A New City

Our new place

Our new dining room

The view from the back porch

Atlanta so far

Atlanta is interesting and different so far from other places I’ve lived. It’s Southern and it’s not. People here make a clear distinction between ITP and OTP, in reference to whether you live inside or outside the perimeter. The city’s horrible traffic, sprawling suburbs, and lack of any major natural geographic feature give many visitors a negative impression. Someone coming to Buckhead or Alphretta though is only seeing one side of Atlanta, and I would argue an ugly side. Where Maya and I found a place, Lake Claire/Candler Park, we are ITP and there are a lot of funky, cool neighborhoods around. While walking is not that easy, biking short distances is very doable and there lots of cool unique independent businesses.

I was recnetly invited to join the people sitting next to me 5 year old daughter/grand daughter's tea party birthday at Dr. Bombay's, a fine local establishment 

The cost of living is so much cheaper than in the North. In my neighborhood there’s a few “universal” free library mail boxes were people can trade books among themselves. This is the type of place where people know their neighbors, their neighbor’s dogs, and people greet each other. That being said, in Atlanta in general, neighborhoods seem to change every few blocks and a safe nice neighborhood can turn to not so safe very quickly. You kind of have to figure out the lay of the land.

The three biggest surprises for me so far have been the amount of people here that are not actually from here (or from Georgia even), the amount of hills here, and the amount of green space. I have at least 5 parks within a mile or so walk. Not so far away is the Candler Park executive golf course, 9 wholes $9, not bad. The other day I say a few dudes playing behind me, one holding a 6 pack of Killians, one walking a big ol’ black lab, and a third one carried his guitar. One of them seemed to actually be playing golf.

Just a few blocks away from me is the Lake Claire Land Trust. The land trust is a crazy vestige of the 1960’s – community owned plots of land with small, shared raised beds for growing food, walking paths and a pond, and their very own emu (Lou). They have a famous bi-monthly drum circle that keeps the neighbors up but I think is pretty cool and a lot of people actually go to it. They also have a sweet playground and some type of natural homemade sauna they've constructed.

We've been fostering puppies as a way to try out dog ownership and get the dogs out of the high kill shelters here (a big problem in Georgia) and I walked one of the dogs the other day to the land trust. I guess it shouldn't have been surprising the he didn't seem to like Lou the emu. The dog would not stop barking (the emu was not phased). What was more surprising though was the fact that at 7:30 Monday morning when I was leaving there was a young dude blasting music (something ironic like the Tragically Hip) in the parking lot from what looked like his mom’s van. He had a friend with him who stood crouched over just outside the van vomiting as the dude explained that they like to come to the land trust after a night of recording music to drop their empties at the land trust’s recycling. Yeah, it’s an interesting neighborhood here. 

Mushy, a black lab mutt. Our first and so far best foster pup

Mushy running after chicks at the Lake Claire Land Trust

Best of 2014

About a month ago I went to Jeckyll Island. It’s a small island off the coast of Georgia. I was there for the Georgia organics conference with Café Campesino and still can’t forget the feeling of 70 delicious roasted oysters in my happy stomach. But it was more than just that.

The sun was setting as a small crowd gathered outside stand around getting ready for the oyster showdown. We stood around the tables as enormous buckets of steaming fresh oysters were put out beside the fresh lemons, hot sauce, and crackers. When we started eating it was so delicious it was like what I imagine crack to be, you couldn't stop. Everyone quickly became disgustingly wet and gross from shucking oysters. There were flies everywhere, biting us, and it just didn't seem to matter. One guy I saw the next day had red bumps covering both of his arms and at first I thought he had an allergic reaction until he reminded about the flies. Nothing could stop us. We socialized, joked, and made friends and I'm pretty sure everyone left that table in a great mood. 

Jackyll Island just before a big rainstorm came in