we have?

OK, things change. The good with the bad. Just my observation that the things we most want to stay the same--the old house, the neighborhood, the school, the old haunts--seem to change the most.