Underground Nostalgia

A post card from the past…

I remember visiting Underground Atlanta as a child, when my Dad and I would drive down to see my Mom while she was there on business. It was the early 1970s, right after the whole area had been “rediscovered”, and it was still rather a dark, adult-themed restaurant and entertainment center…

It was great in a sort of late 1960s nostalgia-obsessed sort of way which allowed it still to seem just a little seedy on some level despite being brand new on another. I remember there being a lot of that when I was a kid; it’s as if the whole country suddenly became enthralled with the turn of the century. This was the era of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlors and Victoria Station Restaurants. Supermarkets sprouted faux gas lamps, red flocked wallpaper was suddenly hot again, and every restaurant looked a little like a Victorian San Francisco whorehouse…

Anyway, the old incarnation of Underground Atlanta was too cool to last. By 1980, the area was apparently pretty scary, and MARTA construction didn’t help, but a “new” Underground Atlanta rose (sank?) in 1989. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same. I was horrified when I visited shortly after the renaissance; it was nothing but a big, bright, cheerful mall with a giant Coke bottle at its entrance…

Alas, it had fallen victim to that too common American tendency to take anything cool and interesting and turn it into a “family friendly” theme park version of its former self, eliminating pretty much any of the characteristics — and characters — which made it appealing in the first place. The “new and improved” Times Square is a prime example, although San Francisco is an even better one, since the transformation has happened almost citywide there…

I hope the rebirth of New Orleans doesn’t follow a similar pattern. I’m about 95% certain, though, that it will. It’s amazing the damage that an army of planners and developers armed with millions of tax dollars can do…