this is me, doing my part to aid future travellers who google “downtown atlanta restaurants” for recommendations:
ended up heading over to a little place in west midtown (about a $10 cab ride from downtown) called The Food Studio. mmmmmmm, it was good. i had the appalacian cassoulet, which had duck, very tasty spicy sausage, beef, and black eyed peas. it was really yummy. they gave me this huge serving of it, too; i was sad to waste it, it was so tasty, but there wasn’t any way anyone could eat that much food. we had a wine to go along with dinner, seven sinners syrah (’02, i think), which not expensive but was pretty darn tasty. (i have to write this down so i can go look for it when i get home, and buy a bottle or two.) and then i had a glass of taylor’s 20 year tawny for dessert. oh, it was a yummy meal. the prices weren’t too shocking, and our server was really nice. it’s in this little artists’ plaza, and the plaza also has a dance studio, some little shops, what looks like a ballroom, and they apparently also have a theatre. and the ambience is great; it’s evidently a converted old manufactory and so it’s all exposed brick and ductwork, with artwork of old machinery suspended around. i really enjoyed it. i might, in fact, go back before i leave, if i end up confused about having nowhere to go.just went down to the hotel sports bar — the only bar, so far as i could tell — to see if it was interesting or not. despite having brought a good book (it), booooooooooorrrrrrrrrrring.
also, $5.50 is entirely too much to pay for a pint of sam adams, but that was the best thing they had on tap that i could see (bud light? erk.). time to find something else to do. trouble is, apparently there’s nothing much downtown, and it’s a sunday to boot. feh. but, in the meantime, here’re some photos taken by another uchi person here at the conference, of the hotel interior. i think they’re pretty neat.
Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion–New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too–a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland “values” like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They–rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs–are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.
yeah, you’re really fucking progressive: promoting segregation between those stagnant, regressive, unwashed rural folk and we progressive, diverse, and dynamic city folk, who are — for the record — clearly superior. it’s awfully convenient, also, how all those non-city dwellers all think EXACTLY THE SAME.
how perfectly tolerant and progressive of you.got in around 9:45 AM ET. the train was actually not just on time but ahead of schedule — until we were about ten minutes out of the station, when we were blocked by a stopped freight train. and so we sat there, for almost an hour. quel drag. still, i remain surprised but gratified that my train yesterday arrived in d.c. not more than an hour late, and this one to atlanta got in about an hour late. not bad! not bad at all.
in collaboration with the reverend pirate dan, hatched a plan: i’m going to go out and buy a digital camera for him, and use it on this trip. so, yay, pictures! man, i was so hacked off i didn’t have a camera when i was in d.c. yesterday. it was the most gorgeous, gorgeous blue-skied day, and there are so many neat things to take pictures of. and then there’s the hoover building, which i decided yesterday is officially one of the ugliest damn buildings i’ve seen. (and i live not too far from the jail on south clark street!) i mean, i’ve seen it a hundred times on the x-files, but up close it was just like … jeez, were you trying to offensively have no aesthetic? it was obviously by the architecture firm of blocky, blocky, blocky mcboxalot. sheesh. i know, you’re there for justice, not for being teh pretteh, but couldn’t you at least have pretended? for me? (free warning: incoherent paragraph ahead. sorry. i need either more or less coffee; i can’t tell, what with all this uncontrollable twitching. you know.) got adopted by a friendly homeless man-slash-local tour guide after walking around d.c. for a couple of hours, after i gave him some change and he was like, mind if i walk around with you? so we hung out, had some coffee, heckled things (especially bad architecture), bummed other homeless folks smokes. it was fun for the first hour or ninety minutes or so, but after a while i said that i had to get back to union station to make my train. which of course meant that i ended up back at the station far earlier than i had intended, which was sort of a drag. i had tried to find a place to have lunch, but wasn’t successful in finding some place that looked like a place i wanted to eat lunch (i had in mind a pub sort of place) — all i seemed to pass were fast food and sandwich shops. at one point i wandered into some place called the caucus room, because they had a review posted outside of the doors which sounded good, so i went in, but then they weren’t open until dinner, and it was only like 2. alas. anyways, it was after that that i ran into sammy, the homeless tour guide. and after he walked me back to union station, i kinda felt obligated to stay in the train station because if i went back out and ran into sammy after saying my train was leaving soon, i’d feel like a bad person. so i ended up having some surprisingly pretty ok albacore tuna salad and clam chowder at a train station bar/grill. that part of the day isn’t as interesting as walking around d.c. with sammy, but i’m bored and don’t want to write it all out, so just imagine something. actually, if you imagine what the afternoon was like, write the story in a comment so you can amuse me. if you throw in squirrels, i’ll give you bonus points.17:53: omfg. the train left on time. and we’re crossing over I-55 right now — oh, all your poor, sad southbound people there in traffic! you should all be so lucky as to be me at this moment in time.
i am so fucking happy work is letting me take the train to lisa. it’s such a unique thing, travelling long distance by rail. and, probably more importantly, it’s a unique thing that i enjoy a very great deal. so i’m here in compartment A of car 3001 on train #30, listening to “dream on” by aerosmith — it got in my head the other day, thanks to eminem, so i bought their self-titled album when i was out yesterday — staring out my window at an after-dark northeastern indiana (best guess, based on my perspective to the skyline — i can see that doofy diamond building from “adventures in babysitting” clearly, so i’m obviously southeast — but i don’t see any catenary, so we aren’t on the south shore line right-of-way) with the spires on top of the sears tower still just barely visible as we slowly move east — cars are passing us on streets outside; we can’t be doing more than 35mph (in-city rail speed limits are low relative to non-city, though as this is after all amtrak i’ll certainly allow that “fast” means only about 75.) spent all of today cleaning the apartment and packing. am pleased to announce that the apartment is clean. am displeased to note that i’ve already realized something i’ve forgotten to pack, and while it wasn’t by any means the most important item it’s certainly an item that it pisses me off a lot to have forgotten: my digital camera. am so, so mad about that. i can’t believe i went off on this trip, which i was totally looking forward to, wherein i’m going to get to spend the only non-already-booked-up time in washington, d.c. i’ve ever had there, and left my camera at home. so now i’m going to have to either use the treo phone camera — crappy — buy a disposable — crappy — or get a new digital camera — expensive and wasteful. oh, so cranky. cranky and bitter. although i have to say, my conductor, nathan, is a cutie pie. so that’s sort of a bright side. i had the world’s worst cab driver on the way to union station. first of all, there are *always* cabs up the 700 block of south dearborn, where i live, so i pack up my shit and go downstairs to hail a cab. and there are NO CABS. none. like, not even any engaged cabs. so, fine. i walk the block and a half up to the hyatt, which has a cab stand. NO CABS. none go by. this is getting stupid. i walk up to congress. … NO MOTHERFUCKING CABS! what the shit! i had to walk all the way up to van buren to catch a damned cab. and when i finally get one, he’s the shittiest cab driver ever. first of all, there i am with one piece of rolling luggage, a large laptop bag, and a backpack, and does he get out and put it in the trunk for me? NO. he just sits there and i piled it into the backseat. because, what, i’m going to get another cab? THERE ARE NO CABS. fuck. so i tell him union station and we go, and he goes to drop me off on canal street, and i say, no, actually, could you drop me off at the entrance off clinton? and he’s suddenly all by-the-books guy, like, no, this is the passenger drop-off! while i’m sitting there in the back seat stunned about a cab driver refusing to take me where i want to go, especially when it means another minute or two on the meter, he concedes and takes me around. he obviously doesn’t know where the cab drive is and just sort of stops next to a bunch of double packed cars. fine. whatever. now i just want to get in, drop off my bags, and get a damn drink. does he help me get my bags out? no, of course not. what a shit! get my tickets — had to stand in line forever because the magic ticket machine wouldn’t help me — get to the first-class lounge, drop off my carry-ons, and head out to a bar. get upstairs at the bar and go downstairs to the bar seating (don’t ask; it’s train station physics) and by complete coincidence run into smokes, whi’s there drinking with someone from work — i believe they had a meeting with Mr. Miller (Lite). so i got a harp from the world’s most easily distracted train-station bar bartender, we chat, i chain smoke, john gets another Lite, i get a double grey goose — the skimpiest damned “double” i’ve ever had, i have to say — drink that, smoke some more, gossip with john, and suddenly it’s 1710 and my train is boarding, so i go back to the lounge, claim my carry-ons, and head out to the platform. am still in shock that the train left on time. seriously. this is not a first for me, but it’s probably only a third. we’re going through a rainyard now, as i’m typing. locomotives lit up and moving cars around. there really isn’t anything like long-distance rail travel. and now it’s nearly time for my 1830 dinner reservations, and after that i believe i’ll go get a hella overpriced beer from the lounge car, bring it back to my compartment, and watch a DVD. now this is travelling in style.
