Rap City, USA

This song called Atlanta, GA has been stuck in my head all day, and I got to thinking about all the rappers/producers/hip hop artists/whatever you want to call them from Atlanta. It really seems like a new one shows up on the map every day. No matter how great or terrible some of their music may be, it's pretty impressive that so many big time rappers come out of Atlanta. Here's all the ones I can think of, just off the top of my head

Shawty Lo
Gucci Mane
Young Jeezy
B.o.B
TI
Lil Scrappy
Ludacris
Andre 3000
Big Boi
Yung Joc
Cee Lo Green
Jermaine Dupri
Youngbloodz
Ying Yang Twins
Usher
Goodie Mob
Soulja Boy

Baseball in October?

Something entirely new and unknown to me has happened in past week of my life. For as long as I've been following baseball, no team that I have even remotely cared about has made it to the post season. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I was used to baseball season ending in the middle of August, right around when the Pirates were getting ready to clinch their so-and-so consecutive losing season and the Godly Steelers were starting training camp.

But now, the Atlanta Braves are in the playoffs. There's baseball going on in October. Baseball is supposed to end in the summer. I'm going through a massive sporting paradigm shift, and I don't know if I can handle it. Go Bravos!

Asheville

What a great city for weird people like myself and my friends. The city is surrounded on all sides by the blue ridge mountains, and downtown is small, hilly, and really lively. I went last Thanksgiving and it was way too cold to really explore the city, but this time was perfect. Lots of funky little art galleries, bookstores, and restaurants. It is definitely a hippie city, but it's in the south!


We ate at a really great vegetarian restaurant called Rosetta's Kitchen (get the tempeh reuben, it's magical), and drank local beer at the Thirsty Monk. If you haven't been, then GO!

I think one of the southeast's greatest strengths is its small cities. There are so many really interesting and beautiful ones: Asheville, Greenville SC, Savannah, Chattanooga, Chapel Hill, etc. All of these towns take the things that I love about the big cities (namely ATL) that are too spread out to be really accessible, and smush them down into a more compact version.

More Travels

I went to one of my favorite cities in the south this weekend: Asheville, NC. I'll have an entry and some pictures pretty soon. For now, check out the website and new songs recorded by my bluegrass band, The Rusty Boys.

It's List Time

These are my favorite places in Atlanta. If you live here or visit, you should probably go to all of these.

1. Piedmont Park (see Tandemonium pictures below)

2. Virginia and Poncey Highlands - Walkable and lively with lots of shops and bars. Moes and Joes has $3.50 pitchers of PBR on Tuesdays and the best black bean quesadillas. 10High has live band karaoke.

3. Westside - So many unique places over here and tons of new development. 5 Seasons Brewing, Octane, Hop City, Ormsbys (a speakeasy-style bar with bocce ball courts), White Provision district, and Northside Tavern.

4. The Beltline - A ring of parks and greenspace that used to be railroad tracks all around Atlanta. The east side (between Dekalb Ave and Piedmont Park) has some amazing art installations and should have a paved walking/biking trail by December. Light rail eventually? I hope so.

5. Smith's Olde Bar - I'm kind of biased because my band's first gig was here, but this place is the best for live music and catching Steelers games. There's Steeler gear all over the place, and gamedays are full of fans waving terrible towels and wearing Polamalu jerseys. It's also really laid back and unpretentious, which is hard to find in midtown.

New Orleans, Round 2

I went to New Orleans a few weeks ago with some friends that studied abroad in France with me. This wasn't my first time going--I went in the spring of 2007 for a service trip to clean up after Katrina. Back then, I spent the vast majority the weekend there in the poorest parts of the city that had been hit the hardest by the hurricane. It was terrible seeing first hand all the damage that the hurricane had done and how bad it still was a year and a half later.

This time was a little different--we stayed at a friend's house in the city, went hiking through the swampland and marshes of a national park, and saw lots of great live music in the French Quarter.

It reminded me of Pittsburgh in some ways--people are so fiercely proud of their region, culture, and history that they could never even think about leaving, no matter what happens to their city. It's a place where families have lived for hundreds of years without ever thinking of moving. It's really a shame that terrible things keep happening in that part of the country because the people are so friendly, the culture is unique, and the city has so much charm that it almost forces you to fall in love with it.




A band called Sweet Street Symphony busking on Frenchmen Street


The Revivalists at Blue Nile music club. We caught a free concert after the red dress race.


The streetcar on St. Charles street

Tandemonium

I just realized that I never got around to posting pictures of the finalized tandem bike. It was a FRIGID day in December, 2009. The location was the gorgeous fields of Piedmont Park in my fair city of Atlanta, Georgia. Three excellent friends--Grey, Cassie, and Sinan took the newly built-from-scratch and barely functioning tandem bicycle out for a photoshoot. We thoroughly enjoyed one of those few short periods in which the bike was in working condition.

At the current moment I am sad to say that the tandem is in dire need of some love/fixing, but it will be back sometime soon.






ATL--We love this city