Stay long enough in Atlanta, and you'll complete the checklist of generally-accepted tourism stops at least twice.
If you've had one too many swigs of Beverly at World of Coke's Beverly, there are still plenty of things to see around Atlanta — strange and wonderful things.
Here are six of them:
The Waffle House Museum.
Waffle House Museum
2719 E. College Ave., Decatur
770-326-7086
www.wafflehouse.com/waffle-house-museum
The Waffle House Museum isn't just a Waffle House, its the Waffle House. The museum is housed in the building next door, while the flagship restaurant serves as a WaHo time capsule preserved forever in it's 1950's state. On display are are items salvaged from the Waffle Rubble of Hurricane Katrina as well as all manner of vintage wears.
In a twist of irony for a restaurant that never closes, the WaHo Museum is only open by appointment. Call 770-326-7086 at least 48 hours before you plan to visit breakfast's most hallowed ground.
RELATED: 12 things you didn't know about Waffle House
Tiny doors get tiny ediitions of the AJC.
Nine intown locations
Start your search for the artfully diminutive stoops at Little Shop of Stories on the Decatur Square; it's the furthest tiny door from it's eight tiny friends. At the bookstore, a six-inch tall installations offers art fans a tiny bookshelf with tiny doors, leading to what surely must be a tiny Narnia.
In addition to Decatur's port, there are eight other tiny doors at Krog St., Old Fourth Ward, Little Five Points, Cabbagetown, Inman Park, Paris on Ponce, Carter Center and King of Pops. Perhaps the best part of Tiny Doors -- other than the tiny AJC's -- is the tiny window they give into Atlanta's most artistic neighborhoods.
Nobody on earth has more small chairs.
The Collectible & Antique Chair Gallery
994 Main St., Stone Mountain
770-498-8816
If searching for Tiny Doors has your full-sized legs tired, let your imagination have a seat in one of Barbara Hartsfield's tiny chairs. The Collectible & Antique Chair Gallery proclaim their 3,000-plus miniature chairs (housed in a three room museum) the world's largest collection of small chairs. Even if there is some private collector quietly amassing an even larger collection of miniature chairs, Hartsfield's Stone Mountain showcase is the world's only miniature chair museum. One online reviewer summed the attraction by describing the "tiny chair earring holder that holds earrings that are even tinier chairs."
Your friendly neighborhood trail of dismembered doll heads and other awesome junk.
Doll's Head Trail
33.680893 N , -84.335475 W
Let's say you like Tiny Doors and Tiny Chairs, and love hiking, but you are also kind of weird. If that sounds accurate, the Doll's Head Trail might be for you. Part trail hike, part natural preserve, part horrifying descent into serial-killer layer, and filled with copperhead snakes, there is nothing quite like the Doll's Head Trail. It can be difficult to find the trail, which is buried within the trail system at industrial Atlanta's Constitution Lakes park.
Whenever you go, the payoff at Doll's Head is worth it; there are several great art installations along with a few strange ones. Most of what you will see is art. Much of that art is made from doll heads. What all began as one man's efforts to turn trail trash into art became something strangely communal, which makes the Doll's Head Trail as awesome as it is bizarre.
3687 Briarcliff Road., Atlanta
Another of the metro area's great roadside attractions (and finally one that doesn't involve the terrifying prospect of doll heads) is the nearly perfect replica of the White House. The footprint of the property and the structure are built to ¾ scale. Inside, the Atlanta White House once boasted 36 rooms across it's 16,500 square-feet that included a Lincoln Bedroom, Presidential Theater and Oval Office. Even the President's desk was accurately detailed by builder, curator and long-time resident Fred Milani.
Ironically, the replica White House was nearly brought into foreclosure in 2011, before Milani lowered the asking price from it's initial $11 million to a final sale price around $2 million. The fate of the interior appointments are unclear now that the home is privately owned, but the sight of the sprawling estate of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sitting at 3687 Briarcliff is enough to inspire the 'merican pride into any red-blooded citizen taking in the freedom on full display at the greatest house in the nation.
via Wikipedia Gravity wants to hold us down.
Gravity Research Foundation Monument
1400 Oxford Road, Atlanta
When Roger Babson's sister drowned, he (rightly) blamed gravity and then dedicated his remaining life towards the implementation of gravitational shielding. Babson wrote "Gravity - Our Enemy Number One" and founded the Gravity Research Foundation at the suggestion of Thomas Edison. Were Babson more successful in his efforts to shed the planetary pulls that glue us to Earth, his legacy would likely endure beyond the plaque at Emory University.
Though it looks a lot like a pink marble tombstone, the plaque is in fact a celebration of hope emblazoned with Babson's message of the "blessings forthcoming when science determines what gravity is, how it works, and how it may be controlled." Babson envisioned, rightly or wrongly, perpetual motion machines and other seemingly-wild notions if only we could resist gravity on Earth. The monument was housed on campus for 37 years before it was moved to storage. It sits today in front of the Callaway Center, proving once and for all that there is nothing that can hold a determined man down.
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