Thursday, June 10, 2010

What Secretly Rots in Atlanta, Stays in Atlanta

Three years into this city, and I know a few things. I know that Marta is both as bad and as good as everyone says it is. I know that every other road in the whole town is named Something Ferry or Somebody's Fucking Mill. I know too that, in the throes of an ongoing economic rough spell, new nightclubs for hip-hop sorts keep sprouting up like triage centers on a battlefield.
I have also deduced that this city has no actual identity. At all. It is merely huge, it is sort of Southern at times but mostly not, and the only persona it boasts is that scraped together by frantic tourism advertisers and promoters. "Hey, Atlanta! You're something, Atlanta!" In the words of Ben Franklin, my ass.
Yet I am continually struck by one asset to this town. I have never lived in any city more amenable to the dumping of corpses. Every highway, every avenue, even quite a few midtown, is bordered by very deep and utterly overgrown ravines. It is a murderer's paradise. Pick a street, slow down the car, roll out the evidence.
Are you listening, ATL tourism?
PS My personal choice would be the fabulous trenches all around the NorthCreek office park lot.
Below: the view from every bus in the Marta fleet. Who even needs Hefty Bags?

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