Gonna put it in the want ads

30 Jan

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Good reading: the classified section of the Great Speckled Bird archives.
Accused of “spreading sexist attitudes” through its classifieds section (“requesting young, hip, white, females to move in free of charge and do housewifely chores”), the Bird ditched the money-making sexist ads in 1970 and just offered the space for free.spacer In this section there were a lot of requests for prison pen pals (A LOT), desperate family members seeking their hippie dropout kids, free cats and poetry, waterbeds and VW vans for sale, cheap macrame kits, fundraising pleas for various liberation movements and lesbian fairy tale publications, and really cryptic personal ads. We can only hope the intended recipients got the message. Continue reading →

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    Tags: the great speckled bird

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    • Categories reading
    • Author pecanne log

    Hey, what’s up in Atlanta?

    26 Jan
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    Atlanta, Indiana by Flickr user J. Stephen Conn

    Sometimes when we get too bummed out here in Atlanta, Georgia, we like to check in on what other Atlantas are up to, to see if they’re living up to the hype, or even just making do. Makes us feel like we’re not alone in the world – somewhere out there, there’s another Atlanta, plodding along, learning valuable lessons through its constant mistakes, and just trying to make a name for itself in this crazy game we call life.

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    Atlanta, Illinois via www.atlantaillinois.org

    Atlanta, Illinois: It’s hard to tell a lot of what’s up in Atlanta, Illinois, as the Atlanta Argus is updated online only monthly. The water leak on North Street will be repaired soon. There is a problem with unnumbered houses in the town that the council has to deal with. Dollar General needs a business license and the grocery wants to start selling liquor on Sunday.
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    There is so much to see and do in Atlanta, located along Route 66 and proud site of “the Bunyon Statue” of Paul Bunyan holding a hot dog and Illinois’ only eight-sided limestone public library and museum. You can get some great Atlanta souvenirs at the J. H. Hawes Grain Elevator Museum and find out where cornflakes come from in their new exhibit. Continue reading →

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    Tags: escapism, these are the atlantas I know

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    • Author pecanne log

    Christmas judgment

    21 Dec

    It’s nearly the end of another year, which means it’s time to reflect on all the people who rubbed us the wrong way in 2011 and make empty threats about what we’ll do to them if they pull that shit one more time in 2012.

    In the interest of Christmas cliches, we have compiled our annual naughty and nice list. Do you want the good news first or the bad news first?

    Naughty
    1. Kim Severson
    2. Robbie Brown
    3. Kim Severson and Robbie Brown on the same byline

    Everyone’s still buzzing about Severson’s latest thing, “that pecan article” (come on, Hawkdogg hasn’t updated his MySpace page since March!), and we’re probably still rolling our eyes over Severson-Brown’s “black Hollywood” piece. (Good inventory of subtle offenses here.)

    Oh, and let’s not forget Brown’s Waffle House crime story.

    These are the issues that Atlanta and the South face. THESE ARE THE THINGS NEW YORK TIMES READERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TO CONTINUE SHAPING THEIR WORLDVIEW which apparently begins and ends with that one scene from Mame where Lucille Ball goes to Savannah to meet Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside’s family.

    But these articles to which we’ve already alluded barely scratch the surface of what Severson and Brown are capable of! Sometimes they cover the ho-hum trend pieces for which The New York Times is famous, or they’ll hone in on one person in a human interest profile and won’t try to convince the readership that this one Bogart man or “Windy” (=Gone With the Wind fanatic) represents the whole of the South, all of it, every last person. But then there are the times they get carried away, lost in some grotesque scattershot caricature that they know readers from other geographic regions will read with glee.

    Behold some of their most offensive clippings and anecdotes from the past year or so: Continue reading →

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    Tags: american period furniture, christmas, kim severson, new york times, poster hut, robbie brown, thomas wheatley

    Street hymns

    29 Nov

    Enough about Peachtree Street!
    “Badstreet U.S.A.”  by Michael Hayes and The Fabulous Freebirds (from the 1987 album Off the Streets)

    Shortly after this song debuted, Bad Street was renamed “Atlanta’s Historic Livingston Mims Motorway” to shed itself of negative connotations with the notorious and sloppy wrestler vs. punk blood feud that plagued the thoroughfare for the majority of the ’80s.

    If I had to pick a real-life Bad Street Atlanta G-A, maybe I would go with the very south end of Moreland Avenue, past Coco Loco de la Noche. There are just a lot of beige nearly-windowless “sports” bars that seem like weathered men go in there every night and come out with nosebleeds, either from brawls over whether to play trashy honky-tonk or thrash metal in the jukebox, or because of snorting too much hillbilly heroin.

    Now a real road – Auburn Avenue.
    “Auburn Avenue” by The Spirit of Atlanta (produced by the legendary Tommy Stewart, from the 1973 soundtrack to the never-made film The Burning of Atlanta)

    This whoooooole album is sooooooooooo goooooooooooooood. I can only imagine what the movie for which it was recorded would be like. What was the plan for “Buttermilk Bottom“? I am dying to see the heavy nightlife scene for which that was likely intended. There’s also “Hunter Street” (now MLK Drive – thanks jolomo) which is clearly scored for a police chase scene. And if you like funk woodwind and brass riffs, you’ll love the instrumental “Down Underground“!

    Here’s one last song with street undertones, while we’re on the subject of Tommy Stewart. Continue reading →

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    Tags: michael hayes, the fabulous freebirds, the spirit of atlanta, tommy stewart

    Happy Thanksgiving

    23 Nov

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    Woman in corn field, surrounded by harvest vegetable crops, holding a live turkey, Georgia, 1930s

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    Man holds an axe, looking down at turkeys in front of him, November 1940

    Continue reading →

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    A wonk down memory lane

    23 Nov

    There are days and weeks when we literally cannot remember why we live in Atlanta other than because all our stuff is already here. Only a force as powerful as the History Twins can nurse us back from full-on fatigue to just dull listlessness.

    Hey, snap out of it, you! This is truly one of the most amusing, ineffable episodes of them all. Especially if you like grand sweeping staircases and the letters “DOT” flying in your face. Oh, and more visuals with FOOD. You’ll see soon enough.

    Here’s how the third-to-last episode of The Making of Modern Atlanta starts:
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    WHOA WHOA WHOA!! What is this? Clearly we are impeding on some sort of fancy dinner and similarly fancy conversation…

    Dr. White: “…Maybe when we’re shooting The Making of the Modern Riviera.” [Inhales goblet deeply.]
    spacer “Mmm, delicate fragrance. Fine taste. Robust but not ill-mannered. Ah, what’s the vintage?”
    Continue reading →

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