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Atlanta, Georgia
Blood tastes like steel seeds and skinned knees on sidewalks
It seems like it hasn’t been all that long since I was last in Atlanta but this time things don’t look all that different. The giant ferris wheel (also known as SkyView Atlanta) still slowly spun over Centennial Park under a warm summer sky, where the view of the skyline is nice but the view down to the Olympic Rings Fountain is nicer.
There are a lot of reasons to go to Atlanta, enough that the city actually offers a CityPass ticket, including star attractions like the Georgia Aquarium (where the whale sharks are the big draw), the World of Coca-Cola (where the commercial theater and international soda testing are the big draw) and the CNN Studio Tour (where being relieved that Wolf Blitzer is based out of DC and not Atlanta may be the big draw).
There are lots of things to do in Atlanta outside of CityPass attractions and not having to worry about running into Wolf Blitzer (he knows what he did). One such attraction is Stone Mountain, a geological oddity not too far out of the city where a cable car whisks you up to the summit where what you do next is up to you.
And while thankfully there are no “30 Rock” hill people attacks to worry about, the park and even the mountain has a historical issue or two to deal with. Everyone knows that the mountain has a confederate carving on its face, but in front of it is a monument plaza that feels, well, the nicest things to say about it are “unbelievably out of date” or “tone deaf.” There are individual monuments to each confederate state, as well as a few non-confederate border states, and even the roads are named after the confederates carved on the mountain. I dare you not to cringe in horror the first time Siri tells you to make a left on Jefferson Davis Drive.
There are lots of reasons to go to Atlanta, but maybe, just maybe, the real reason to go is to get some ribs at Fat Matt’s Rib Shack, where the “shack” feels like nothing special but the ribs sure do.
There were a few reasons that precipitated a trip to Atlanta in the middle of July, but the biggest factor was my credit card. As a perk, I get a free annual companion ticket, and this expired at the end of July. Looking for direct flights on Delta out of Newark, you’ll find limited choices at best, and Atlanta (the big Delta hub) jumps out as one of the best. Of course there were all of the CityPass attractions and Fat Matt and the rest, but there was also one more draw out there.
This year (also known as 2017 for any archivist reading this in our certainly dystopian future) was the opening of Sun Trust Park, the brand new stadium for the Atlanta Braves. Located far away from downtown (and away from Atlanta’s reliable subway), the brand new stadium and area built around it is actually quite wonderful. The stadium has its own Waffle House (I did have a waffle), tasty soft pretzels shaped lithe the A in Atlanta and an unbelievably dangerous looking “food” item called a “burgerizza” consisting of a giant burger with two pepperoni pizzas as buns (I did not try this, which might explain why I am still alive). The hometown Braves beat the Arizona Diamondbacks on a surprisingly pleasant Friday night (all the severe thunderstorms somehow missed the park) and it was even fireworks night. What else could anyone ever ask for?
Moments ago we were talking about baseball stadiums and now we’re back in Midtown Manhattan, hopefully you’re enjoying the whiplash that is a Weekend Trips Slideshow.
We’re going to end this page’s pictures with a few images from an Untapped Cities tour of the Hotel New Yorker, an unusually interesting building that most people probably never heard of. The tour took you everywhere except the roof, including the vault, the basement, the abandoned secret tunnel to (the original) Pennsylvania Station and even to the Tesla Suite where Nikola Tesla lived and died. As a side note, if you ever wanted to sleep in the room where Nikola Tesla died, all you have to do is book a reservation and hope for the best. The room is assigned to guests at random, with no warning until you get there and see the little plaque on the door. And then you get to deal with the ghost of a misunderstood genius haunting you every night during your trip to the big city. Fun times ahead for all.
