Atlanta 1919 - 2008

Here are two little images, but if you click either you'll get a bigger version. The one on the left is interesting if you're familiar with Atlanta. It's a map of the town from 1919 that I found on the University of Texas Austin's library website.

1919 Map of Atlanta 1919/2008 Map of Atlanta

Our house, when eventually built nearly a decade after this map was published, would be all the way over to the right, about where the "AVE" in "GROTON AVE" is. (That appears to be what is now called DeKalb Ave., which sounds a lot less particle physicsy.) I'm guessing that the handful of Victorian houses on our street were here with sprawling yards and not much else in 1919. Today our neighborhood is so "in town" that people sometimes say "oh, you mean really in town", but it looks like in 1919 Candler Park was a quiet retreat from the hustle and bustle of urban life.

I could go on (like about how Piedmont Park, now in the heart of midtown, appears to have been on the northern edge of town in 1919), but the second image does the job much better — it's the same map superimposed on Google's imagery of Atlanta. Just for fun, I've marked our house and my workplace. AT frequently works up around the "Street View" button near the top of the image. And there are plenty of folks who live beyond the four corners of this image who would, under the right circumstances, say that they are from Atlanta.

Part of what is so interesting here is not just Atlanta's population growth (which has been amazing), but also how very poorly managed that growth has been. Have a click on the chart to the left to see a ranking of 34 U.S. cities by population density. See how if the list had been kept to 33, Atlanta would not have made the cut? Atlanta demands that you have a car, and demands that you drive it. AT and I were at dinner last night with some folks and (inevitably) the topic of Atlanta traffic came up. Someone pointed out that every city has its traffic problems, and that Atlanta is, in this regard, no different. But the list of cities used to illustrate the point — Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — are all much larger metropolitan areas. Atlanta, for it's population, is huge.

But I digress. The maps are cool, right?

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Batman Decapitates Boy [File Under "Be Glad You Have Daughter"]

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Not that girls don't get into trouble, but there seems something particularly boyish about chancing a trip beneath a 50mph roller coaster to make better time getting back into the park.

The popular "Batman the Ride" rollercoaster at Six Flags Over Georgia remained closed Sunday while authorities continued investigating the death of a teenager who jumped over two fences and was struck by the ride.

The 17-year-old South Carolina teen who died was identified as Asia Leeshawn Ferguson, of Springfield, S.C. He was on a church outing when the incident occurred about 2 p.m. Saturday. It was the second Batman ride-related death at the Cobb County park.

...

According to police and the amusement park, Ferguson and a friend climbed over two 6-foot fences -- a wrought-iron style park perimeter fence and a second chainlink fence around the Batman ride -- as a shortcut to get back into the park after lunch. Signs about 40 to 50 feet apart on the outer fence warn that it is a "restricted area" for "authorized personnel only." According to park officials, a sign on a locked gate at the chain link fence also reads "Danger zone" and "Do not enter."

Ferguson was decapitated when the ride struck him, police said.

Batman riders dangle beneath a track and travel up to 50 m.p.h., climbing and dropping the distance equal to an 11-story building and going through two vertical loops and two single corkscrews. The first fatality involving the Batman ride in Georgia occurred six years ago. A 58-year-old park worker, Samuel Milton Guyton of Atlanta, was killed May 26, 2002. Guyton was in a restricted area on a platform when he was kicked in the head by 14-year-old girl on the front car of the ride. The girl was hospitalized with a leg injury.