Tag Archives: Decatur

Rain or shine, Drive Invaders make weekly pilgrimage to outdoor movies

Date: April 8th, 2013, 6:00 pm

Every Wednesday night — even relentlessly rainy evenings like last week — a group of metro Atlantans reclaim a fun childhood memory and help preserve a piece of Americana that is rapidly disappearing from the nation’s landscape.

Last week, Suellen Germani and the rest of the Drive Invaders gathered to watch “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” at the Starlight Six Drive-In, the last outdoor movie theater in metro Atlanta. Instead of a playground, Germani and her grown-up movie companions each paid $7 to tailgate in the rain and watch the movie through wet windshields. The outdoor movie ritual reminds her of when she was around kindergarten age, at dusk on a playground at the foot of a giant movie screen. The memory always ended with her asleep in her parents’ car during the second show of the double feature.
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Posted in Atlanta, Ben Smith, Michelle Hiskey, Saporta | Tagged Decatur, Drive Invaders, Drive Invasion, drive-in, imdb, movie, recession, Rotten Tomatoes | 2 Comments

For 15 years, the mark of an Atlanta newcomer: a 678 phone number

Date: January 28th, 2013, 8:00 am

Fifteen years ago this month, 678 became Atlanta’s third telephone prefix, and every call became a 10-digit dial. Today, when smartphones let us tap to connect, it’s easy to forget past milestones in how Atlantans connect – and what those turning points meant in the perception of the city’s growth and who we are.

For many native Atlantans inside I-285, there’s 404 and everything else. That’s what they grew up with. The 770, 678 and 470 will always belong to the Johnny-come-latelys and suburbanites.

The 404 prefix is dialed into their identity, a shared jersey number for the veterans on Atlanta’s home team. It is a holdover from a simpler time, before the rest of us got here and made life a whole lot more complicated.
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Posted in Atlanta, Michelle Hiskey, Transformation | Tagged Atlanta, banking, cellphone, Decatur, Maria Saporta, Michelle Hiskey, perimeter, transformation | 5 Comments

For veteran journalist, neighborhood trail leads to a new beat

Date: November 12th, 2012, 5:22 pm

Note from Michelle: This week’s column is by guest writer Ben Smith, who happens to be my husband. Many of you know him from his days as an AJC political reporter.

By Ben Smith

In my old life, hitting the trail meant following the money, traveling with a campaign or tracking down a criminal.

Today it simply means taking my dog for walks in the woods and keeping my eyes open.

Yet in the three years since I left the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and sought to reinvent myself in the digital age, I have discovered that my skills as a reporter easily translate to a “beat” that is much smaller, more isolated and surprisingly weird.
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Posted in Atlanta, Inspiration, Life Changes, Michelle Hiskey, Reinvention, Saporta, Transformation | Tagged AJC, Atlanta, Decatur, Dekalb, digital, employment, Hiskey, journalism, recession, Saporta | 1 Comment

For working parents, new childcare solutions sprout like Bean

Date: October 22nd, 2012, 3:25 pm

Amid the Presidential debate chatter of workplace inequality and “binders full of women” catchphrase is the real bind that working parents find themselves in every day: how to succeed at work and childcare.

Adela Yelton is in the middle of that daily juggle herself as an entrepreneur serving working families. Her business is a novel answer to that need for working families. Bean Work Play Café near the Agnes Scott area of Decatur offers a portal into how these moms and dads are making ends meet, and seeking more flexibility, in the Great Recession.

At Bean, a parent can plug in down the hall from the childcare area. No rush to leave the office to beat traffic and late pick-up fees. Since Bean opened in March 2011, and began offering a flexible preschool a few months ago, about 200 “co-working” families have dropped in.
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Posted in Atlanta, Career Makeover, Reinvention, Saporta, Transformation | Tagged Adela Yelton, Atlanta, Bean, co-working, Decatur, Eric Key, Green Machine Inc., Hiskey, Saporta, working parents | 6 Comments

Move over, big profit Amazon. Make room for Little Free Libraries.

Date: August 27th, 2012, 4:30 am

A computer will forever spit out a list of “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought….”

But for those of us who want books that tell us stories about our neighbors’ tastes and experiences, and bring us into conversation and community, here’s a recommendation: Little Free Libraries.

Resembling large birdhouses, the Little Free Libraries are weatherproof cabinets with a couple of dozen books inside. Borrow one, read it, bring it back, or bring another. No cards, no fines.

It’s the charm of yard art, the wonder of a message in a bottle, sprinkled with the spell cast by a deft writer.
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Posted in Atlanta, Inspiration, Michelle Hiskey, Saporta | Tagged Atlanta, books, community, Decatur, Decatur Book Festival, east lake, lake claire, little free library, Michelle Hiskey, Morningside | Leave a comment

Restoration after rats requires Melton’s strong will

Date: July 16th, 2012, 4:30 pm

Aaron and Staci Melton, sitting at a bar table amid a decent weekday dinner crowd, still live with the damage – financial and emotional — from a rat infestation that closed their doors in late 2011.

Every day, they think about their lawsuit against their neighbor, Pet Supermarket, which is in the discovery phase in DeKalb County Superior Judge Daniel M. Coursey Jr. If a resolution comes at all, it will take a while. At stake for the Meltons is $250,000 – their lost revenue and debt for repairs.

Take away the litigation, and the Meltons still represent the psychological struggle for so many of us in middle-class Atlanta and America. Despite hard work and diligence amid economic distress, our standard of living and hope in the future have gone from security to struggle. We come face-to-face daily with this reality: forces beyond our control can quickly shut us down.
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Posted in Atlanta, Inspiration, Life Changes, Saporta | Tagged Atlanta, Decatur, life changes, Maria Saporta, Melton's, Michelle Hiskey, SaportaReport | 1 Comment

For Decatur’s Intown Hardware, family and creativity will survive Wal-Mart

Date: April 23rd, 2012, 7:15 pm

When big-box Wal-Mart announced plans to move into indie-minded Decatur, neighbors mobilized protests.

A legal campaign began. Anti-Wal-Mart yard signs popped up. Across the road from the planned development, Tony Powers keeps the keen eye and taste that has made his family business – Intown Ace Hardware – survive and succeed.

As the world gets more homogeneous, his answer is a more diverse identity. His store’s evolving eclecticism mirrors the funky flowering of Decatur itself.
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