Atlanta and Athens, GA

KillRamsey

Hall of Famer
Location
Hood River, OR
Name
Kyle
We took a 7-day trip down to Georgia for my wife's 20th high school reunion two weekends ago, stopping in Atlanta to bike around for 2 days, then go to the suburbs for the reunion, and finally we spent the last 3 days in Athens, where we both went to undergrad college manymanymany years ago.

Some of the highlights...

My Brompton in a MARTA station, waiting on a train. That's my Domke bungee'd to the bars, where it sits while I bike. The canopy bungees make it easy to detach when we park and lock up. And this is our full travel setup -- we fly two sets like this with everything going overhead on the plane, no checked luggage. The wife's bike has an extra seat on it for our 5yr old.
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Brompton In Red
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

Underway in Atlanta, me with my daughter.
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KBRX7845
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

MLK Center, a very powerful place...
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KBRX7934
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

Atlanta
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KBRX8008
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

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KBRX8032
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

I see you two sitting over there in that tree in Piedmont Park, you adorable little buggers, and I just so happen to have my camera out already with a fast shutter speed dialed up, so I can grab this shot without even stopping...
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KBRX8146
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

Biking in the Burbs. Three cheers for golf cart path!
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Peachtree City
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

High School reunions are pretty much just this...
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Reunion
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

A friend I haven't seen in 22 years, who is still amazing.
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22 Years
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

A tree swing over a river, Athens GA
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KBRX8666
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

You're not *supposed* to take pictures in the art museum, but that's where silent electronic shutters come in handy...
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Georgia Art Museum
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

Ditto
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Georgia Art Museum
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

Just for Luke, here's Wuxtry Records, the shop I worked in during college. It hasn't changed a whisker since 1998. I almost walked behind the counter out of habit.
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Wuxtry Records
by gordopuggy, on Flickr
 
Really nice set Kyle. I was there about 9 months go, and the area around the MLK center is a really nice spot for taking pictures. Piedmont park is a cool place to hangout, as well as well as the Olympic Centenial park.
 
Agreed. I grew up in the burbs below Atlanta, and used to come up there for concerts / dinner / parties. I cannot believe how much it's changed. I haven't lived in GA since 2000, so it's pretty radically different now. Bike lanes, cycle tracks, neighborhoods booming, culture thriving, breweries opening... it's fantastic. it's alive again downtown.
 
Very nice set Kyle. Particularly like that fourth one, of the downtown through the public sculpture / water feature. Nice to hear Atlanta has gotten nice downtown - I've always avoided the place because I understood there practically WAS no downtown! I have a niece down there who has two adorable little ones (one of whom I've never met) and it's a pretty cheap flight from Philly, so I'll have to check it out sometime soon. In Seattle at the moment, on the way to Alaska next week. Definitely traveling withOUT a Brompton! I had my first rear flat on that bike last week - what a puzzle that one was to change. I'd always dreaded a rear flat on that bike. I managed to get it apart and back together, but I got a ride home and fixed it in the comfort of my basement on a workstand...

-Ray
 
I loved Atlanta when I lived near there ca. 1988 - 1992. Shopped at Wuxtry, but mainly at Wax-n-Facts down the street in a little-Hollywood type area. Would go there, then drive up to Lenox Square, then head North. Coming out of Lenox Square I'd get on to a ramp (I85?) that had a killer turn to the right, where I scraped the left fender a few times. My Honda CRX broke down near that ramp in '91, and being late in the day they towed it to a K-Mart. Long story short, instead of paying the dealer $400 or so for a new distributor, there was a guy at the K-Mart auto shop who knew about a dead chip in the distributor, which he replaced for 1/3 of what the honda dealer would have charged. After dropping the car at K-Mart, I had to get my wife to the airport STAT - so called a cab and said "get her there quick", which was a profoundly scary ride.
 
My understanding, from a coworker who lived there up until about 2008, was that Atlanta went through a heavy suburbanization in the mid to late 90's. I first spent some quality time in downtown back in 2007, and it was starting to get more "upscale" urban again, especially in the midtown areas. We continue to go back about once a year for a weekend or so. Its only about a 3 to 4 hour drive from here.
 
People began fleeing (well, affluent / white people) the downtown areas of Atlanta in the 1950's and 60's when cars and gas got cheap. Everyone wanted their own acre, with a gigantic back yard swing set, and the illusion of greater personal safety. It continued unabated until only the last 10 years, really, with the "donut" of suburban bedroom communities with no real identities of their own beyond collosally large subdivisions and megaplex shopping centers and strip malls expanding ever outward until, as a kid in the 1980's and 90's, I had friends who "lived in Atlanta" but were over an hour's fast drive from each other. None of us lived in Atlanta, really. No one did. We all lived in the burbs.

It's incredible now. There's real life downtown.
 
As an urban planner by trade, we used to joke that all you needed to know about Atlanta as a place was that their most notable suburb was named "Perimeter Center". I'm glad to hear there's actually a "Center Center" happening there now too!

-Ray
 
I loved Atlanta when I lived near there ca. 1988 - 1992. Shopped at Wuxtry, but mainly at Wax-n-Facts down the street in a little-Hollywood type area. Would go there, then drive up to Lenox Square, then head North. Coming out of Lenox Square I'd get on to a ramp (I85?) that had a killer turn to the right, where I scraped the left fender a few times. My Honda CRX broke down near that ramp in '91, and being late in the day they towed it to a K-Mart. Long story short, instead of paying the dealer $400 or so for a new distributor, there was a guy at the K-Mart auto shop who knew about a dead chip in the distributor, which he replaced for 1/3 of what the honda dealer would have charged. After dropping the car at K-Mart, I had to get my wife to the airport STAT - so called a cab and said "get her there quick", which was a profoundly scary ride.

Wax-N-Facts was awesome. Probably still is, I haven't been since I skipped high school and hung out in Little 5 Points, where it's located. Little 5 is a little nicer than it was back then, but not drastically. It's still has a nice scuzzy edge to it.

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Little Five
by gordopuggy, on Flickr

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Little 5 Points
by gordopuggy, on Flickr
 
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