I'm never leaving. :
yea if you hate atlanta you either a fukkboy or a cracka. This place is as good as it gets for a black male in the US. The only places fukking with it are DC and Houston
"The GOAT Black City" The Official: ATL Discussion Thread
- Thread starter FreshFromATL
- Start date
yea if you hate atlanta you either a fukkboy or a cracka. This place is as good as it gets for a black male in the US. The only places fukking with it are DC and Houston
MARTA to make an $8 billion pitch to change the face of Atlanta
12:00 a.m. Saturday, July 11, 2015 | Filed in: Politics
For 50 years or more, even before I-285 was finished, metro Atlanta’s orientation has been circular. There is Inside-the-Perimeter, Outside-the-Perimeter, and the rest of Georgia.
That landscape may be about to change. Drastically.
Over the next seven months, the people at MARTA will quietly button-hole local leaders and state lawmakers — top Republicans included — with the aim of building support for an $8 billion expansion of commuter rail that would transform the region.
The future of metro Atlanta could become startlingly linear — a single file of major economic development up and down what is now Georgia 400, built along a rail line that would link Alpharetta with downtown Atlanta and its airport beyond.
The biggest public works package in decades would have other elements as well. In DeKalb County, there would be a rail link to Emory University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, plus another line shooting eastward along I-20. Within the city of Atlanta, the Beltline awaits.
But it is the proposed, five-station expansion of commuter rail into north Fulton County – four of the stops would extend beyond the Chattahoochee River – that could provoke a fundamental change in metro Atlanta’s financial geography. A rail line thrust between Cobb and Gwinnett counties, both of which have resisted mass transit, could present north Fulton with an immense competitive advantage when it comes to corporate recruiting.
Approval of state lawmakers would be required. But that blessing wouldn’t include a tax increase to pay for the new rail, according Robert Ashe, chairman of the MARTA board. The General Assembly accomplished that this spring.
We’ll get to the mechanics in a bit. But let’s allow Ashe, a lawyer at the law firm of Bondurant Mixson and Elmore, a few paragraphs to review the changing political climate that is fueling this ambitious makeover of metro Atlanta.
First, there are the internal reforms pushed through by MARTA CEO Keith Parker. “As of a week ago, we finished another budget year in the black. It may be the first time in MARTA history we’ve had three consecutive years with a budget surplus. That’s due to Keith’s management,” said Ashe, during an interview at his downtown office.
During this year’s debate over a $1 billion-a-year transportation bill, which will go toward roads and bridges rather than rail, Republicans in the state Capitol recognized those internal improvements, and made clear that the transit agency would no longer be the butt of GOP jokes.
Once viewed as a mere vehicle for moving poor people hither and yon, MARTA has become an essential ingredient in the state’s official economic development kit, as businesses look for non-automotive paths to get car-shy, millennial employees to and from work.
“Corporations are increasingly demanding immediate proximity to transit stations. State Farm did it when they came here. Mercedes did it. Worldpay did it when it relocated. Kaiser is going to be located two blocks from here because of the Art Center Station,” Ashe said. The trend will only continue.
MARTA has been able to generate some new revenue by leasing the real estate it owns around its current transit stations for development. But that only goes so far.
“We will never squeeze a dollar out of a dime. We will never be able to afford significant system expansion based on our existing revenue stream,” Ashe said. Which brings us back to the main question: Where can you find $8 billion in loose change?
At the tail end of this spring’s debate over House Bill 170, the aforementioned transportation funding bill, an amendment was attached by state Sen. Charlie Bethel, R-Dalton, a strong ally of Gov. Nathan Deal, to permit MARTA to ask voters for an extra half-penny tax.
The surprise measure very nearly passed, but didn’t. MARTA lacked the time to explain what the extra cash might be used for. Next year, the transit agency intends to tread a harder but more transparent route.
As passed by the General Assembly, H.B. 170 included a provision that allowed all 159 counties in Georgia to levy an additional one-cent sales tax for local transportation projects – through local referendums that can’t be held until 2016.
MARTA has approached officials in Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties with the idea of assigning a half-penny of those proceeds to the transit agency. Approval by DeKalb and Fulton alone would give MARTA an additional $175 million to $200 million a year.
Which could buy $4 billion in construction bonds. Which, Ashe and other MARTA officials are betting, could be matched by an equal amount of federal dollars, resulting in a spurt of construction that would last seven to 10 years.
The only problem is that the penny sales tax granted to counties comes with a five-year sunset. That’s no good for larger, long-term bonding projects, whether involving rail or roads. Nor would would a five-year sunset convince the distributors of federal dollars that the Atlanta transit expansion had long-term, local financial support.
MARTA, Ashe said, intends to ask the General Assembly to make a slight change in H.B. 170. First, state permission would be required to allow counties to assign a portion of that tax revenue to a transit agency. The life of that tax would also have to be extended – to 42 years, the life of the current penny sales tax levied in Clayton, Fulton and DeKalb for MARTA.
Ashe’s election year pitch: “We haven’t raised taxes, because the taxation authority already exists. It’s already state law. You just change to whom it goes, and how long it lasts.”
I asked the MARTA board chairman whether he has approached the governor with the idea. He has. “Our conversations with the governor and his staff encouraged us to seek authority from our members,” Ashe said.
One possible translation: If MARTA can demonstrate strong support for the idea from Democrats and Republicans in Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties, then the governor won’t slam the door on what could be a game-changing move.
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-...e-fac/nmw3Q/?ecmp=ajc_social_twitter_2014_sfp
12:00 a.m. Saturday, July 11, 2015 | Filed in: Politics
For 50 years or more, even before I-285 was finished, metro Atlanta’s orientation has been circular. There is Inside-the-Perimeter, Outside-the-Perimeter, and the rest of Georgia.
That landscape may be about to change. Drastically.
Over the next seven months, the people at MARTA will quietly button-hole local leaders and state lawmakers — top Republicans included — with the aim of building support for an $8 billion expansion of commuter rail that would transform the region.
The future of metro Atlanta could become startlingly linear — a single file of major economic development up and down what is now Georgia 400, built along a rail line that would link Alpharetta with downtown Atlanta and its airport beyond.
The biggest public works package in decades would have other elements as well. In DeKalb County, there would be a rail link to Emory University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, plus another line shooting eastward along I-20. Within the city of Atlanta, the Beltline awaits.
But it is the proposed, five-station expansion of commuter rail into north Fulton County – four of the stops would extend beyond the Chattahoochee River – that could provoke a fundamental change in metro Atlanta’s financial geography. A rail line thrust between Cobb and Gwinnett counties, both of which have resisted mass transit, could present north Fulton with an immense competitive advantage when it comes to corporate recruiting.
Approval of state lawmakers would be required. But that blessing wouldn’t include a tax increase to pay for the new rail, according Robert Ashe, chairman of the MARTA board. The General Assembly accomplished that this spring.
We’ll get to the mechanics in a bit. But let’s allow Ashe, a lawyer at the law firm of Bondurant Mixson and Elmore, a few paragraphs to review the changing political climate that is fueling this ambitious makeover of metro Atlanta.
First, there are the internal reforms pushed through by MARTA CEO Keith Parker. “As of a week ago, we finished another budget year in the black. It may be the first time in MARTA history we’ve had three consecutive years with a budget surplus. That’s due to Keith’s management,” said Ashe, during an interview at his downtown office.
During this year’s debate over a $1 billion-a-year transportation bill, which will go toward roads and bridges rather than rail, Republicans in the state Capitol recognized those internal improvements, and made clear that the transit agency would no longer be the butt of GOP jokes.
Once viewed as a mere vehicle for moving poor people hither and yon, MARTA has become an essential ingredient in the state’s official economic development kit, as businesses look for non-automotive paths to get car-shy, millennial employees to and from work.
“Corporations are increasingly demanding immediate proximity to transit stations. State Farm did it when they came here. Mercedes did it. Worldpay did it when it relocated. Kaiser is going to be located two blocks from here because of the Art Center Station,” Ashe said. The trend will only continue.
MARTA has been able to generate some new revenue by leasing the real estate it owns around its current transit stations for development. But that only goes so far.
“We will never squeeze a dollar out of a dime. We will never be able to afford significant system expansion based on our existing revenue stream,” Ashe said. Which brings us back to the main question: Where can you find $8 billion in loose change?
At the tail end of this spring’s debate over House Bill 170, the aforementioned transportation funding bill, an amendment was attached by state Sen. Charlie Bethel, R-Dalton, a strong ally of Gov. Nathan Deal, to permit MARTA to ask voters for an extra half-penny tax.
The surprise measure very nearly passed, but didn’t. MARTA lacked the time to explain what the extra cash might be used for. Next year, the transit agency intends to tread a harder but more transparent route.
As passed by the General Assembly, H.B. 170 included a provision that allowed all 159 counties in Georgia to levy an additional one-cent sales tax for local transportation projects – through local referendums that can’t be held until 2016.
MARTA has approached officials in Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties with the idea of assigning a half-penny of those proceeds to the transit agency. Approval by DeKalb and Fulton alone would give MARTA an additional $175 million to $200 million a year.
Which could buy $4 billion in construction bonds. Which, Ashe and other MARTA officials are betting, could be matched by an equal amount of federal dollars, resulting in a spurt of construction that would last seven to 10 years.
The only problem is that the penny sales tax granted to counties comes with a five-year sunset. That’s no good for larger, long-term bonding projects, whether involving rail or roads. Nor would would a five-year sunset convince the distributors of federal dollars that the Atlanta transit expansion had long-term, local financial support.
MARTA, Ashe said, intends to ask the General Assembly to make a slight change in H.B. 170. First, state permission would be required to allow counties to assign a portion of that tax revenue to a transit agency. The life of that tax would also have to be extended – to 42 years, the life of the current penny sales tax levied in Clayton, Fulton and DeKalb for MARTA.
Ashe’s election year pitch: “We haven’t raised taxes, because the taxation authority already exists. It’s already state law. You just change to whom it goes, and how long it lasts.”
I asked the MARTA board chairman whether he has approached the governor with the idea. He has. “Our conversations with the governor and his staff encouraged us to seek authority from our members,” Ashe said.
One possible translation: If MARTA can demonstrate strong support for the idea from Democrats and Republicans in Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties, then the governor won’t slam the door on what could be a game-changing move.
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-...e-fac/nmw3Q/?ecmp=ajc_social_twitter_2014_sfp
Why aren’t we talking about Marietta, Georgia?
By Joe Cortright
14.7.2015
Imagine this: A city government takes $65 million in public money and buys up more 1,300 units of aging but affordable housing, which is home mainly to low income and minority residents. It demolishes the housing, and plans to sell the land to private developers for office and retail development.
A pretty cut-and-dried case of gentrification and displacement, wouldn’t you say?
Or maybe it’s a tale from the bad old days of “urban renewal” when cities fought poverty by bull-dozing “blighted” neighborhoods?
Actually this story is unfolding now, in one of the nation’s largest metro areas.
But while it seems that every move in the gentrification battles in Brooklyn and San Francisco is broadcast nationally, this egregious case of direct government displacement is being ignored. Maybe if it happens in the suburbs and doesn’t involve hipsters, it isn’t worthy of media attention.
Here are the details: Last month Mayor Steve Tumlin of Marietta, Georgia sat at the controls of an excavator and took the first swipe at knocking down the Woodlands Park Apartments. The city of Marietta, just outside Atlanta, has acquired – and demolished, or plans to demolish – four apartment complexes on Franklin Road containing more than 1,300 apartments. The demolition is funded by a bond issue approved by city voters in November 2013 by a 2,740 to 2,307 margin. The city has additional bond money and is in the process of acquiring more apartments, with plans to demolish them as well.
(Top: The entrance to Woodlands Park Apartments as it appeared in 2011. Bottom: The shuttered complex in May 2015. Source: Google Maps.)
Marietta officials take a dim view of the apartment complexes on Franklin Road on the city’s southeast side. They describe it as a blighted, high crime area. US Senator Johnny Isaakson said: “I go by Franklin Road as fast as I can every day.”
(If Marietta is a familiar name as a flashpoint for the problems of low income citizens living in suburbs, it should be. You may recall the case of Raquel Nelson, a single mother of three, who was convicted of manslaughter when she and her children were hit by a drunk driver when crossing a suburban highway from a bus-stop to their home.)
One Atlanta commentator described the project as removing ten “ancient” apartment complexes and “ushering” the residents to different locations. Most local citizens echo this view. The mayor sees it as clear cut opportunity to assemble land and develop new business. The city feels that it spends a disproportionate share of its tax revenues providing services to the neighborhood. One “benefit” of the demolitions, then, is lower enrollments at local schools. In just the past year, school officials reported a decline of 250 students from the Franklin Road area.
The project has produced little outcry. One of the few outspoken opponents is a local resident, Marty Heller, who argues that the demolitions are “class warfare”: “The people who voted for it want to eliminate the population on Franklin Road and raze the apartment complexes and replace it with commercial development. They want to eliminate the poor people on Franklin Road, they want to get the Hispanics out of the school system so that their test scores will go up, and it will make it easier for the school system.” The bond measure’s proponents respond that they are helping the poor who are now “trapped in high density crime-ridden slum like apartment complexes.”
What happens to the former residents of these apartments is far from clear. They will have to find housing elsewhere, and their children will have to be educated somewhere else. The demolitions are substantial, amounting to about 10 percent of all the multi-family housing in Marietta. The city says it will help relocate residents, but in press accounts at least, details are scant. Whether residents can continue to afford to live in Marietta, and whether students will end up in some other school district, doesn’t seem to be the city’s chief concern.
The apartments in question date from the 1960s, and when they were constructed were a desirable location for young couples and singles in suburban Atlanta. But as the region has sprawled and the the apartments have aged, they’ve gradually moved downmarket. Apartments.com reports that the Marquis Place complex – which the city plans to acquire and demolish – offers 1 to 3 bedroom apartments for rents of $660 to $940 monthly.
It’s interesting to look back at the history of the neighborhood along Franklin Road. We’ve assembled some data from Brown University’s Longitudinal Tract Database that tracks Census data from 1970 through 2010. We examined data for Census Tracts 304.11, 304.12, and 304.14, which include the apartments in question. In 1970, when the apartments (and most of the housing in the surrounding areas) were still quite new, this was a high income, predominantly white area. The poverty rate was just 4 percent, and the median household income was about 70 percent higher than the national average. In each successive decade, the economic status of the area has slipped. Today, the poverty rate in these tracts has increased to 28 percent – just shy of the 30 percent threshold we use to define neighborhoods of concentrated poverty and median household incomes are about 25 percent below the national average.
Over past four decades, the racial and ethnic composition of this neighborhood has changed even more dramatically. In 1980, the residents of these three Census Tracts were nearly 95 percent white. Today, only 14 percent of the residents are non-Hispanic whites. The area’s population is now four-fifths persons of color: about 52 percent black and about 30 percent Hispanic.
As we’ve pointed out before, public interest in gentrification seems to be highly focused in just a few large – and generally liberal – metropolitan areas. The poster children of gentrification are hipster neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Washington, San Francisco and Portland. The data and scholarly research on the subject show that even in these areas, displacement is far less than imagined, and previous residents are less likely to move away from gentrifying neighborhoods than non- gentrifying ones, and benefit from neighborhood improvement.
Still, the narrative about urban gentrification is full of vitriol and conspiracy theories: city officials, in league with banks and developers, look to exploit poor neighborhoods. Often these theories overlook, or entirely discount, the growing demand for urban living, and the shortage of housing and neighborhoods created by restrictive single-family zoning. So it’s a bit surprising that no one calls it “gentrification” when the demolition of affordable multi-family housing and the displacement of low income residents is the explicit, stated strategy of a local government.
That no one uses the term “gentrification” to describe Marietta’s plan to purposefully de-populate the low income residents of the Franklin Road apartments says a lot about how we think about poverty, class and place in urban areas. It’s apparently acceptable for suburbs to actively discourage – and in this case, actually relocate – low income renters. This is may be a by-product of our obsession with neighborhood change in just a handful of neighborhoods in New York, San Francisco and Chicago: we don’t even notice when the absolute worst-case scenario of low-income displacement for private development takes place in a major metropolitan area, because it doesn’t fit the sexy narrative we’re used to. By pretending this sort of thing only happens in Brooklyn or the Mission, we leave the low income households who used to live in these now-demolished Marietta apartments vulnerable to very real displacement.
What’s next for Franklin Road? Marietta officials are hoping to persuade theAtlanta Falcons to build a new practice facility for their professional soccer team on 50 acres formerly occupied by hundreds of apartments.
http://cityobservatory.org/why-arent-we-talking-about-marietta-georgia/
By Joe Cortright
14.7.2015
Imagine this: A city government takes $65 million in public money and buys up more 1,300 units of aging but affordable housing, which is home mainly to low income and minority residents. It demolishes the housing, and plans to sell the land to private developers for office and retail development.
A pretty cut-and-dried case of gentrification and displacement, wouldn’t you say?
Or maybe it’s a tale from the bad old days of “urban renewal” when cities fought poverty by bull-dozing “blighted” neighborhoods?
Actually this story is unfolding now, in one of the nation’s largest metro areas.
But while it seems that every move in the gentrification battles in Brooklyn and San Francisco is broadcast nationally, this egregious case of direct government displacement is being ignored. Maybe if it happens in the suburbs and doesn’t involve hipsters, it isn’t worthy of media attention.
Here are the details: Last month Mayor Steve Tumlin of Marietta, Georgia sat at the controls of an excavator and took the first swipe at knocking down the Woodlands Park Apartments. The city of Marietta, just outside Atlanta, has acquired – and demolished, or plans to demolish – four apartment complexes on Franklin Road containing more than 1,300 apartments. The demolition is funded by a bond issue approved by city voters in November 2013 by a 2,740 to 2,307 margin. The city has additional bond money and is in the process of acquiring more apartments, with plans to demolish them as well.
(Top: The entrance to Woodlands Park Apartments as it appeared in 2011. Bottom: The shuttered complex in May 2015. Source: Google Maps.)
Marietta officials take a dim view of the apartment complexes on Franklin Road on the city’s southeast side. They describe it as a blighted, high crime area. US Senator Johnny Isaakson said: “I go by Franklin Road as fast as I can every day.”
(If Marietta is a familiar name as a flashpoint for the problems of low income citizens living in suburbs, it should be. You may recall the case of Raquel Nelson, a single mother of three, who was convicted of manslaughter when she and her children were hit by a drunk driver when crossing a suburban highway from a bus-stop to their home.)
One Atlanta commentator described the project as removing ten “ancient” apartment complexes and “ushering” the residents to different locations. Most local citizens echo this view. The mayor sees it as clear cut opportunity to assemble land and develop new business. The city feels that it spends a disproportionate share of its tax revenues providing services to the neighborhood. One “benefit” of the demolitions, then, is lower enrollments at local schools. In just the past year, school officials reported a decline of 250 students from the Franklin Road area.
The project has produced little outcry. One of the few outspoken opponents is a local resident, Marty Heller, who argues that the demolitions are “class warfare”: “The people who voted for it want to eliminate the population on Franklin Road and raze the apartment complexes and replace it with commercial development. They want to eliminate the poor people on Franklin Road, they want to get the Hispanics out of the school system so that their test scores will go up, and it will make it easier for the school system.” The bond measure’s proponents respond that they are helping the poor who are now “trapped in high density crime-ridden slum like apartment complexes.”
What happens to the former residents of these apartments is far from clear. They will have to find housing elsewhere, and their children will have to be educated somewhere else. The demolitions are substantial, amounting to about 10 percent of all the multi-family housing in Marietta. The city says it will help relocate residents, but in press accounts at least, details are scant. Whether residents can continue to afford to live in Marietta, and whether students will end up in some other school district, doesn’t seem to be the city’s chief concern.
The apartments in question date from the 1960s, and when they were constructed were a desirable location for young couples and singles in suburban Atlanta. But as the region has sprawled and the the apartments have aged, they’ve gradually moved downmarket. Apartments.com reports that the Marquis Place complex – which the city plans to acquire and demolish – offers 1 to 3 bedroom apartments for rents of $660 to $940 monthly.
It’s interesting to look back at the history of the neighborhood along Franklin Road. We’ve assembled some data from Brown University’s Longitudinal Tract Database that tracks Census data from 1970 through 2010. We examined data for Census Tracts 304.11, 304.12, and 304.14, which include the apartments in question. In 1970, when the apartments (and most of the housing in the surrounding areas) were still quite new, this was a high income, predominantly white area. The poverty rate was just 4 percent, and the median household income was about 70 percent higher than the national average. In each successive decade, the economic status of the area has slipped. Today, the poverty rate in these tracts has increased to 28 percent – just shy of the 30 percent threshold we use to define neighborhoods of concentrated poverty and median household incomes are about 25 percent below the national average.
Over past four decades, the racial and ethnic composition of this neighborhood has changed even more dramatically. In 1980, the residents of these three Census Tracts were nearly 95 percent white. Today, only 14 percent of the residents are non-Hispanic whites. The area’s population is now four-fifths persons of color: about 52 percent black and about 30 percent Hispanic.
As we’ve pointed out before, public interest in gentrification seems to be highly focused in just a few large – and generally liberal – metropolitan areas. The poster children of gentrification are hipster neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Washington, San Francisco and Portland. The data and scholarly research on the subject show that even in these areas, displacement is far less than imagined, and previous residents are less likely to move away from gentrifying neighborhoods than non- gentrifying ones, and benefit from neighborhood improvement.
Still, the narrative about urban gentrification is full of vitriol and conspiracy theories: city officials, in league with banks and developers, look to exploit poor neighborhoods. Often these theories overlook, or entirely discount, the growing demand for urban living, and the shortage of housing and neighborhoods created by restrictive single-family zoning. So it’s a bit surprising that no one calls it “gentrification” when the demolition of affordable multi-family housing and the displacement of low income residents is the explicit, stated strategy of a local government.
That no one uses the term “gentrification” to describe Marietta’s plan to purposefully de-populate the low income residents of the Franklin Road apartments says a lot about how we think about poverty, class and place in urban areas. It’s apparently acceptable for suburbs to actively discourage – and in this case, actually relocate – low income renters. This is may be a by-product of our obsession with neighborhood change in just a handful of neighborhoods in New York, San Francisco and Chicago: we don’t even notice when the absolute worst-case scenario of low-income displacement for private development takes place in a major metropolitan area, because it doesn’t fit the sexy narrative we’re used to. By pretending this sort of thing only happens in Brooklyn or the Mission, we leave the low income households who used to live in these now-demolished Marietta apartments vulnerable to very real displacement.
What’s next for Franklin Road? Marietta officials are hoping to persuade theAtlanta Falcons to build a new practice facility for their professional soccer team on 50 acres formerly occupied by hundreds of apartments.
http://cityobservatory.org/why-arent-we-talking-about-marietta-georgia/
DarkHorse23
Banned
DC way too expensive. I live in Houston...Atlanta intrigues me.
anybody go to the Jeezy show last night? Patton, Benjamin, Kanye, Ludacris all were present.
GOAT black city
I know we all work in different parts of the city, but for those who work Downtown and Midtown I'ma throw yall some lunch recommendations, the link is the Yelp page
Currently, I'm off Spring near Atlantic Station.
Mr. Everything (by the AUC) - bomb ass plates with your choice of meat (lamb, chicken, steak etc) over yellow rice and vegetables. Itis inducing
Neighborhood Eats (in an office building across from R Thomas) - breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches, burgers. Had the chicken sandwich today
Big Al's Gourmet Made Butter Burgers (across from Justin's, in the plaza with Firehouse Subs )- I've been on a search for the best burger in Atlanta. It might be here
Bell Street Burritos (next to R Thomas) - I'm not a fan of Chipotle. If you don't want Moes, Tin Lizzys, or any of the other "Mexican" spots, this is a good alternative.
I've only been for dinner/drinks but The Sivas off Juniper is a nice spot if you like Mediterranean food. They also have hookah if that's your thing. I'd recommend it for a date spot
Currently, I'm off Spring near Atlantic Station.
Mr. Everything (by the AUC) - bomb ass plates with your choice of meat (lamb, chicken, steak etc) over yellow rice and vegetables. Itis inducing
Neighborhood Eats (in an office building across from R Thomas) - breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches, burgers. Had the chicken sandwich today
Big Al's Gourmet Made Butter Burgers (across from Justin's, in the plaza with Firehouse Subs )- I've been on a search for the best burger in Atlanta. It might be here
Bell Street Burritos (next to R Thomas) - I'm not a fan of Chipotle. If you don't want Moes, Tin Lizzys, or any of the other "Mexican" spots, this is a good alternative.
I've only been for dinner/drinks but The Sivas off Juniper is a nice spot if you like Mediterranean food. They also have hookah if that's your thing. I'd recommend it for a date spot
Welp....been here as of one year ago this week. 
Atlanta just keeps on getting better every week we're here.
Went to the Steve Harvey Neighborhood awards Friday and Saturday.....was in the elevator with Sanaa Lathan.
Don't even get me started on the honies there yesterday.
We GOTTA have the finest Blackwomen in America down here, how the damn daughter fine AND her momma fine? Momma be in her 50s, damn near lookin like the daughter's FRIEND and shyt. 
Also, for posting those employment stats. Been tryinta tell people about the job market down here right now.
#NewBlackMecca
Atlanta just keeps on getting better every week we're here.
Went to the Steve Harvey Neighborhood awards Friday and Saturday.....was in the elevator with Sanaa Lathan.
Don't even get me started on the honies there yesterday.
We GOTTA have the finest Blackwomen in America down here, how the damn daughter fine AND her momma fine? Momma be in her 50s, damn near lookin like the daughter's FRIEND and shyt. Also,
for posting those employment stats. Been tryinta tell people about the job market down here right now. #NewBlackMecca
↓R↑LYB
I trained Sheng Long and Shonuff
Welp....been here as of one year ago this week.
Atlanta just keeps on getting better every week we're here.
Went to the Steve Harvey Neighborhood awards Friday and Saturday.....was in the elevator with Sanaa Lathan.
Don't even get me started on the honies there yesterday.
Also,
#NewBlackMecca
Been out here 5 years breh and as a black man, it don't get much better than Atlanta
