Growing up in Atlanta in the 1990's (East Point, College Park: 2014, rental homes)

[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.

[plessthanpointohfive]

This was GREAT! Thanks for telling this story. I can tell that you're about my age.

This is such a great story of growing up in Atlanta!

[Mossberg]

Great post.

[cqholt]

Great Story, rally enjoy hearing those from people who been here all their lives. I live in Kirkwood and enjoy listening to the old folks about how much the eastside neighborhoods have changed.

[CollegeStudentinAtl]

*gasp* you actually made a name for yourself ( professor, home ownership, rental homes) even with hanging out in the hood (5points), listening to rap music, and etc...and no you did the most unforgivable sin you hung out at lennox without buying anything..*shocked* -_0...

however; cool story.
Crips and Bloods been played out. I think that died down in the early 00's.

[Onthemove2014]

I want to hear a white person's story now.

[FlyingFox]

Thank you for posting. Very interesting read.

[ATLTJL]

I want to hear a white person's story now.

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?

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by Onthemove2014

I want to hear a white person's story now.

Mine would be pretty boring, I'm afraid. Mostly just school, sports and/or work in the old days. A lot of us married fairly young in that era so by your late teens you were raising a family. Graduating from high school was considered very important, but college tended to be more for the well to do.

Downtown was a place you'd get dressed up to visit -- that often included gloves for the ladies and hats for the gentlemen. The buses were very well maintained and everybody rode them.

Oops, sorry, that was the 50s and 60s, not the 90s.

[SLIMMACKEY]

Always wondered what it was like. I moved to the city in 04 and change had already happened. Plus I never did the Freaknik thing. Always good to get a locals POV on the past and day to day living.