Atlanta

Since I learned that the Performing Arts Exchange would be in Atlanta some time ago, I was beside myself with excitement. "Atlanta!" My eyebrows raised and I smiled. I had always wanted to go to the South and I was as excited as my favorite heroine in my favorite movie - Gone with the Wind.

That is where the trouble started. See, I had a very incorrect vision of what the city looked like in my brain. It's not that I expected sandy or cobble streets and horses and buggies...but I didn't expect NYC transplanted into Georgia. Skyscrapers and skywalks and tons of traffic welcomed me. I looked around downtown for some indication of a previous life...a turn-of-the-century life. Some sense of history.

Now this was a tight packed schedule and I didn't have as much free time to explore as I had in Kansas City. I ditched a professional development workshop to visit the Margaret Mitchell Museum to learn that Atlanta has a history of all historical places and things being burned, demolished, etc. in favor of new development. How horrifying and disappointing. But the tour of the author's little apartment was really very cool and the museum housed a collection of her letters documenting her writing the novel and the aftermath. As I walked back to my hotel, I decided I would simply need to schedule a real tour of the south...I'd have to do Charleston, Savannah and visit a plantation. Atlanta, while a bustling metropolitan, was not the "south" I wanted to experience.

And unlike Kansas City which teemed with cool photo opportunities, Atlanta left me wanting more. Every day I passed this one restaurant on the corner of Peachtree Street and Harris Street and something about it's huge wrap around porch and balconies made me think it might have been a special place back in the day. I imagined "polite society" throwing a party in their ballroom and greeting their guests...who arrived via buggy...men in top hats and coats and the ladies in their hoop dresses, hats and parasols...in the large parlor.

Then again, it could have been a saloon, the likes of which polite society never saw nor discussed.

Yes, this scene went through my head today. Photo to come.