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| My old neighborhood looking west down Ponce de Leon Avenue toward Midtown. Photo by me, September 2025. |
Turn and face the strange. - David Bowie's Changes
A couple of weeks ago I was in my old 1990s neighborhood in Atlanta. The only reason for me to go there is I have some need to go to Ponce City Market and that was true again as I walked into Madewell. I visit Ponce City Market or to me, City Hall East/the old Sears building, about twice a year since I am rarely down in the city anymore. My infrequent visits to Atlanta are marked by the changes to the landscape. I play the game of what is the same and what is gone. The changes used to happen around me in more of a gradual sense like the frog in a pot of boiling water, but since I have not lived in the city for four years this month, the changes are more noticeable.
The Clermont became a boutique hotel with a rooftop bar, the Masquerade was gutted, Zesto and Paris on Ponce are gone and The Eagle and MJQ moved out of the neighborhood. Ponce has changed as part of the evolution of the city at large. It would be stereotypical to feel that the change was bad, but I am indifferent, as I am emotionally checked out on Atlanta and that feeling has been building for the last fifteen years.
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| Where I lived in the Ford Factory and Ponce City Market next door. Photo by me, September 2025. |
Walking through Ponce City Market, I
noticed there was some turnover in the retail and more vacancies
since my last visit. There was some odd place that felt very
downmarket with vendors selling products that were obviously made at
the kitchen table and it had two live DJs playing over each other.
Was it a club or a store? Most of the other people there were talking
to each other and not buying anything. My ears hurt, I straightened
my collar and realized that whatever that place was, it was not for
me. A couple of other places were odd fits too. Ponce City Market is
a nice piece of architecture, but the shine is wearing off and it
felt less chic.
I am not as plugged in as times past as to what
happens in the city and unbeknownst to me, it was the first day of
the Shaky Knees Festival, which has moved to Piedmont Park and
replaced Music Midtown. I remember when Music Midtown began off Tenth
Street in what were then empty lots west of Peachtree behind what was
Weekends before the Federal Reserve moved from Downtown to Midtown. I
remember trying to get to work at Turner through the Music Midtown
scene and the detours. I would say Atlanta was more interesting and
alternative then, but I would guess the people who attended Shaky
Knees this year would say the same about modern Atlanta. In your
youth and mistake making period, all of the world can seem to be an
interesting playground.
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| James Laid. |
The first Music Midtown lineup in 1994 varied from James Brown to The Knack to James. I am a sucker for bands from Manchester and I loved James. They had hits with Say Something, Born of Frustration and in 1993 their big hit was Laid, a song about messing around with gender roles. If that song could be a mainstream hit in the U.S. in the early 90s and it likely would not be in the climate of 2025, then what has changed and is society going backwards or forwards? Why are we more uptight about some topics and lowering our standards everywhere else from public behavior, education, the arts, government, architecture, fashion and so on?
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| The Bank of America building from North Avenue. Photo by me, September 2025. |
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| Peachtree Street looking north from North Avenue. September 2025. |
If the city was not more interesting and alternative in the 90s, it certainly was more loose, rundown, smaller and society and culture were entirely different. Was the 90s the last great decade and the peak of personal freedom? I was in my teens and twenties then, so with youth clouded memories, I am biased. There is no easy answer, but I would be dishonest if part of me did not want to say it was. When comparing today to the 90s and if given a choice of being young today or being young in the 1990s, even with the ever-present risk of AIDS and the gay rights struggles of that time, I would choose the 90s again without hesitation. Young people today are growing up in an entirely different world that is in some ways better and in some ways worse and I do not envy them. The person I am, the young person I was and the experiences I had are not suited for Atlanta in 2025. I do not belong there and I am comfortable with that, nostalgia is not leading me by the hand to a rose colored past.
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| A new skyline. Photo by me, September 2025. |
The only building visible in the photo above from 17th Street from the foreground to the background
that existed in the 1990s is the one marked. That is 999 Peachtree
Street or what was known as First Union Plaza completed in 1987.
First Union bank was purchased by Wachovia, now Wells Fargo, in 2001.
In the 90s, the foreground was the Atlantic Steel mill.
The original goths, the punks, the alterna kids of the past are all grown and gone like the hippies of the Tight Squeeze before them. Gone too are the hangouts from 688, Midtown Music Hall to The Metroplex. Atlanta once had a thriving rock and alternative scene, not that most not from here would know since the media only fixates on rap and hip hop and ignores anything else. The city of today is a different playground for a different generation that lacks an original cultural identity. Are they Generation Recycle? I suppose I should be happy that Little Five Points still exists.
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