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DragonCon Junior, AKA Anime Weekend Atlanta, has hit and it has twice the orientation acceptance yet an average age of attendance of half of DragonCon.

If you live in Atlanta, you know the wildest party of the year if DragonCon.  In fact, it’s the wildest party Atlanta has seen since Freaknik.  It’s people in all manner of get ups invading downtown for the weekend and essentially shutting down Peachtree Center.  We all know it’s wild, we all know it’s licentious (if you’re doing it right), and we all know we want those tourist dollars.

Many of you may be unaware that about 20% of the people who went to DragonCon will come back inside the perimeter this weekend to put their Bleach costume back on and go to AWA.  People come from Florida, Tennessee, Chicago, Texas, and even Japan to participate in the convention.  Thousands of people attend and thousands dress in costume.  The Waverly and Galleria are used almost exclusively for the conference (in fact, if you’re part of the Log and Timber Show, you’re in for a surprise).

What makes AWA interesting is that while it’s nominal focus and events are more narrowly targeted, the anime focus makes explicit more of the funnier and more adult parts of DragonCon.  This while the audience is generally younger.  While topics focus heavily on anime, it’s production elements, on creating the costumes, and new releases, there are also elements that acknowledge certain fetishes and those who like them.

There is a sub-genre of anime that specifically deals with ‘boys who like boys‘ and the girls who like them.  At AWA this year, there was a meet and greet specifically for fans of this genre.  This was then followed by another 18 and up session dealing specifically with the art of Japanese Bondage.  What makes this amazing is that because a large minority of the anime produced is expressly sexual in content, the convention reasonably deals with it and expects participants to be generally tolerant if not open and affirming of people of different orientations.  This perhaps reached a fever pitch with an ad hoc march/conga line of the furries through the Waverly.

The people running the convention are walking a very fine line.  They want to attract a diverse audience and give people room to dress up as it ads to the atmosphere.  On the other hand, they are expressly concerned with the well being of thousands of attending children and the concerns of their parents.  Not only have they made some events strictly 18 and up, but they make a serious effort to keep other events G-rated and put serious constraints on what can be put into a costume.  They even (perhaps wisely) have decided that silly string is a weapon.

Still, these restrictions don’t seem to cramp the style of the convention, which has a formal ball, a Jazz night, and a higher percentage of participants in costume than DragonCon.  What AWA needs to do now is add programming.  They have a few tracks, but they are limited.  If the number of participants grows, adding more seminars will give people a place to go, add to the quality of the presentations, and raise the prestige of the event.   That should make the convention managers, Cobb County, and local vendors very happy indeed.

Dear MARTA,

Quick notes for you!

1. Using police officers to shackle teen-agers taking photos of themselves in a MARTA station is overkill.  The same is true when applied to Taiwanese tourists. Anyone with a camera phone or a palm pilot can take a full scale movie of this.  You can’t stop the pictures so use some judgment. If they’re just taking silly pictures of each other, no problem. If they’re taking detailed telephotos of the venting mechanism at Peachtree Center, that’s a different thing. It’s great to see MARTA Police! It’s sad to see them used to silly purposes.
2. You need to replace the maps in the trains as they are missing some cultural landmarks (such as the Children’s Museum & Theatrical Outfit) and list landmarks that have not been downtown this decade (Onstage Atlanta).
3. Run 6 car trains after Braves Games. Patrons are told to spread out on the platform only to have to rush back toward the middle to get on the 4 car trains running that late at night.
4. Please add 802.11 to your radio feeds on the trains and buses. Want to increase use of the system and tourist dollars? If every MARTA station, train, and bus had free internet on it, you’d be in business. Heck, ACVB might help you!

These simple steps will make MARTA a more pleasant place to be, keep your customers, and your revenue stream.

Recently, Gilda’s Club held an event at 2 Peachtree Street.  The results tell a lot of about Atlantans.  It turns out that White native Atlantans had no idea where this was.

This building used to be known as the First Atlanta Tower and the Woodruff Foundation paid to refurbish the building then gave it to the state.  It now houses state departments and some offices of Georgia State University.  For nearly 10 years it was the tallest building in Atlanta and it was the second tallest for another 8 years.  Now, people have forgotten it completely.

Why?  Because for many years, Atlanta wasn’t a city, it was Los Angeles East, and White native Atlantans abandoned downtown as soon as Mayor Jackson was elected.  Part of the culture was the wholesale abandonment of downtown for the mall.  Hence, Rich’s and Davidsons are long gone.  Hence Underground continues to have trouble.  Hence Fairlie Poplar still has not become the nightclub/theatre section of town it is perfectly laid out to be.

The result is that the people who actually knew, or at least deduced, where the building was were all northerners or African Americans.  They were people who had thought about the actual street number and what it meant, something which the white natives apparently no longer do.  They were also the ones who actually knew their way around downtown a little bit.

What Atlanta needs is for the current generation of native Atlantans to actually discover the city part of their city.  They should know where 2 Peachtree is.  They should know where 206 Washington Street is and what is there.  The same goes for 84 Luckie Street.  If Atlanta is to thrive, people need to be able to take advantage of these resources, and to do that, they have to be able to find them without a GPS.

MARTA did not win customers this weekend.  On one of the busiest weekends of the year, MARTA decided to single track.  Further, they ran a number of trains on the opposite site of where they usually arrive confusing tons of out of towners.

Here’s what happened this weekend:

• The Braves were in town
• Falcons played
• Georgia Tech Played
• African American Gay Pride
• Oh, Yeah, the 60,000 people that went to some part of DragonCon!

All of these events meant that trains were packed.  Often they were so full, that if you tried to get on at a station south of Lindbergh you couldn’t.  Moreover, during the day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, they did not run all the trains to the airport, doubling the demand for southbound trains.

People griped.  Worse, Klingons griped!  You don’t want to be stuck in a MARTA car between an angry Klingon, a Wookie, and a Mets Fan.

Of course MARTA has to do maintenance, but events such as DragonCon are high profile events that bring lots of tourists to town.  Those folks will go back to work Tuesday and help determine whether more conventions come to here.  Their negative MARTA experience will not help.  Surely, MARTA management, the local sports teams, and the ACVB can coordinate events so that maintenance is done at night and on weekends when nothing is happening in town.

Moreover, MARTA needs to make a guarantee.  If you wait more than 20 minutes for a train ever, that ride is free.  How can they do this?  Tap out.  The system knows where you got on.  They know how long it takes to travel on MARTA to your destination.  They know when you tap out.  Hence if your time traveled plus twenty minutes is greater than your tap in and out, the system can credit you.

Such a guarantee would encourage MARTA use and put pressure on operations staff to keep things well maintained.  It can also go into the Union goals as a benchmark for them to hit and that will also please the MARTOC committee.  When the customers win, the politicians are satiated and efforts are made to increase the economy of the product, we’ll get better results both in transit and in economic development terms.