Pregled posta

Marketing

This is the Terminus 100 building on the corner of Peachtree and Piedmont. I took the picture heading to an office party at Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse. As a reward for being the second best account in the region, we got money for a party, so this place with its selection of 15 different meats was chosen for tonight.

I like driving into Atlanta the back way. By this I mean I skip the interstate. I take Moore's Mill Road (named for Moore's Mill, established on Peachtree Creek by Thomas Moore in 1828), which runs through, in my opinion, some of the nicest property in Atlanta. Atlanta is a city of decadent greenery and crappy streets, and my route through Moore's Mill, West Wesley and Peachtree Road is abundant in both. I do not pass by the aging luxury on West Wesley without muttering "Gracious Living." There are areas in Atlanta just as lovely. But I'm familiar with this drive, which gets me into Atlanta and beats I-20 any day of the week.

I'm not sure I've ever eaten where the final tab came out to around $100/head. But that was with drinks included. In addition to the meal, I had some sort of fruit cream for dessert, a brazilian lime drink, a dirty martini, a cappucino and two shots of patron. We were trying to spend what had been given to us, what can I say?

At this restaurant, there's no menu. There's an extensive salad bar with everything from smoked salmon and proscuitto to asparagus spears and heart of palms. You could make a meal with that alone, but you dare not. Because the table was also laid with small metal dishes of fried polenta, mashed potatoes and fried plantains. Then the servers, called gauchos, fly around the room at a dizzying and overwhelming pace, holding sharp knives and metal skewers of meat poised over shiny metal saucers. They cut portions at your table, or slide portions off the skewers to your plate. Of all the selections, I think the baby lamb chops were the best. Bright pink, they were cooked just enough that no blood was left on your plate when you cut them, but so sweet and tender that you could almost skip chewing. One of the husbands called them "stunning." I tapped Dan, my unofficial date, several times just to see if he was conscious. This would be a bad date restaurant, because the man wouldn't be paying attention to anything but plowing face forward into his plate.

As we left, I headed behind the restaurant, because I'd done self-park instead of valet. It was quite late and much of the wait staff was outside, talking in Spanish and smoking. Suddenly the fancy evening was over and I was transported, away from the sophistication of the restaurant, to a scene of working people whose cars cranked hesitantly and sounded poorly tuned. As I put on my seatbelt, I stared at a group of waiters standing in the streetlamp's light. I wondered if they resented how large parties like us lingered to the very end, or if, as my director implied, the tip we left more than made up for the tired feet and sore backs. And as I drove home through the tall buildings and outdoor patio restaurants which Atlantans love, I noticed many in black pants and white shirts, the standard waiter's ensemble, sitting exhausted on curbs and waiting on buses on what must be their busiest night of the week. I hope my director was serious and had tipped enough.

As I drove back down West Wesley, I wondered what it would be like to live without want or a sense of dread over financial obligations. Not only this, but to perhaps to be "old money," where neither parents or grandparents had known a paycheck to paycheck existence.

Another road you cross on West Wesley is Howell Mill. They say it's named after Clark Howell, a prominent turn-of-the-century name both in the Atlanta Democratic party and the newspaper industry, which at one time was the same thing. His daddy ran with men like Joel Chandler Harris, an industrious newspaper man before he was a folklorist. They say Clark Howell's run for governor near the turn of the century sparked the Atlanta Race Riots. He won a Pulitzer, hired other journalists who did the same, steered the Atlanta Journal Constitution for over fifty years and served on special commissions under two presidents, almost a third. He even founded a radio station at Georgia Tech, for giggles. It strikes me that when you come from a family like that, you never wonder, tucked behind your tree-lined drive, if you will have enough money to get your roof fixed.

It makes me wonder if maybe a few of the roads around Atlanta shouldn't be named for guys who make their living each night working until they're exhausted, take the bus home to save money, and still figure a way to pay the bills and do right by their family.

i was tagged by the lovely miss retro modern and i’ve been a terrible slacker in responding. i'm flattered to be tagged and will try to measure up in intrigue and glamour to my lovely flickr squirrel girls, though it's a tall order (and they are tall girls!)!

1. i am a music lyric savant. i can, quite literally, remember the lyrics to nearly every song in the english language that i’ve heard more than once. i also have a good ear for instrumentation, particularly percussion. songs are in my head nearly all the time, and it’s a bit crazy making. alas, i am neither a musician (horrible guitarist) nor anything more than an adequate singer, but i do possess more esoteric music trivia recall than the average bear. the rolling stones are my favorite band of all time. the beatles and steely dan are close seconds. i adore classic country, motown, stax records, TSOP and yacht rock/70s easy listening – ie, every variety of fromage you can imagine from the 70s.

2. i was born in germany and lived there again for almost six years in the 70s and 80s, from third grade to ninth. i didn’t really like it, though the haze of memory and distance makes it somewhat romanticized and more appealing. we lived on the 13th floor of an apartment building overlooking heidelberg.

3. i am afraid of heights and have a touch of vertigo. things get a little wobbly and mel brooks-ish on stairs for me, so i have to have a banister to hold on to, like an old lady. my grandma opal used to walk down stairs sideways and I remember thinking how matronly that looked. now i understand, as i do practically the same thing.

4. i’m related to the hatfields of the hatfields and the mccoys.

5. mick fleetwood once bought me a drink and hit on me. i love this especially because he’s like 6’9 to my 5’1.

6. i was thrown from a horse in switzerland when I was 11 and cracked my skull and broke my nose. i was only treated at an ER and never had follow up, so it was only years later, looking at pictures of myself from before the accident, that i realized that my nose had been broken. i toyed with the notion of getting a nose job for years but opted out. i’m still sort of ambivalent about my nose. but on a good day, i think it makes me look tough.

7. i happen to like howard stern.

8. i am 1/8th or 1/16th cherokee, depending on who in my family you ask. there’s a lot of racial and religious embellishment and/or ambiguity regarding one’s ancestry in the south, so i may never know for sure.

9. i am a really, really good cook. however, i am a bit fussy and judgy; ie, i dislike eggs and can only tolerate them in baked goods or in dishes where they are hidden, like frittatas or huevos rancheros. i also dislike sweet/fruit and meats together – i’m looking at you, lamb with mint jelly, and the abomination that is pork chops with applesauce. and i don’t eat the following: black licorice, caraway seeds, organ meats, pickled beets, indian food. because they are all disgusting.

10. i have had several visitations from the dead. i fully understand and take responsibility for that fact that this is a thing that, once admitted publicly, opens a girl up to speculation that she is a silly person.

11. left-handed and not even remotely ambidextrous. if you broke my left arm, i would be completely helpless. i’m already working at a deficit anyway, because i’m completely clumsy.

12. i have most of an MFA in poetry (lacking dissertation). a completely useless degree. i used to call myself a writer, but i don’t any more because it feels weird and pretentious.

13. i have ridden motorcycles, as the driver or a passenger, since i was 13 years old. i used to ride a dirt bike in the arizona desert when we lived there. i am a harley davidson/indian snob. i hate crotch rockets. i think they’re dangerous and obnoxious and they totally miss the point of the romance and americana of the great road adventure that is cruising.

14. i am from kentucky. i have a derby party every may. i collect derby glasses. i bet on the horses and study their jockeys intensely. i used to want to be a jockey and studied steeplechase as a preteen. and yet, i have never actually been to a derby. quel tragic.

15. i have been to all but nine of the united states. i am both a liberal democrat and an unabashed patriot. this emulsion probably comes from the fact that my parents are, respectively, a retired military colonel slightly to the right of lyndon larouche and a NOW chapter leader ERA marching caftan wearing VW bus driving hippie.

16. when my baby is born in july, my two children will be 17.5 years apart. and yes, i am crazy, thanks for asking.