Otherstream

I’ve just submitted my first article for paid print publication. So am I officially a professional writer now or do I have to wait for the check to arrive before I can make that claim?

Random thoughts for a Wednesday afternoon:

• I brought my mom into the 21st century this past weekend by upgrading her original Bondi Blue iMac to from OS 8.5 to OS X. While the whole transition was a little hard on me, since I couldn’t swear too much while doing the install, it seems to have made things much more pleasant for her. She’s not really what you’d call an intensive user — she pretty much checks email, gets stock quotes online, and does the occasional bit of word processing — so the interface change isn’t causing her much grief. She just thinks it’s prettier…
• A little identity theft is an annoying thing. We’ve just determined that someone has been charging her Sprint phone to our checking account. Actually, it’s not such a big deal, as we’ve already closed the account and will be filing a police report shortly just for the record. In fact, Bank of America’s lack of any discernible customer service has made it an even easier call for us to move our money to a local credit union, so maybe there’s even a good side to it all…
• Why is EVERYTHING so much more convenient here than in The City of Doom™? It’s even easier to get a doctor’s appointment here; there’s none of that “six to eight weeks for a new patient appointment” bullshit you seen in SF.
• Is it just a coincidence that during the very year Mark and I moved here from California (where such things are commonplace), Charlotte experienced one of its hottest, driest summers ever AND suddenly began having some of the highest gas prices in the country? Just curious…

Wow. My hometown just lost its primary industry. That’s a blow it wasn’t really prepared to take right now, I fear…

Unrelated: do any of you typography nerds (and I know there are a couple of you out there) have any idea what the font pictured above might be?

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…