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That's funny. I have heard lots of stories from white people growing up in Atlanta, and I grew up not too far from here, but a few years earlier than this post.
It did strike me how incredibly different the black experience is.
If when I was in high school I announced to my mother that I was going to ride MARTA to downtown Atlanta to hang out at the Omni, I would have been at boarding school! But obviously it happens with no problems....well, unless you count the little brother getting jumped a problem, which my family definitely would have.
Anyway, that's a unique perspective on Atlanta. I remember the kids who hung around that arcade at the Omni. I never thought about it, but if you asked me, I would have figured that none of them would have amounted to much, so it's neat to hear that at least one of them became a professor. You're not the kid who tried to sell me a counterfeit watch when I was just trying to play Earthshaker pinball, are you?
I don't think the black and white experiences are that different. I think it depends on how you grew up. If a black person grew up in a mostly white suburb, I'm pretty sure they would have the same experience as their white counterparts. Same for a white person growing around black people in the rural area. They would have the same experience as a black person growing up. And so on on
For example, If I ever told my moms I wanted to go to deadend/southpark to hang out (Pittsburgh and the Bluff equivalent in Houston), I would have been shipped off to the country to stay with my aunt and alligators. Surprisingly, my friends (white, Asians, black, and Latinos) and I all share the same experiences. Overprotective mothers, strict schooling, curfews, parties, bumming rides to school/parties/mall, and so on. We even moved from that area and I still had the same experience with some new friends of different colors... There was never much a difference, however discipline wise it was. I use to envy my white/Asian/ counterparts though lol.
Location: Vinings/Cumberland in the evil county of Cobb
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Originally Posted by complex30030
During the early to mid 90’s, many of my friends where swapping out their S-Curls or boxes for braids, ponytails, afros, or tight fades. We used to ride Marta to Five Points very frequently. The store that is on Decatur Street called Phat Gear used to be inside the Five Point Flea Market (now called the Mall at Five Points). It was still pretty hood then, but I guess because I’m older, it seems a little worse now. We’d also visit a store called Focus and get Ecko t-shirts that came with mixtapes featuring hot underground artists. Everywhere we went was based on whether it was on the Marta line… so much so, that when I started driving, I kind of had to relearn how to get around. During the summer, many kids used to catch the train to Hightower Station to go to Six Flags with no money at all. We’d just talk some girls into wetting their re-entrance stamp and pressing it against the back of our hands to get in.
Gangs were really big in the nineties and most people I know where either claiming or had a working knowledge of Crips and/or Folks. Bloods were not as popular at the time. Nowadays, it seems kind of played out amongst black teens. While many young minorities today want to be rappers, in the nineties in Atlanta, there were very few (good) rappers, but quite a few guys would get together to form dance groups… by dance groups, I mean choreographed (all male) booty shaking dance groups. There was a show called Atlanta Jams that simply highlighted teenagers dancing at a club on Candler Rd. I don’t remember the name of it. But I remember everybody doing the same side-to-side dance in every episode. Of course, there was also American Rap Maker (later American Music Maker) with Arnell Starr and Planet Rocks.
Many young urban kids wore bright colorful Tommy Hilfiger and Nautica outfits. Many with matching baseball style hats with the bills flipped up. They wore bright multi-colored swimming trunks as shorts. Alternatively, kids often wore Dickies and t-shirts or entire Dickies suits. Some with airbrushed baseball caps.
I remember waiting for the train most frequently at Kensington Station, Decatur Station, Indian Creek, Five Points, Avondale, and Lenox Station and watching kids having Bankhead Bounce battles in which they would imitate smoking, fishing, playing golf, hitting a baseball, fighting, or throwing fireballs like Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter. My house was often packed with kids playing Street Fighter 2 on Super Nintendo.
We’d go to the Omni (which is now the CNN Center) and go to the video game arcade inside. I also used to frequent the video game arcades in South DeKalb Mall and Underground Atlanta. I was mostly on Street Fighter 2 Turbo Edition or Marvel vs. Capcom. Older kids used to bet money on who would win or lose. Downtown was the central location of most of Atlanta’s predominantly African-American hoods. I met many people from East Point, College Park, Kirkwood, East Lake, East Atlanta, the West End, Cascade, Clarkston, Scottdale, and SW Atlanta downtown, even though I was living in Lithonia. When bored, it seemed like entire neighborhoods (of kids) would say, “Let’s go downtown”. So you could imagine the mobs of black teens that would congregate there on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I would imagine that it would make some that are not used to the sight quite nervous. Some were insulted by that. Others relished in it.
On several occasions, I've been lost on the Marta bus trying to get to Northlake Mall (off the Marta train line)… we’d visit Lenox frequently just to people watch and talk to the girls using a wad of money (mostly ones with a big bill on top) that I would never spend. Avondale Station used to be the last station on the east bound Marta line. The buses would take you from there all the way to Lithonia.
In terms of nightlife, the Atrium (on Memorial Drive in Stone Mountain) was pretty big as I’ve seen the likes of Erykah Badu, KRS-One, the Lost Boyz, the Liks, Boot Camp Clik, CNN, and many others perform there. Clubs in the same basic location called Flava and Club Prestige were pretty popular also. I was friends with Swiss (now Swiss Beatz) who went to Stone Mountain High School. I also was there when a crew from Mobb Deep shot at Tupac at a club near the corner of Glenwood and Columbia Dr. called The Gate. They mention the incident in a song. We also went to see Eightball and MJG there, but they cancelled, so it turned into a bootyshaking contest. My brother was 13 and was with me, but couldn’t see any thing because the stage was extra high and he was extra short… but at the time he described it as the night of his life. We also saw the likes of Method Man and Keith Murray at the same location. Years later, that same brother was jumped while waiting for a bus on Glenwood near Second Ave. in front of East Lake Meadows, (back when it was Little Vietnam). People from the mosque across the street came to help him out. He later received a full scholarship to Emory and now lives off North Druid Hills.
During the mid-90’s, there was large influx of people from NYC, which caused tensions between teenagers from the north and the south. The northerners often called Atlanta natives “Georgia Boys” or more condescendingly “bamas”. They referred to the music they listened to as country music. However, Pastor Troy and DSGB made an anthem for the south and soon the south (Atlanta in particular) began to take over in terms of music.
Popular artists where Kilo Ali and the So-So Def Bass All-Stars. Freak-Nik was in full swing during these years and increased in wildness until it was eventually shut down. It got so crazy that even the black people in it were saying that it was too wild. I just remember mobs of kids and young adults walking down Peachtree Street at 3am chanting “There’s only five years left!” from Busta Rhymes. [They were concerned about a New World Order in the year 2000.] It sounds crazy now, but at the time, it was quite a sight. Popular artist also included DJ Kizzy Rock and kids used to go the Candler Rd Flea Market (now called the Candler Road Discount Mall) to get DJ Jelly mixtapes and King Edward J Pillow Bass mixtapes (these basically consisted of slow jams remixed with block beating bass). Cadillacs were more popular than Chevys amongst the type of crowd that now likes Chevys. Kids did dances like the East Lake, the Rag Top, the Get Out, the East Side Stomp (later called the A-town Stomp), and of course, the Bankhead Bounce. I guess Atlanta has always been in the forefront of inventing some regionally popular dance crazes.
We used to hang out at the first house on the right just south of I-20 on Boulevard near Grant Park. In fact, we called the guy who used to live there Boulevard. I never knew his real name. We used to kick it in East Atlanta a lot. In fact, you would often find us on the corner of Stokeswood and Ormewood Ave. My stepbrother’s mom bought the house for $60k. Now it is worth over $250k. They still own it. You'd occasional catch us in the West End, but most of our time was spent in “The Dec”. Often along Candler, Glenwood, and McAfee. This is before cell phones, so kids would go to the local beeper spot to pay their $10 monthly fee or get designer cases. The entire Stonecrest area did not exist. To us, anything past Evans Mill was way out in the country... and if you couldn't get there by Marta, it was NOT in Atlanta.
When Outkast and Goodie Mob came out, they were incredibly popular and influential in Atlanta. They created a pride in Atlanta similar to the Braves going the World Series or Mike Vick in his prime. It was not until then, that I considered Atlanta a large city. Honestly, I used to diss Atlanta in favor of Chicago, Boston, or NYC before the mid-nineties. Now I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. In the later 1990s, I would park at the Indian Creek Train station or Kensington station and commute to GSU. While attending GSU, I would walk around at LOT. I’d walk from GSU campus to Utrecht’s near the midtown Vortex and back stopping by different restaurants for lunch along the way. I’d often stop by Earwax, Criminal Records, and I’d also frequent a music spot called Vibes that use to sit above the Decatur Marta station. There was another spot on Peachtree St. in midtown next to Club Kaya, but I forgot what it was called.
While at GSU, I was classmates with Chris Bridges (aka Chris Luva Luva aka Ludacris). I also met Biggie at the airport while listening to his first album on my walkman. You were considered a boss if you took your girl to the Sundial and spent a night or two at the downtown Westin. Cool spots changed from one to another. We went from kicking it at South DeKalb to Lenox to L5P. From going to the movies at the corner of Covington Hwy. and Panola Rd., to South DeKalb, to LaVista Road, to North DeKalb, to Lenox, to the spot on the 85 Access Rd., to Atlantic Station.
Currently, I am a professor at Morehouse and Spelman colleges. I still own that Lithonia home. Plus I have rental property in Edgewood and the West End. My family and I reside in Oakhurst, Decatur, Ga. Just off South McDonough. Just one man's story of growing up in the A. Thanks for your time.
GREAT POST...I often reminisce with my friends about my childhood growing up in NYC (70s & 80s). We talk about some of the things that went on and how much different NYC is now. I admit it's much safer and much cleaner, but it has lost alot of it's character, which by your post it sounds like Atlanta has experienced a similar transformation. Being a recent transplant I find these type of stories interesting. I used to tell my transplant friends in NY who now live in Harlem, Fort Greene, Bklyn and etc that 20 years ago you guys would have avoided these areas like the plague, which is probably similar to some of the recently gentrified areas of Atlanta.
Another thing that makes me nostaglic for the "old days" is how independent we were growing up. Nowadays between soccer leagues and play dates, kids rely on their parents for 99.9% of their social activities. It's great that parents take active roles with their kids, but I also think this may retard the kids socially to some point. A major part of maturing is being able to make decisions on your own within your own peer group, without being under the omnipresent watchful eyes of mommy and daddy. As a pre-teen in NY we knew how to travel on the subway by ourselves, and just had the opportunity to figure a part of life out on our own. Once again, GREAT POST. It really took me back to some of my experiences growing up, and I wouldn't trade them for the world.
We’d go to the Omni (which is now the CNN Center) and go to the video game arcade inside. I also used to frequent the video game arcades in South DeKalb Mall and Underground Atlanta. I was mostly on Street Fighter 2 Turbo Edition or Marvel vs. Capcom.
A short lived basketball arena where Philips Arena is now. I guess the office/hotel complex around is still called the Omni, though.
Wasn't that short lived. It was built in 1972 and closed in 1997, so it was around for 25 years and saw both the Flames and Hawks. I saw many a concert there in the 1980s. I think it was a better venue for music than the current one.
I have been a lifelong ATL resident except for some short stints in Manhattan and a brief yet woeful time in the sticks of NW GA (I'm a city girl!) here's some ATL stories I remember from my childhood:
+riding MARTA after school to the downtown library (we didn't have bus service at our private school,and during the Wayne Williams era riding Marta & waiting at the library was considered safer than hanging out at a park or walking to a friends' house) to wait for our parents to pick us up...after Peachtree Center opened, we loved getting off at this stop so we could ride the super long escalator and check out the exposed granite walls. Downtown fascinated us because it was largely empty and we would gawk at all the old buildings.
+ the whole "SAWB" (smart a** white boy) flak after Mayor Young's statements regarding the Mondale campaign. I remember tshirts/white buttons with this abbreviation on it. I asked my mom what it meant and she said "its people being hateful." She always told off the people trying to give her a button, as it was merely adding fuel to the fire.
+the huge influx of Vietnamese refugees after the end of the Vietnam war. Our church had a Vietnamese priest and we would hold "yard sales" where congregation donated items and the refugees could come and pick out whatever they needed to help out with their new lives. Our church helped set up a Vietnamese church near Conley/Thurmond rd. Camouflage was banned at our school because it was thought to be traumatizing to those who had lived through the war.
+most of my schoolmates were military brats associated with Ft. Mac or Ft. Gillem, so I would sometimes only see friends part of the year as their parents were reassigned; or they would be gone for a couple years then would be back. In school watched all the crazy nuclear movies like The Day After and had to do bombing/nuclear bomb duck&cover drills...we also learned about what to do in the event of a kidnapping or hostage situation since apparently the presence of officers' brats made our school a potential security threat.
+ We had a lot of Delta and Piedmont Airlines employees as parents, so there were a lot of field trips to the airport. I remember the crazy Robo train (which I thought had something to do with the Pac-Man fever song due to the similar effect). There was an annual field trip experience where kids who had never flown could buy a really cheap ($20 I think!) roundtrip tkt on Delta to fly to Greenville so you could experience a flight. My very first flight was on Piedmont Airlines...I was too scared to walk down the metal stairs to the tarmac so the captain carried me down while my mom carried my infant sister.
+I loved going to the old Scotts antiques market before it moved to the new location and became more expensive and filled with interior decorators selling new items. The old Lakewood fleamarket/antiques market was even better!!
+the midtown plaza was fairly new-- I think there was a gas station there before...we used to meet up with our "public school friends" and eat at Woodys.
+Flossie, the singing carhop at the Varsity, was as much of an ATL staple as Baton Bob or Blondie! RIP...
+My mom was an usher at the Fox and very much involved with the campaign to keep it from being torn down. I remember meeting "The Phantom of the Fox" who showed us his private apartments.
+RIO Mall off North Ave was the coolest place with all its weird 80s deco architecture and the pond with all the frog statues. Several friends in a local band (The Changelings) wrote a song about the Frogs awakening and destroying the city godzilla-like upon the command of the strange metal orb that was the central sculpture in the mall. Someone I knew absconded with one of the statues after the property was being torn down-- last I saw it was in a bar,but its been out of sight in recent years.
+I remember seeing movies & eating food at the old Excelsior Mill theatre where the Masquerade is now. I also remember the old music midtown on the big hilly area where all the 10-14th St. skyscrapers are now. This area was largely old houses which were either run down or broken up into too many apartments filled with Tech/GSU students and transients. We also saw movies at the Starlight drive-in...so glad this place is still hanging in there!
+Pretty much hung out constantly at the old 688/Weekends/Nocturnia...sort of fitting it is a drug-testing place now! Other venues: the old midtown music hall (now the pool room at the Highlander--I miss all the "missing pet" posters that used to decorate the place), the point (where clothing warehouse is now in L5P), Metroplex, Cotton Club (I believe all clubs started enforcing carding after the GA Tech student drowned at Pmont after a show here) and (more recently) the space-age decor of the Echo Lounge in E Atlanta. Petrus and Axys in midtown were fabulous clubs, as was the Limelight of course. But one of my favorite venues (where white folks seldom ventured) was and still is the Royal Peacock on Auburn-- we saw several incredible dancehall artists here.
+As a young girl, we received "protocol" lessons (more like charm school!)at school on proper posture, letter writing, hospitality (place settings, recognizing military rank by symbols/badges), and had practice luncheons at Pittypat's Porch, Paschals, Mary Macs', the Colonnade, and the Magnolia Room at the Rich's downtown. Riding the pink pig was like the Atlantan child's rite of passage!
+Shopping highlights included the old sears catalogue bldg on ponce, bargainata, the old Junkman's Daughter/Princess Pamelas, Wax n Facts, Loehmann's, and the fifth floor closeout sales at Rich's.
+I remember watching a plane spell out PEPSI in the sky when Michael Jackson & the Jackson 5 performed in ?1985...a lot of my neighhors felt this was blasphemy in a Coke town! One of my neighbors told me how Coca Cola paid her teacher's salary (during the depression maybe?) when the city couldn't afford to do so...
+LIGHT UP ATLANTA! this was an effort to get people to come back downtown in the early 80's...sort of a first friday type event to rehab the core part of the city after the "murder capital" era. Downtown was largely empty after the govt workers went home. Big spotlights would circle over all the darkened skyscrapers, and the buildings would light up floor by floor.
+I remember all the old shotgun homes, abandoned and overgrown, in the old Vine City area before they built the Dome. Before the Ted was built, that area was really depressed too...left for dead in the wake of progress northward to midtown. I had friends who were considered "crazy" to buy the dilapidated old homes in Grant Park. One friend paid $40K for hers and its now worth $300K. The area looks totally different except on the southern edges.
+My parents took me to the grand opening of the first Home Depot and to the new Gwinnett Mall (I thought we were driving to NC as it seemed to be so far out in the country!).
+I lived on Feld Ave in Decatur/Kirkwood back in the late 90s. "Gentrification" had *barely* begun-- there were a lot of drug-related criminals who prowled the area. Literally, one side of our street had fixed up houses with neighborhood banners & newly landscaped yards, typically bought by young gay couples (white and black) who could not afford downtown decatur or inman park. The other side was still very "rough." Our apts were razed to build a new condo complex. We moved to Tzafyville on 13th street in midtown and lived there most of the 2000s (during the 112/Velvet Room/Vision era) until we bought a house in Adams Park (pre-bubble burst).
+I often volunteered with local cemeteries and historical preservation groups to help preserve old cemeteries. While Oakland became very popular as a grass-roots cause, I was also very partial to the stunning Westview, the incredibly diverse Greenview (near my current home in Cascade- Greek Orthodox, Chinese Freemason, and of course the huge Jewish sections with the incredible Memorial to the Six Million), and the historic Southview.
+I remember being completely bored at Braves games during the 80s, yet stuck with them, and survived all the heart attack playoff games of the 1990s.
+going to Manny's with my parents, who were friends with old AJC editors and political figures, and listening to Manny himself rail against various hotbuttons of the day.
+eating Buffalo wings at Taco Mac's in Virginia Highlands (a huge novelty to my Buffalo-born parents), being scared of the gators at the old Dante's Down the Hatch in the old Underground, listening to the harpist play at the Abbey restaurant(now a church again) across from the Mansion (now SCAD/condos), eating Ethiopian at the Blue Nile, ice cream at Gorin's in VA-HI,and wondering what the heck the mock-meat "fried flamingo" was at Golden Buddha on 10th. $1 coke in a bottle and $1 "Our Daily Bread" loaf at Bridgetown grill in L5P kept me from starving during college.
+you were supercool during my single digit years if you had your birthday party dinner at Benihana's, Nakato, Circus Playhouse (sort of like Chuck-e-Cheese's, but much better!), and then went to the roller rink.
+Z93 used to play top 40 pop, and 96 rock was all classic rock. The "bad" boys in the neighborhood drove black t-top trans ams with the gold bird or Z-28s with the 96 rock tag turned upside down on the front. Album 88 & WREK were *the* places to find out about obscure music genres (and still are...). WQXI was an all-oldies am station that never strayed from its 50s-early 70s format.
+I remember when they boarded up the slide at Piedmont Park...sad day! I also remember the old Piedmont Golf Course shutting down. The woods of the Botanical Garden where the canopy walk were well-known for gay cruising...they had a funny nickname--anyone remember? Went well with Cheshire Bridge Rd. being known as Vaseline Valley.
+An older friend told me that during the red-light district years of Ponce de leon, swingers would hang out at a club which is now Eats. They used to have community hottubs there apparently!
+The ford factory lofts were one of the first (that I can recall) loft conversions in ATL...we had the rooftop unit there, and would watch all sorts of mayhem in the Kroger parking lot and across the street during MJQ's heyday after it moved there. Speaking of Kroger, various Kroger stores around town had nicknames: Disco Kroger (most famous) on Piedmont, Murder Kroger (Ponce), and--I have heard this from people of various background--Krogerdishu (Citicenter off Metropolitan/Stewart Ave). I remember going to the Citicenter on RDA and being fascinated by the idea of shops inside a grocery store long before I ever set foot in a Wal-Mart. Kroger was considered high-dollar by my parents-- they would buy staples at Thriftown and knew all the places to find men selling fresh veggies from their truckbeds before local farmers markets caught back on.
+I will never forget the insane traffic/all out decadence of Freaknik in the 90's. It must seem like a crazy lie to young kids! The cartoon-musical that came out a few years back is a pretty hilarious take on this phenomenon. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was for the city to shut down the expressway exits to try to keep partygoers away.
+we were hanging out downtown when the Olympic Park bombing happened (hello...24/7 alcohol and hot international athletes!)-- most chaotic thing I've ever experienced. I had no idea we had that many sirened vehicles!! I also remember how the city seemed to cough up public art overnight.
+as a kid I remember the old sad ATL zoo, with the animals in cement cages and Willie B watching his tv. It made me hate zoos as a kid. I appreciate conservation efforts now, and think our zoo is a treasure. I am still on the fence about the aquarium...I like Chattanooga's better. But I am grateful the city is focusing on eliminating some of the empty carparks downtown and hopefully will continue to heal the wound caused by "cutting off" the westside with the Dome/GWCC.
+I remember when there was more than one news/traffic helicopter (I think Captn Herb is all that's left?)-- every day during rush hour several would fly over our backyard and we would wave to the cameramen hanging off the side. I was always in awe of Monica Kaufmann-Pearson's changing hair styles. I remember Bebe Emermen's helmet-hair from WSB and Guy Sharpe on 11Alive.
+We used to love trying to stump Franklin Garrett, or call out our random neighborhood names for him to give us a nugget of local history.
Growing up and living here, I have always appreciated the diversity of ATL. In NYC you have to still go to certain areas of town to find certain heritages / cuisine, where as in ATL you get everything in a small area. I worked as a courier for many years here and saw tons of the city that are off the beaten path, at all hours of the night. The tumultuous ups and downs of the city make me respect everyone's personal history and I am dismayed by the assumptions and judgment I see/hear sometimes. Going forward, I hope we are getting better at not discounting the historic character and culture of an area just because it doesn't look like some large investment property firm's vision of cookie-cutter intown living (big brand name stores, a few artsy lofts, a few upscale condos, that could be plopped in the middle of anywhere without any local touch). I love the idea of the beltline and hope people who are not as familiar with some of the small neighborhoods along its path take the time to explore and appreciate our history, good and bad, in order to give better context to our future as a city.
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