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Sigh.  It seems everyday the music dies a little more.  Today’s death, however, was big.  J. Michael Cawthon died.  You might have known him better as Fuzzy.  Since 1983, he’s operated a public house on North Druid Hills road with some of the best Creole cooking you could imagine.  He also made sure that some of the best musicians played his club in front of tiny houses.  Want to see Francine Reed up close?  You can do it at Fuzzy’s.  You just can’t do it with Fuzzy anymore.

A bar owner sets the tone.  In the same way Brian Maloof made Manuel’s better when he took over, and how Tamra Erisman makes Cotton’s one of the friendliest places to get great food, Fuzzy wanted to make sure you relaxed.  His bar is everything a Jimmy Buffett song ever aspired to be.  The staff is sassy but caring, the food is great tasting but a little bad for you, and they have a fully stocked basic bar.  Fuzzy just wanted you to kick back and have some fun.

He meant it too.  Once, one of the best guitar players in town was on stage and had played a whole set, but hadn’t sung anything.  Fuzzy walked straight up to him and offered him $100 on the spot to sing one song!  The guitar player declined and Fuzzy just shook his head.  “C’mon man!  Sing one song!  The people will love you!  I will love you and give you a hundred dollars!  How much more complicated is life than that?”

If you want to celebrate, make a donation to the Georgia Alzheimers Foundation and then come Nov. 01 to Fuzzy’s Place (on North Druid Hills between 85 and Buford Highway) and celebrate the life of one cool guy.

What gives with the AJC?  The election is approaching and the Constitution is making endorsements.  However, they are endorsing nearly all the incumbents.  For a paper whose editorial board (both left and right) constantly decries current policy and seems to want new visions, the consistent endorsement of incumbents is odd.

For Cobb County, they’re headline is explicit: “Incumbents the Better Choice”.  Huh?  Though the paper has yet to make all it’s endorsements, the only statewide incumbents it has not endorsed are those running for the Public Service Commission.

What should be different?  State School Superintendent for one.  A Republican intendant with a Republican legislature has led to less total per pupil funding for schools and a drop in Georgia’s rankings.  Who knew they could drop?  Yet Kathy Cox (with a K) found a way!  Either opponent has a better chance at making waves and progress!  Even if the paper did not want to be seen as endorsing Democrats, this is a race where Libertarian David Chastain would have been a reasonable alternative.  His plan is to get the office appointed with a rigorous set of requirements for the selection process.  At least there is some sense then that the person running knows something about education!

Why almost all incumbents almost all the time?  There is an obvious meta reason.  The AJC editorial board is now a two paned (pained?) window on the world.  The board is still made up of the remnants of the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution boards.  Because of this, members for both sides seem to feel as though they have to stick up for their ideologies and the folks who represent them.  This makes it hard to have a cohesive vision of what’s ‘good for Atlanta’.  When it comes time to compromise on an endorsement, it becomes easier to support the known devil.

It’s also the case, that this ideological split has made quantitative judgments more important in the decision making.  Incumbents are far more likely to be able to give detailed information about office they hold than those who are on the outside trying wrangle the keys away for the current holder.

What then is needed?  In the short term, a defense.  Surely they must have noticed the number of incumbents they support.  Why?  Cynthia Tucker’s recent column does not answer.

Long term, the members of the board may need to change so that there is a cohesiveness of vision.  Bring back Marilyn Geewax to associate edit and you have a plan!

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see who Creative Loafing endorses and whether the Sunday Paper reacts the exact opposite way!

It is another sad day indeed. International Records in Peachtree Center has closed. It was great eclectic little record shop in Peachtree Center that had a great selection. Howard Cohen, the owner, decided to retire and with him went the shop. A sad day indeed. That combined with the closure of giants such as Tower means it’s going to be harder to browse through music in Atlanta. It also means there is no longer a record store in all of downtown.

International Records will be missed and is to be thanked for providing so much good music to the community. Mourn.

No better eulogy exists than DNB’s Blog entry about it.

Will Atlanta Re-boom?  That’s the question defining one of the big, upcoming battles about the city.  Cousins Properties thinks Atlanta will have over 800,000 residents by 2020 and wants to build housing to suit them.  They also want the infrastructure to support that.

The Atlanta Regional Commission thinks that even by 2030, Atlanta’s population will only be a little beyond 600,000.  By contrast, they believe Gwinnett County will have nearly a million residents.

The question comes directly into where to invest resources, and where you invest resources ultimately determines what life will be like for people who live in the region. Regrettably, given the nature of the current government structure the ARCs vision is more likely to come to pass, but it’s not a foregone conclusion.

If the ARC is assumed to be correct, then we’ll need to build a ton of roads, lots more subdivisions, our traffic will be hell and if we have any chance of ever facing the EPA with a straight face, we’d better start building regional rail at a record pace.  We better also completely rewrite our water use plans because small growth in the city, but huge suburban growth means more water usage.  What will happen is that our growth will be limited not by our own planning but by smog and water limits that the Federal Government will have to enforce to preserve people’s safety.

If, however, we take the Cousins estimate and build it, we’ll have our own urban ‘Field of Dreams‘.  Develop the infrastructure for 800,000 people with the housing, the services, and transportation needed, and they will come.  Even if they don’t come by 2020, the city will gain a reputation as being well built and ready for growth.  That attracts business, which is what is needed to keep attracting able people to the region.  With new businesses moving to Atlanta, everyone will benefit.  Even the outlying counties will see a stronger region with a larger tax base and demand for housing and services in their restaurants.

The question is really one of vision.  Do we want our governments to follow the trends they see and try to keep playing catch up?  Or do we want them to seize this opportunity and weave an urban fabric with a strong central core that works?  Really.  Would you rather live in Detroit?  Or Chicago?

I used to subscribe to the Economist magazine but in my drive to absorb every article, I’d end up with a constant inch-thick stack of them on the to-read pile. Picked up an issue recently (excellent like always) and they are currently doing some very nice city guides which are available online. The cities they cover in the US are NYC, DC, Chicago, SF, LA and Atlanta. That’s it. Pretty nice company. So checking out the Atlanta pages they’ve got some pretty useful information.

Discussions of the airport are accurate and informative, but the best part I noticed is under the tab “Insider Tips”. Check out the subsection on business etiquette: they mention that if you plan to give a gift of a bottle of wine, you can’t buy it on Sundays; how to get the tea you expect and the importance of college football. Each of the twelve points are worth noting for visitors.

There’s a nifty local reading list, a guide to tipping (double the tax and add a few bucks), and the sightseeing and restaurants definitely concentrate on downtown, midtown and buckhead. With quotes like “rush-hour lasts from about 7am-9am and 3.30pm-6.30pm”, this is an extremely useful guide for the international traveler to our fair city.

(Watch the video)

The old Wachovia building at Peachtree and North Ave. was imploded this past Saturday to make way for a new mixed-use condo tower. The old building was said to be a great example of modernist architecture. It featured a parking deck that took up more than half the site, a drive-thru bank (with a walk-up window that went unused for many years), and a single street-facing building entrance facing Peachtree St. That’s some great modernist (suburban-style) architecture.

Oh yeah, there was also a nice blank marble wall facing North Ave.

The new condo tower, the Premiere at Fox Plaza, will feature limited parking integrated into the building so that it’s less visible from the street, and street-facing retail. The initial landscape design concept shows a private greenspace facing Peachtree Street, which will eventually make way for a second tower.

While those who cry preservation-for-preservation’s-sake will miss the old building and condemn the new building for being new, they’ll never be able to explain why the historical significance of the old building (sentimentality) was great enough to trump the new development. What I’ll miss the least about that site will be the parking deck.

As a midtown resident who lives down the street from the site (and walks past it on a near-daily basis) I’m very excited about this new development. The experience of walking past what was there before was depressing, to say the least.

Speaking of which, since I do live down the street from the site, I had a chance to film the implosion. This is my take on the events of the morning of September 30, 2006.

You have about a week to register to vote.   Your registration must be complete by October 10.  If you don’t vote, then whatever the outcome of the election, you’d better support it because you did nothing.

What’s at stake?  The Governor’s Mansion, Lt. Governor, Agriculture Commissioner, Labor Commissioner, Public Service Commission seats, Attorney General, Judicial Seats, District Attorneys,  The Entire US House of Representatives, The Entire Georgia Legislature, and many local races.

Want more about the people running?  All you have to know is your zipcode and Vote Smart will give you information about everyone running!

A number of issues turn on your vote in the election.  Will we focus more on crime prevention or business development?  Will we change the tax code and how?  Will we continue to just fund road construction or will the state help pay for non-concrete solutions to our transportation problems?  We will re-regulate the natural gas market?

All of these issues are up for grabs and your vote matters.  Election day is November 7th.  Voting is open from 7 until 7.

If you don’t vote, no Chocolate for you for 2 years!  And you can’t vote if you don’t register!