Morning, y’all! Was it Voltaire who said, “Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung?” That’s the common attribution. I thought of this as I looked up the words to “Rock Lobster” by the B-52s for today’s edition. To be clear, one could argue most song lyrics sound stupid out of context, so I mean no slight to the aural Dadaism of Athens’ finest.
Let’s get to it.
KEMP CALLS SPECIAL SESSION
The future of Georgia’s elections will be determined by a special legislative session called by Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday.
Starting June 17, lawmakers will reconvene at the Capitol with two aims:
- The Republican-led legislature will try to redraw the state’s political maps after a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gutted the section of the Voting Rights Act prohibiting racial gerrymandering.
- They will also decide how Georgia voters will, you know, actually vote. The body is facing a self-imposed July deadline banning the use of QR codes to tally votes used in the state’s voting system. So far, lawmakers haven’t agreed on an alternative, or proposed money to replace the systems.
Pay attention to timing
- June 16, the day before, is the election day for any primary runoffs.
- Kemp has ruled out changing any maps this year, but GOP leaders want to make the changes while they’re sure they still have a Republican governor to sign off on them.
🔎 READ MORE: What decisions could come, and what they mean
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WHAT DID A BILLION DO FOR THE BELTLINE?
Twenty years after the city invested nearly $1 billion in public and philanthropic funds into the Atlanta Beltline, we’re seeing the full scope of the returns.
The Atlanta Beltline released an economic impact analysis detailing how the 22-mile trail loop has impacted its city.
- $14.2 billion in private investment: The project surpassed its initial $10 billion goal five years ahead of schedule.
- Tens of thousands of full-time jobs: Most of them come from companies operating in and around the trail.
- $23 billion of economic output in 2025: This tally includes direct output and “spillover effects,” or economic output it prompted in the surrounding areas.
Success comes with a price, though. Area residents and city leaders know the increased economic activity in the area has raised prices. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens says City Hall is working to address affordability issues.
🔎 READ MORE: More big Beltline numbers
MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS
⚖️ Fani Willis says she’ll challenge the newly signed Georgia law requiring nonpartisan elections for most local officials in the five most populous counties in the Atlanta area. Our AJC politics team predicted Kemp’s signing of the controversial law would immediately invite legal pushback, and here we are.
✂️ What else did Gov. Brian Kemp cut from the state budget to pay for the state’s new income tax cuts? A summer food stamps program for kids, paid leave for pre-K teachers, support for foster children and more.
COCA-COLA’S SECRET LABORATORY
Coca-Cola has brewed up several fancy new soda machines (they call it “beverage dispensing equipment” but that’s no fun).
- A revamped Freestyle fountain machine, a mini Freestyle machine that sits on a tabletop and a mixology station are among Coke’s efforts to capitalize on the growing trend of complex, personalized beverages.
- The new tech is dreamed up right here in Atlanta.
- Coca-Cola’s equipment lab is tucked away in a hidden space not far from the company’s North Avenue headquarters.
- Only about a 100 people work there, but the lab has churned out roughly one-fourth of Coca-Cola’s patents over the last 15 years.
🔎 READ MORE: Freestyle machines actually lead to new drinks on shelves
IT WASN’T A ROCK! IT WAS A …
The Athens Rock Lobsters may be a minor league hockey team, but they’re majorly popular. So popular, in fact, they’re being promoted.
- The team will join the SPHL, formerly the Southern Professional Hockey League, next season. That’s a step up from their current place near the top of the standings in the Federal Prospects Hockey League.
- The Rock Lobsters increased average attendance by 22% last season to roughly 4,500 fans per game.
How’d they do it? By having fun and winning, of course. I love this write by the AJC’s Fletcher Page looking at the events, marketing and music that lead to the Rock Lobsters’ sellout crowds.
NEWS BITES
‘Ocean Dream’ blue-green diamond sells for more than $17 million
The super-rich-person version of “Treat yo’self.”
See Atlanta hip-hop legend Jermaine Dupri’s Atlanta Braves bobblehead
Such lovingly rendered jeans! Very fashionable (fashionabobble?).
Kids are in a ‘reading recession,’ as test scores continue to decline
This very literally keeps me up at night and I don’t even have kids.
The Win Column: Bobby Cox ejection trivia
I hope you love anything as much as Bobby Cox loved getting kicked out of baseball games.
ON THIS DATE
May 14, 1939
Kidnaping real thing, Publisher Putnam says. Peace officers searched widely but in vain Saturday for two German-speaking men declared by George Palmer Putnam, 52, the book publisher, to have kidnaped him in an attempt to learn the author of the anonymous novel, “The Man Who Killed Hitler.” Putnam, who was found early Saturday bound and gagged in an unfinished Bakersfield house, asserted emphatically the experience “was much too painful and too realistic and too elaborate to be a publicity stunt.” “If anyone wishes to claim this is a publicity stunt for the book, ‘The Man Who Killed Hitler,’ let him say it to my face and I’ll give him a forceful demonstration that it is not.”
Narrator voice: It was, in fact, a publicity stunt. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go over well.
Putman was also married four times, and his second wife was THE Amelia Earhart. (Referred to in this article as “Amelia Earhart, woman flier,” which I sincerely hope was on her business cards.)
And yes, “kidnaping” is a legit way to spell “kidnapping.” No, I don’t like it either.
ONE MORE THING
Thank you so much to everyone who came out to the AJC Subscriber Week sports trivia night in Midtown with Tyler Estep and me! Congrats to subscriber Paola and her team, who emerged victorious. Robert, David, the other David, Myrna and John — it was so much fun chatting with such kind, witty, intelligent members of our A.M. ATL family. Y’all are the best!
Thanks for reading to the very bottom of A.M. ATL. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact us at AMATL@ajc.com.
Until next time.
About the Author
AJ Willingham is an National Emmy, NABJ and Webby award-winning journalist who loves talking culture, religion, sports, social justice, infrastructure and the arts. She lives in beautiful Smyrna-Mableton and went to Syracuse University.
