Spring 2011

I realise A LOT has happened since I last updated this. I've evidently gotten accustomed to Atlanta and don't feel the need to report on every run in with a homeless guy etc.

In the months since my last update I've had and left/lost jobs, made a bunch of friends and started some bands. I'm currently working as a parking lot attendant until I find something more steady.

Do have a funny story to tell about the Russian guy who cut my hair the other day best summed up by some of the things he was saying:

"I like Beatles and Scorpion- you know Scorpion?" (he then proceeded to sing to me.)

"London girls are hot yes?" (This despite me mentioning a few times that I wasn't from London. Turns out he's only been to Heathrow airport.)

"They have good wifi in London?"  (...)


Below are some of the few pictures I've taken/had taken in the past few months.

 You have to pack heat in ATL.

 Some of the art on display at Sister Louisa's Church of the Living Room & Ping Pong Emporium.

 Southern Comfort (aka Roadhouse 4 reel).

 The view outside my condo as of a few weeks ago.

 Lou Barlow (of Sebadoh) rocking out at The Earl.

 Daniel Higgs (playing with The Skull Defekts).

 GG King at the Atlanta Mess-Around.

 The Testors at the Mess-Around.

Yelling man

My apartment is located on the intersection of two roads: Peachtree (a long road that goes for a number of miles from the north to the south of metro Atlanta) and Pharr Road. There's a bus stop located on corner of Peachtree and Pharr and on two occasions now when I've been crossing the road to go back to my place I've noticed a guy yelling across the street.

The first time he did it I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or not. I'd only had my bike for a few days and since the traffic was particularly bad on this occasion I decided to use the pedestrian crossing to cross the road rather than ride with the traffic, and that's when he started yelling. At first I thought he was talking gibberish. I couldn't tell if he was talking to me or not either, but after a few moments realised he was instructing me to cross the road (since the pedestrian cross walks here are particularly pedestrian un-friendly and at this point in time, they confused the hell out of me). I could hardly make out what he was saying but it was something like

"You gotta go now, othawise you have to wait!"

And with that advise, I decided to cross as soon as the road became clear, nevermind what the sign said. Both hands holding onto my handle bars, I had to run across the street lest I be run over by a busy Atlanta motorist.

The second time I came across him it was close to midnight.

He spotted me standing on the other side of the road from him, about to cross in my wool-lined deerstalker/Holden Caulfield style hat;

"Wool hat! That's a goood hat!" he said excitedly.

"Yes, it is a good hat." I thought to myself as I crossed the street.

"Prettay, prettay, good!".

Epic bike journey at 1am, or: "Fucking invincible at 1am."

The other week I biked/MARTA'd to a hardcore show down at Wonderroot, near Inman Park-Reynoldstown Station. I've noticed shows go on here fairly late and the last MARTA train was at 00:40 so around 00:20 I say my goodbyes and bike down to the station.
As I walk down to the platform I see that it's deserted.

"This doesn't look good!" I think to myself.

I look at my watch. It's 00:39. The last train going the other way comes and goes. 00:45. Fuck. I text my friend Stewart, a fellow biker about the best way to get back to Buckhead from Inman. He texts me back promptly: "Do you have lights? Take Edgewood to Peachtree."

I get out my flashing back light, attach it to the back of my backpack, put on my helmet and picking up my bike, begin to walk back up to the platform, cursing to myself at having missed the last train. Looking at the map I have luckily packed with me, it's about a 10/15 mile ride back to my house.

As I start to exit the MARTA station I stop an elderly man for directions to Edgewood. He points me in the right direction and two minutes later out on my bike cycling towards Edgewood Avenue. After a couple miles or so I come to Edgewood-Candler Park MARTA station. I take out my map and look at it. Just as I though, I've gone the wrong way. The old man must've thought I meant Edgewood station, not Edgewood Avenue. "Cock, balls!" I say to myself, as I cycle back the other way. I've figured out that if I keep going along the road I'm on I'll get to Peachtree and then it's a straight shot (or thereabouts) back to my condo.

After about 40 minutes, I get to Peachtree. As I make the long (in hindsight) ride from Peachtree to my condo I see the same thing with each passing minute. Lone, homeless men, usually of African-American decent. One guy almost steps into me as he goes to cross the road. "Hey, watch out!" I yell at him. He seems oblivious. Poor guy. And right in the heart of the business disctrict too.

This reminds me of something I heard recently: "Homeless people, the sign of a healthy capitalist society." or something to that effect.

As I to the last couple miles of the journey, I stop into a gas station to get a drink. My legs are screaming with pain, almost tensed up. I'd attended a cycling safety class a few weeks before and remember a conversation the instructor had with one of the other attendees about how it was impossible to injur yourself riding a bike due to it being a no impact activity. "What a crock of shit." I think to myself as I half limp out of the gas station and take the brake off my bike for the last leg of the journey.

I finally get to my turn off. I look at my watch. 02:55. "Wow, it's so late." A white car pulls up beside me at the stop light. A man who looks to be in his late 20s/early 30s winds his window down to talk to me:

"You're out cycling at 2am?" he says incredulously, as if I'd just decided to take a leisurely bike ride at this time of night.

"You've got to be really careful, okay?"

Now, I'm not the best with confrontation. But this really gets my goat. I explode:

"Look, I appreciate the sentiment, but I've just biked 15 miles fron Inman to get here, because I missed the last train and I'm just about to turn onto the road that takes me to my condo so, thanks, but no thanks."

The traffic light goes green and I turn onto my road. Home.


So, the moral of the story?


I NEED A CAR!

Funny MARTA Story #1

So, as any vistor to Atlanta probably knows, riding the Marta is always an adventure (just watch this).

I've seen a lot of funny/peculiour shit since riding the bus/train a bunch of times since getting here, whether it be the bizarre middle aged man writing this on a pad and then holding them up and reading them again, nodding to himself, or the balloon man on the train to Indian Creek from 5 Points making balloon swords for the little kids, and their beaming faces as they dueled but the best thing I've seen happened on a train from Sandy Springs this past Friday afternoon.

I was sat facing the doors and a few feet to my left was sat a middle aged man. Glasses, baseball cap, stone washed jeans and white sneakers. He looked a lot like Toby Radloff, the nerdy colleague of Harvey Pekar's in American Splendor (RIP). A few seconds after clocking him, another guy gets on and sits down next to him and they begin to talk. He's dressed in in dark, jeans, a fairly snugg fit and a dark coloured shirt. They have loud, very pronounced accents again, like Toby Radloff only more southern and as I sit listening to them I can't help but crack a smile. Such peculiar dudes! Anyways, the second guy gets off and a few minutes later as I'm looking out the window I start to hear a buzzing sound, like an electric razor. I look over and Toby Radloff-a-like is shaving with an electric razor. He's concentrating hard and seems oblivious to the funny looks he's getting from myself and the other commuters. He finishes shaving and proceeds to take the guard off the razor and blow the hair out, which goes all over the floor of the car (he's hardly got a 5 o'clock shadow so it's not as if there's a lot, but it's still pretty gross). No photos/videos sadly. I guess you had to be the

A month?

Fuck, has it already been a month?
Shame on me for not having written anything yet. I've seen/experienced a lot in the past four weeks
and no doubt with this post I'll leave out a lot of things but my battery can only last so long and going to and from the library/Barnes & Noble has been a pain so it's going to have to be brief due to time constraints.

Mark and I flew into Atlanta on the evening of October 22nd, at around 8:30pm. My first impression on landing was how humid it was, despite how late in the year it was. Just as we'd left the UK it had really started to get cold; four layers on, a bitter wind and anything longer than a 5 minute walk made you wish you'd not had to leave the house.On the contrary, the weather here has been 18-20 degrees for the most part since arriving here. Sunny too. I.e. the kind of weather UK folks would consider summer weather.

Atlanta is H U G E. Buckhead alone, the area I live in is probably about the size of the whole of Newcastle to give you some idea of it's scale. Of course, I knew this before I arrived here but coming here knowing I was leaving Newcastle/the UK behind and starting a new life here made it all the more daunting. I was going to have to get used to this beast. Like a man who'd just had his Mini taken away and a Hummer given to him in it's place.

My old friend Christina (we've known each other since Kindergarden) picked us up from our hotel near the airport our first morning here and after a brief stop at a sports bar to watch the Navy/Notre Dame (American) football game and we went to Target, Next Tuesday and a few other places and got cutlery, plates, bedding, etc.
That night we went to a Halloween party. I forgot that Halloween is actually done properly here. Just check out two of the costumes from that night:

The following day Mark and I were dropped off by Christina and her mom at Ikea (pangs of homesickness for NCL walking around the identikit store) where we picked up desks, shelves etc and had them delivered to our condo.

The following Tuesday eve we met up with our friend Nicole, had dinner at the very awesome Vortex Bar & Grill (as featured in Man Vs. Food) and then went to Club 529 to see Pure Graft (more pangs of homesickness for NCL). It was here I also made my first friends in ATL. Sean; one of the most welcoming, awesome people I've met on this planet, Lynlee the southern belle from Mississippi with the amazing accent, and the mysterious but no less friendly Lindsey.

Mark left for Chile on the following Monday and since then I have spent the last few weeks job hunting, 'cruising in the ATL' on my new bike

and spending time with the friends I do have here (Nicole, Emily; my long lost friend from the early days on uni who's now living in ATL coincidentally, Sean, Victor, Max, Adam, Morgan, Frank etc). House parties/shows at Sugar Creek and Couch Couch and renting books and dvds from the library in an effort to alleviate the inevitable boredom of living alone in a new city.

Anyways, my battery is about to die.

More info/photos later.

Flights booked. 22.10.2010. The beginning is in sight.

Just over a month ago I made the decision/was given the opportunity (thanks to a free place to live) to move back to Atlanta, Georgia; the city of my birth.

I've been living in Newcastle for the past 7 (almost 8) years now, and although I love the place and have a met some great people whilst living here, I feel it's now time to shake things up and move on. 

I decided to start this blog to document my journey. It'll be both a travel blog about my experiences in Atlanta and a way to reminisce about Newcastle.