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Atlanta’s best annual events? Dragons, drive-ins and more.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Chicago family visited Atlanta for its first Dragon Con in 2001. They’re Kathy , Quincy 9 and Vincent Newkirk. Kathy made the Star Wars costumes. I SO want to see this in my city this weekend!
In typical Labor Day, live-it-up-it’s-a-long-winter fashion, there’s a lot going on this weekend.
Starlight Six’s Drive Invasion
I pull out these three because they’re seriously unique events that apparently happen here every year? I had no idea! Dragon*Con seems like the kind of thing that could travel from city to city, but clearly found a home here. The Decatur Book Festival is new since I lived here last. And the Drive Invasion? Well, it takes something special to sustain a drive-in, let along a drive-in celebration of kitsch and cinema.
So what are the other yearly events here — big and beloved, underground and underappreciated, growing and changing — that I don’t know about? I suspect they’re happening all the time, not just holiday weekends.
What’s your favorite Atlanta area annual events?
Speaking of holidays: I’m sleeping in on Monday. Catch you at 7 a.m. Tuesday!
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Atlanta history, gone with the wind?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The man that spoke the first lines in the “Gone With the Wind” movie died last week. Fred Crane, who played one of the red-headed Tarleton twins, along with George Reeves, died of complications from diabetes on Thursday. He had been the last living male actor with a credited role in the film.
“Gone With the Wind,” the movie and the book, seems to be dying off, fading from our collective memory, if it was ever there at all. I read it in high school, during a summer of reading epics that maximized my amusement between library trips. I saw the movie soon after, but only once. (Four well-done hours. But seriously — four hours.) I hardly remember the role of Atlanta, beyond burning.
Love or hate its politics, meaning and legacy, “Gone With the Wind” meant a lot to this city, once upon a time. It was written here and the movie debuted here. Margaret Mitchell was born here in 1900, and died at Grady Hospital in 1949. She wrote for The Atlanta Journal.
Ann Boutwell of Margaret Mitchell House pointed out that the book sold one million copies within months of publication.
Where can you find the history still? The house where Mitchell grew up is gone; so is the Loew’s Grand Theatre, at the corner of Peachtree and Forsyth, where the movie premiered in 1939.
Loew’s Grand Theatre
The Margaret Mitchell House and Museum, which is the restored building where Mitchell lived while she wrote “Gone With the Wind.” About 50,000 people visit here every year, especially from Japan and the United Kingdom. (The truest fanatics have a nickname, MM House told me: Windies.)
Oakland Cemetery Margaret Mitchell was buried here, along with several family members.
There are other signs: the apartment on Piedmont Avenue where Mitchell lived when she was struck by a car while crossing at Peachtree and 13th Street. The Georgian Terrace Hotel, where a reception for the movie premiere of “Gone With the Wind” was held.
Everything I’ve read about the premiere suggests it was Atlanta’s coming out party, complete with finicky stars, massive crowds, historic costumes and one of the saddest stories of the time: intense racial segregation, so much so that the black stars of the film weren’t invited to its premiere. (For a brief look at that, check out this Q&A with Gary Pomerantz, author of “Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn.” Or hey, just pick up that book.)
The film made its New York debut four days later.
Gone With the Wind premiere, 1939
Behind the jump, I attached a story by reporter Jim Auchmutey. I pulled it from the archives and posted it here because it was published in 1989 for the 50th anniversary of the premiere, well before AJC.com was helping stories live online forever. The story recreated that week in Atlanta history.
That’s a lot of history to be forgotten.
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Why are you here? Why do you stay?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I read this story on NYTimes.com yesterday: “City Fits, Eventually, for New Arrivals.”
It’s a thoughtful, other-side-of-the-looking-glass version of an amusing Creative Loafing story from a few weeks ago, “I Love New York: Ex-Atlantans dish on life in New York.”
The NYT story is distinctly New York, the ever-abused subject of so many musicals and love letters: young people head to the big city to follow their dreams, to shake off their past, to find what’s missing, but it’s tougher than they think, until it’s not.
Reading it, I saw that the story of newcomers in New York is not the story here. In this area, there are just as many customs, behaviors, histories and habits to learn. But you may be a newcomer to “Atlanta” while never setting foot in the city itself, or in Atlanta, where you ignore our neighbor counties. It may be the biggest city you’ve ever seen, or a break from a faster life elsewhere. We have no universal reason to be here, that I can see; maybe general impatience with cold weather?
The New York story has romance, but I like that ours doesn’t have so obvious a plot. It can be tiring to deal with the constant bickering and unexpected sensitivities here; I disagree with some prevailing wisdom or insanity every day since moving here. That’s OK.
“Newcomers,” reporter Cara Buckley wrote of New York, “suddenly realize either that the city is not working for them or that they are inexorably becoming part of it, or both.”
I wonder who has the idea to come here and can’t find some way, some space, in which it works. Someone who isn’t trying, who guessed far wrong? Someone who never intended to be in love here, anyway.
But…if you are here at all, you are part of the story.
Why did you come to Atlanta or the metro area? How did you make it work for you?
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Friends don’t let friends risk bad tattoos.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Some things should be done only with the recommendation of others.
Cheap Chinese food, for instance. It can be sickening to even the drunkest gullet, or a surprising delight. (Delivered!) It helps when someone vouches for it.
Unknown books longer than 500 pages. Pet adoption organizations. Movies that might be cult-classic dark comedies or whole new varieties of stupid. Yes, recommendations matter.
Another: piercers and tattoo artists.
A bad mall piercing isn’t likely to cause the trouble of, say, a bad trip to the cardiologist, but why should it be bad at all? (Bad trip to tattoo parlor…yikes. Not something I want to experience. Not something I’m willing to risk, really.)
I feel lucky to have a friendly, vouched-for piercing studio in the neighborhood. It’s nice to have a jewelry-maker and an autoclave around when you need one.
What’s your Atlanta area piercing and tattoo business of choice?
(By the way, newcomers, if you want to know the state rules and regulations about tattooing and piercing, use the searchable Georgia code. Just type in the word “tattoo.”
And check out our galleries of tattoos.
Katrina Sanchez of Smyrna got a tattoo from Brett Zarro of Oneonta, NY during the 11th Annual Atlanta Tattoo Arts Festival on June 17, 2007. Zarro had drawn the outline freehand and was filling in the details and color.
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Was “affordable college” on your list of reasons to move here?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The U.S. News & World Report college rankings hit newsstands today, and Georgia, Georgia Tech, Emory, Spelman, Morehouse and Agnes Scott all made some of the lists.
As the AJC story points out, these rankings are loathed by most school administrators. Still, it’s an ego boost to list-happy parents, students and alumni, and is quick to get the attention of people shopping for schools.
As a high school student in Michigan, I considered going out-of-state for approximately 10 seconds, the amount of time it took to do the math: likelihood of massive student loan debt + general uncertainty about life’s course - cafeteria work wages - aspirational scholarship funds = perfectly lovely in-state school education.
Of course, if you live in Georgia, the reason to stay in-state is even stronger, fancy-sounding rankings or not. It’s called the HOPE scholarship.
Here’s the deal: the Georgia Lottery-funded scholarship covers tuition, some fees and some books for students who are Georgia residents and maintain a B average throughout high school, if they attend an eligible in-state school. (Private school students can get a portion of the cost paid, too.)
Yes, in this tough economy, Georgia universities might make staff cuts and increase fees that would fall outside the reach of HOPE.
Yes, the formula to calculate students’ grade averages recently changed, which left some students and parents disappointed.
And yes, the dangling carrot of paid tuition creates some intense competition to get in to state schools.
Hard to see the downside of greater academic achievement, though. Without requiring an essay or interview, a certain SAT score or even an A-average, the program has helped 1,191,115 students with $4.1 billion since 1993.
I’m thrilled with my college education and that it helped me to land here, out-of-state. But if I’d known more than what was in the rankings, if I’d believed the HOPE scholarship wasn’t some higher education fairy tale…maybe I would’ve been a newcomer sooner.
Did it convince you to move here, or to stay here?
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You’re holding out on me Bronxchcic. Shorting me with just mild name calling. Let’s have some of you’re over the top unfounded delusional rhetoric. Pluuezze…once more explain to us all once more about you’re vast superiority.... read the full comment by XLAX | Comment on Why are you here? Why do you stay? Read Why are you here? Why do you stay?
To all you HATERS of New York - Sk Dk!!! I email what I want… You never know where I’ll be. But guess what I drive a white Ford mini van NY plates. If you got balls( AND OF COURSE NONE OF YOU HAVE THE BALLS TO SAY IT TO MY FACE)stop... read the full comment by bronxchic | Comment on Why are you here? Why do you stay? Read Why are you here? Why do you stay?
Bronxchic, I’m bored. Can you come out to play today with your bag full of venom for the people of Atlanta. Let’s hurl some verbal arrows at each other. I know you’re up to it. Being a complete B** is a given for you. BRONXCHIC…where... read the full comment by XLAX | Comment on Why are you here? Why do you stay? Read Why are you here? Why do you stay?
So, Bronxchic, what you should have said is “Fifteen to 20 people at the law firm at which I work have never left Atlanta. (I still find that nearly impossible to believe. Are they some gang of agoraphobics or what?) In either case, you - surpassing... read the full comment by Now I See | Comment on Why are you here? Why do you stay? Read Why are you here? Why do you stay?