Neighborhoods - Inside the Boulevard Food Co-Op
The resident-run initiative tackles food insecurity in Old Fourth Ward
Photo credit: Erik Meadows
Every other Thursday, Old Fourth Ward resident Charlie Star begins and ends his day from the cab of a U-Haul truck. Star is one of the Boulevard Food Co-Op's original members as well as the organization's main volunteer delivery driver. Twice a month he's responsible for shuttling several thousand pounds of food and supplies from the Atlanta Community Food Bank and Truly Living Well Urban Agriculture Center to the Kindezi School, a nonprofit charter school located on the eastern edge of Old Fourth Ward's Central Park.
Food cooperatives are distribution outlets specifically built to serve their members' needs. No two co-ops are identical, but most are oriented around principles such as open membership, democratic member control, and concern for community. Some co-ops seek to provide consistent sustainable food sources; others focus on supplementing low-income households' groceries. Unlike the traditional charity model of a food pantry, co-op members have a say in how the organization operates and participate in the distribution process.
"It's not just like giving handouts," Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall says. In December 2013, the Atlanta Community Food Bank and Truly Living Well joined forces with Hall's Yo Boulevard initiative to start a dialogue on food insecurity within the greater Boulevard corridor. "It's people being empowered, inspired, with the tools and resources to own their own future," Hall says. "And in this case the problem is food insecurity and hunger, and local residents are part of the solution."
The mile-and-a-half-long stretch of Boulevard from Ponce de Leon Avenue to Decatur Street is home to historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and Atlanta Medical Center. Over the years, the corridor has become known for crime, street drug sales, and a high concentration of low-income residents.
HELPING HANDS: Co-op members unload f during one of the Boulevard Food Co-Op's bi-monthly distribution days
Photo credit: Erik Meadows
Photo credit: Erik Meadows
This part of the neighborhood is also a food desert, an area where "a significant number or share of residents is more than one mile (urban) or 10 miles (rural) from the nearest supermarket," according to the USDA. Most of the corridor's low-income residents struggle with food insecurity to some degree, says Truly Living Well Program Services Director Kai Dean. "The majority of our members, I would say 75 percent, come from housing projects nearby. And I would say the other 25 are seniors from the Cosby Spear Highrise."
The Boulevard Food Co-Op launched in fall 2014. Initially, the Co-Op served 15 member families. Now in its second year, the organization distributes 40 pounds of fresh and packaged foods to more than 60 families every two weeks.
One crisp February morning, a hodgepodge of volunteers and organizers prepare for one of the Co-Op's bi-monthly Kindezi School pick-up days. Some trickle in through a side door and disappear down one of the school's colorful hallways. Others linger in the sun-speckled parking lot, chatting as they wait for Star to arrive with the day's provisions. Just after 8 a.m., the 15-foot U-Haul pulls into the parking lot. Once the goods are brought inside, Co-Op members, many of whom rely on motorized wheelchairs to get around, move about the room making selections from tables as they pass.
To join the Co-Op, prospective members go through an application process to establish their eligibility. "Members have to fall in line with the poverty rate along with the SNAP guidelines," Dean says. Once approved, members pay a one-time $5 membership fee plus a $3 processing fee on distribution day. The revenue from these fees covers programming costs such as the Co-Op's six-week training class new members are required to take to help them make healthy dietary choices.
HELPING HANDS: Co-Op Recipient from Boulevard Food Co-Op
Photo credit: Erik Meadows
Photo credit: Erik Meadows
Cynthia Wheat, a two-year member with a huge smile and joyful eyes, says the Co-Op has played a huge role in helping manage her diabetes.
"I was 235 pounds before I started and I'm 174 now," Wheat says. "In the two years I've been here. And it's because of all this. Amen! I would never have lost that weight because I'd be eatin' other things out on the streets. This is homegrown stuff, country stuff I was raised up with. This saved my life and I love this place."
Another member with diabetes, Bessie Green, feels particularly grateful for the training class and access to fresh produce.
"That was my biggest takeaway," Green says, "learning to read the labels and knowing what foods to eat and how to cook healthy. My health has definitely improved."
As the Co-Op continues to grow, the stakeholders have been in the process of developing an independent source of revenue to become a self-sustaining operation. In May, the Boulevard Food Co-Op and the Old Fourth Business Association are launching a bottled hot sauce enterprise called Hot Sauce in the City, which will be the funding mechanism that supports operating expenses in the future.
"So those sales will end up supporting the Co-Op and its revenue model but at the same time give us that foundation for sustainability," Hall says. "But who knows, it could also be able to do even more over the long term because of the skill sets developed. ... My dream is to see more entrepreneurs/social entrepreneurs come right out of Bedford Pines, Old Fourth Ward, and Boulevard communities from our Co-Op and sustain the organization."
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Will Edmond, culture ambassador — Adventures of Will, WERC Crew
"I'm really into fishing and outdoor things, so I love Sweetwater Creek. It's right outside the city of Atlanta, close to Six Flags. A lot of people don't really visit Sweetwater Creek because you have to drive west of the city. But it's very peaceful. The Chattahoochee River runs into it; that's how Sweetwater Creek is created. They just added yurts, so you can go out there and camp. A yurt is like a circular domed tent that can sleep eight to 10 people. They really try to promote the nature vibe out there.
"Another place I love to go in the summer time is the Roswell Mills Waterfall. The waterfalls are also produced by the Chattahoochee River. It's beautiful and I like that we have a waterfall so close to the city. You can go behind the falls and there's a hidden cave inside. For people who like nature, it's a great place to be." (Rodney Carmichael)
---
@allysillins on Instagram says:
"My favorite place in Atlanta is the rooftop of the Telephone Factory lofts. I go there every year during the Beltline Lantern Parade to watch thousands of people walking below me joined together as one community."
---
image-2
Ari Fouriezos, band manager and booker for Sorry, Mom! Productions
"I spend a lot of time in Little Five Points — Java Lords is sort of my temporary personal office — holing up in the morning and drinking way too many cups of coffee while hammering through work. I hold half of my meetings there; maybe it's the Sagittarius in me that likes working in public and running into friends. Afternoon rolls around and when I realize I've forgotten to eat I head to Elmyr for a burrito. If I'm still around by the evening, the Porter is my favorite bar to hang and have a beer or whiskey.
"Musically, the neighborhood is still in the game as well. Last spring I walked to Criminal Records and freaking Janet, Carrie, and Corin of Sleater-Kinney were there and signed my copy of No Cities to Love. How cool is that? I'm also impressed with what Aisle 5 is bringing to this city. I dig it." (Chad Radford)
---
@le_savoirvivre on Twitter says:
"I love the @HighMuseumofArt because so much of humanity and ATL is reflected in the works of art. It builds community."
---
image-3
Zeb Stevenson, Watershed on Peachtree executive chef
"My schedule is pretty tight so I have alarmingly few regular spots (unless you count work and my bed) but I do have coffee at Revelator almost every morning. Honestly I'm a little reluctant to give up my spot for fear that I will no longer have it all to myself, but if you can get over the, ahem, challenging location (park in the garage off of 14th Street and walk up the stairs) you'll be treated to super-fresh, properly roasted, and distinct coffees in a tranquil and welcoming space without the cooler than you vibe that's so common in most shops. Pro Tip: It's all about the coffee there, no flavored syrups or caramel goop. Have a pour-over. We can chat for a few minutes while you wait." (Stephanie Dazey)
---
Saleem Cook on Facebook says:
"West End for its historical colleges, homes, landmarks and varied history. There is always excitement there. It's almost like its own little town."
---
image-4
Nedra Deadwyler, owner of Civil Bikes
"The stretch of Forsyth Street from Marietta Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and on to Mitchell Street. It goes between Downtown and Castleberry Hill so it connects two distinctive neighborhoods. You have street art by Belgian artist ROA. Hotel Row is there. Eyedrum is there. I almost got booted in that parking lot. If you walk over the bridge you can see railroad tracks. You can see people moving. The bus, the train, the police are lined up. People are coming in and out of the Sam Nunn Federal Building for lunch. There is all sorts of action. Across the street is the old Atlanta Constitution building. There is no one going into it or out of it. It's a very peaceful and artful building. It's quiet but it's like a lot of buildings in Atlanta — it's not used." (Thomas Wheatley)"
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__Will Edmond, culture ambassador — [http://www.willedmond.com/|Adventures of Will], [http://wercatl.com/|WERC Crew]__
"I'm really into fishing and outdoor things, so I love Sweetwater Creek. It's right outside the city of Atlanta, close to Six Flags. A lot of people don't really visit Sweetwater Creek because you have to drive west of the city. But it's very peaceful. The Chattahoochee River runs into it; that's how Sweetwater Creek is created. They just added yurts, so you can go out there and camp. A yurt is like a circular domed tent that can sleep eight to 10 people. They really try to promote the nature vibe out there.
"Another place I love to go in the summer time is the Roswell Mills Waterfall. The waterfalls are also produced by the Chattahoochee River. It's beautiful and I like that we have a waterfall so close to the city. You can go behind the falls and there's a hidden cave inside. For people who like nature, it's a great place to be." (Rodney Carmichael)
---
__@allysillins on Instagram says:__
~~#27a8e0:"My favorite place in Atlanta is the rooftop of the Telephone Factory lofts. I go there every year during the Beltline Lantern Parade to watch thousands of people walking below me joined together as one community."~~
---
[image-2]
__Ari Fouriezos, band manager and booker for [http://www.sorrymomproductions.com/|Sorry, Mom! Productions]__
"I spend a lot of time in Little Five Points — Java Lords is sort of my temporary personal office — holing up in the morning and drinking way too many cups of coffee while hammering through work. I hold half of my meetings there; maybe it's the Sagittarius in me that likes working in public and running into friends. Afternoon rolls around and when I realize I've forgotten to eat I head to Elmyr for a burrito. If I'm still around by the evening, the Porter is my favorite bar to hang and have a beer or whiskey.
"Musically, the neighborhood is still in the game as well. Last spring I walked to Criminal Records and freaking Janet, Carrie, and Corin [of Sleater-Kinney] were there and signed my copy of ''No Cities to Love''. How cool is that? I'm also impressed with what Aisle 5 is bringing to this city. I dig it." (Chad Radford)
---
__@le_savoirvivre on Twitter says:__
~~#27a8e0:"I love the @HighMuseumofArt because so much of humanity and ATL is reflected in the works of art. It builds community."~~
---
[image-3]
__Zeb Stevenson, [http://watershedrestaurant.com/|Watershed on Peachtree] executive chef__
"My schedule is pretty tight so I have alarmingly few regular spots (unless you count work and my bed) but I do have coffee at Revelator almost every morning. Honestly I'm a little reluctant to give up my spot for fear that I will no longer have it all to myself, but if you can get over the, ahem, challenging location (park in the garage off of 14th Street and walk up the stairs) you'll be treated to super-fresh, properly roasted, and distinct coffees in a tranquil and welcoming space without the cooler than you vibe that's so common in most shops. Pro Tip: It's all about the coffee there, no flavored syrups or caramel goop. Have a pour-over. We can chat for a few minutes while you wait." (Stephanie Dazey)
---
__Saleem Cook on Facebook says:__
~~#27a8e0:"West End for its historical colleges, homes, landmarks and varied history. There is always excitement there. It's almost like its own little town."~~
---
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__Nedra Deadwyler, owner of [http://www.civilbikes.com/|Civil Bikes]__
"The stretch of Forsyth Street from Marietta Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and on to Mitchell Street. It goes between Downtown and Castleberry Hill so it connects two distinctive neighborhoods. You have street art by Belgian artist ROA. Hotel Row is there. Eyedrum is there. I almost got booted in that parking lot. If you walk over the bridge you can see railroad tracks. You can see people moving. The bus, the train, the police are lined up. People are coming in and out of the Sam Nunn Federal Building for lunch. There is all sorts of action. Across the street is the old ''Atlanta Constitution'' building. There is no one going into it or out of it. It's a very peaceful and artful building. It's quiet but it's like a lot of buildings in Atlanta — it's not used." (Thomas Wheatley)"
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string(5196) " 040e31 Neighborhood Question1 4 48 2019-02-20T15:01:31+00:00 040e31_neighborhood_question1_4_48.png neighborhood issue 2016 Readers reveal the spots that remind them why they love the A 13914 2016-03-24T08:01:00+00:00 Neighborhoods - What's your favorite place in Atlanta? ben.eason@creativeloafing.com Ben Eason CL staff 1224075 2016-03-24T08:01:00+00:00 image-1
Will Edmond, culture ambassador — Adventures of Will, WERC Crew
"I'm really into fishing and outdoor things, so I love Sweetwater Creek. It's right outside the city of Atlanta, close to Six Flags. A lot of people don't really visit Sweetwater Creek because you have to drive west of the city. But it's very peaceful. The Chattahoochee River runs into it; that's how Sweetwater Creek is created. They just added yurts, so you can go out there and camp. A yurt is like a circular domed tent that can sleep eight to 10 people. They really try to promote the nature vibe out there.
"Another place I love to go in the summer time is the Roswell Mills Waterfall. The waterfalls are also produced by the Chattahoochee River. It's beautiful and I like that we have a waterfall so close to the city. You can go behind the falls and there's a hidden cave inside. For people who like nature, it's a great place to be." (Rodney Carmichael)
---
@allysillins on Instagram says:
"My favorite place in Atlanta is the rooftop of the Telephone Factory lofts. I go there every year during the Beltline Lantern Parade to watch thousands of people walking below me joined together as one community."
---
image-2
Ari Fouriezos, band manager and booker for Sorry, Mom! Productions
"I spend a lot of time in Little Five Points — Java Lords is sort of my temporary personal office — holing up in the morning and drinking way too many cups of coffee while hammering through work. I hold half of my meetings there; maybe it's the Sagittarius in me that likes working in public and running into friends. Afternoon rolls around and when I realize I've forgotten to eat I head to Elmyr for a burrito. If I'm still around by the evening, the Porter is my favorite bar to hang and have a beer or whiskey.
"Musically, the neighborhood is still in the game as well. Last spring I walked to Criminal Records and freaking Janet, Carrie, and Corin of Sleater-Kinney were there and signed my copy of No Cities to Love. How cool is that? I'm also impressed with what Aisle 5 is bringing to this city. I dig it." (Chad Radford)
---
@le_savoirvivre on Twitter says:
"I love the @HighMuseumofArt because so much of humanity and ATL is reflected in the works of art. It builds community."
---
image-3
Zeb Stevenson, Watershed on Peachtree executive chef
"My schedule is pretty tight so I have alarmingly few regular spots (unless you count work and my bed) but I do have coffee at Revelator almost every morning. Honestly I'm a little reluctant to give up my spot for fear that I will no longer have it all to myself, but if you can get over the, ahem, challenging location (park in the garage off of 14th Street and walk up the stairs) you'll be treated to super-fresh, properly roasted, and distinct coffees in a tranquil and welcoming space without the cooler than you vibe that's so common in most shops. Pro Tip: It's all about the coffee there, no flavored syrups or caramel goop. Have a pour-over. We can chat for a few minutes while you wait." (Stephanie Dazey)
---
Saleem Cook on Facebook says:
"West End for its historical colleges, homes, landmarks and varied history. There is always excitement there. It's almost like its own little town."
---
image-4
Nedra Deadwyler, owner of Civil Bikes
"The stretch of Forsyth Street from Marietta Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and on to Mitchell Street. It goes between Downtown and Castleberry Hill so it connects two distinctive neighborhoods. You have street art by Belgian artist ROA. Hotel Row is there. Eyedrum is there. I almost got booted in that parking lot. If you walk over the bridge you can see railroad tracks. You can see people moving. The bus, the train, the police are lined up. People are coming in and out of the Sam Nunn Federal Building for lunch. There is all sorts of action. Across the street is the old Atlanta Constitution building. There is no one going into it or out of it. It's a very peaceful and artful building. It's quiet but it's like a lot of buildings in Atlanta — it's not used." (Thomas Wheatley) Joeff Davis FORSYTH STREET: Neda Deadwyler, Owner of Civil Bikes "neighborhood issue 2016" 13086696 17042997 http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/040e2d_neighborhood_question1_1_48.png Joeff Davis SWEETWATER CREEK: Will Edmond http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/040e2e_neighborhood_question1_2_48.png Eric Cash LITTLE FIVE POINTS: Ari Fouriezos http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/040e30_neighborhood_question1_3_48.png Joeff Davis WATERSHED: Zeb Stevenson http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/040e31_neighborhood_question1_4_48.png Joeff Davis FORSYTH STREET: Nedra Deadwyler Neighborhoods - What's your favorite place in Atlanta? "
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string(8545) "There's no shortage of convenience stores on Atlanta's west and southwest sides. Supermarkets are another story. A number of neighborhoods in the area such as Capitol View qualify as food deserts — places with poverty rates higher than 20 percent and more than a third of residents living at least a mile from a grocery store. Not surprisingly, chronic disease tends to show up in areas where access to fresh, healthy foods is limited. To begin addressing these issues, Georgia State University professor Rodney Lyn, in collaboration with the Morehouse School of Medicine, has launched a Healthy Corner Store Initiative. It's being implemented across an area that includes Neighborhood Planning Units T, V, X, Y, and Z (from Lakewood and Sylvan Hills up through Adair Park and West End) with $400,000 from the CDC's Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Health, or REACH, grant program. Lyn and his team, which includes Mary Anne Adams and Margaret Hooker, who work in GSU's School of Public Health's Center of Excellence on Health Disparities Research, are working directly with neighbors, neighborhood groups, and store owners to make healthy foods available to more Atlantans. Their goal is to have 21 stores enrolled by the time the three-year program wraps in fall 2017.
What issues do you see where you're working in Atlanta?
Rodney Lyn: When you go NPU-V all the way up through the westside, where we've been doing work in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, the profile is fairly similar in terms of the burden of chronic disease, HIV, diabetes, heart disease, obesity. Hypertension is a major burden. Mental health is another issue.
Mary Anne Adams: What we're seeing day-to-day are people really impacted by poverty. They're either unemployed or underemployed, folks who have huge transportation barriers so they have to rely on these corner stores because they don't have the transportation to go to a big-box store nor do they have the resources to do that. A typical customer in a lot of these corner stores goes in for sodas, lottery tickets, tobacco. People are not going in to utilize these stores for groceries.
If you're HIV positive, you have diabetes or cardiovascular disease, you need to be eating nutritional foods. If you don't know what they are or you can't afford them, then you revert back to what's familiar, what you know, and what's cheap.
What work are you doing in the neighborhoods at this point?
MAA: We are giving store owners information about health disparities, about who's in their neighborhood, and making them more aware of what these health disparities are and how they can really help by increasing the healthy foods that they carry in their stores. We're not trying to do this on a large scale, but maybe three to four offerings. Maybe if you just carry bananas now. Maybe you can carry some apples, some grapes, low-sodium foods. We're trying to do it in the context of where the store is and who their customer base is and currently what they have. The store owners, by and large, it has not been difficult to enroll them. ... We are very pleased with the owners who have readily enrolled into this program, and who really sincerely want to do something different. They just didn't know how to do it.
RL: When we started this, we didn't envision that this initiative was going to turn food access on its head in these communities. It was: Here's where the community is. What can we do to get the ball rolling? We don't have a lot of money. The resources are limited. Can we look at the existing infrastructure in the communities? These convenience and corner stores are a part of that. Can we leverage them as a part of the effort?
image-2
Are you working on any partnerships?
MAA: Wholesome Wave is very much interested in partnering with us. ... We want to do a neighborhood cleanup. That would be a way to get people invested. And not just one time but hopefully we can build this into the culture. We also are interested in developing recipes and doing workshops with the community residents and having food demonstrations at these stores. I think these are partnerships that we can develop that will be vital, and that will continue to cause awareness, and get people involved and invested.
What are you seeing as some of the source issues for the lack of information about food and how to cook it?
RL: Educating people alone, we've been doing that for decades, and the needle hasn't really moved on nutrition, physical activity. The approach over the last, going on 10 years now, has been to create environments and policies and systems that support healthy choices. If I put people in an environment where it's easier to make a healthy choice, then they're more likely to do that. If people don't have the environments or the access to the healthy products then it's sort of all for naught. That's part of what this effort is. Can we create the environment that at least facilitates healthier behaviors?
People often have a hard time understanding why a mile is far away to travel for food. What you do say to help people understand what a burden a mile really can be?
RL: We often have a hard time understanding things that we take for granted. We take for granted things that are just given in our lives. It's a very different reality to be in a community that's cut off by major interstates, where bus routes may not be as convenient as you would like. The means of transporting your products, if you can even get to them, is not easy. ... There has to be consideration of sidewalks, streets, bus routes, access to transportation of all kinds.
MAA: You see now more seniors who are using electronic motorized wheelchairs. We've seen people using these to go into these corner stores since we've been out doing this. When you're in a chair, and you have a bag, and you're trying to go down the street and the sidewalks are not accessible, that mile seems a long, long way. For the people that we deal with every day, they clearly understand a mile and what a burden a mile is.
RL: All that, and then don't let it be cold or raining.
image-3
Does any of the money go to help fund the store owners or are you working to convince them that this is the right decision for their business?
RL: We've been trying to make a business case. We've been trying to make the case on a number of different fronts with the store owners, but it's not been a, "Hey, we'll give you $500." We haven't had that sort of luxury in this initiative. ... There's a start small sort of approach. It's generally not wise, on any sort of program, to launch it before you have any evidence of feasibility. That's where we are, is launching and establishing feasibility.
What can a corner store add to a culture of a neighborhood?
RL: I think some of the things that we haven't gotten to yet that we still have on our to-do list is outreach. Outreach to logical community organizations and partners to increase awareness of what's going on. I think the NPUs can help us with that, but there'll be some additional outreach. The other thing is connecting things like urban gardening to this movement. There's a lot of it going on here. It says that there is a community of people that have a real interest in sustainable, healthy products and foods. I think to the extent that we can bridge those gaps right now, I think there's a lot of value in that.
What I've seen with gardens is that they are an important source of community cohesion and community social capital. Community building is maybe a better way to say it. I've seen where people have put in gardens, those gardens that then the county says, or the city says, "We're going to invest. We're going to put a pavilion in." People are barbecuing there now. We're going to put signage in. People raise money, and now there's a trail around the community garden so people can get physical activity. Then you get a grant, and there's a manager for the garden, and it's growing. It's sort of something that can build momentum over time.
MAA: When we look at all these potential partners and the possibilities for community gardens and for healthy corner stores and for community partners we're bringing awareness to a generation of young kids who are looking at what we're doing, because these kids also frequent these stores. I think it's important for us to remember that what we're doing now is going to impact them. It's educating them now. It's going to affect them for generations to come."
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__What issues do you see where you're working in Atlanta?__
Rodney Lyn: When you go NPU-V all the way up through the westside, where we've been doing work [[in predominantly African-American neighborhoods], the profile is fairly similar in terms of the burden of chronic disease, HIV, diabetes, heart disease, obesity. Hypertension is a major burden. Mental health is another issue.
Mary Anne Adams: What we're seeing day-to-day are people really impacted by poverty. They're either unemployed or underemployed, folks who have huge transportation barriers so they have to rely on these corner stores because they don't have the transportation to go to a big-box store nor do they have the resources to do that. A typical customer in a lot of these corner stores goes in for sodas, lottery tickets, tobacco. People are not going in to utilize these stores for groceries.
If you're HIV positive, you have diabetes or cardiovascular disease, you need to be eating nutritional foods. If you don't know what they are or you can't afford them, then you revert back to what's familiar, what you know, and what's cheap.
__What work are you doing in the neighborhoods at this point?__
MAA: We are giving [[store owners] information about health disparities, about who's in their neighborhood, and making them more aware of what these health disparities are and how they can really help by increasing the healthy foods that they carry in their stores. We're not trying to do this on a large scale, but maybe three to four offerings. Maybe if you just carry bananas now. Maybe you can carry some apples, some grapes, low-sodium foods. We're trying to do it in the context of where the store is and who their customer base is and currently what they have. The store owners, by and large, it has not been difficult to enroll them. ... We are very pleased with the owners who have readily enrolled into this program, and who really sincerely want to do something different. They just didn't know how to do it.
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__Are you working on any partnerships?__
MAA: [[Wholesome Wave is] very much interested in partnering with us. ... We want to do a neighborhood cleanup. That would be a way to get people invested. And not just one time but hopefully we can build this into the culture. We also are interested in developing recipes and doing workshops with the community residents and having food demonstrations at these stores. I think these are partnerships that we can develop that will be vital, and that will continue to cause awareness, and get people involved and invested.
__What are you seeing as some of the source issues for the lack of information about food and how to cook it?__
RL: Educating people alone, we've been doing that for decades, and the needle hasn't really moved on nutrition, physical activity. The approach over the last, going on 10 years now, has been to create environments and policies and systems that support healthy choices. If I put people in an environment where it's easier to make a healthy choice, then they're more likely to do that. If people don't have the environments or the access to the healthy products then it's sort of all for naught. That's part of what this effort is. Can we create the environment that at least facilitates healthier behaviors?
__People often have a hard time understanding why a mile is far away to travel for food. What you do say to help people understand what a burden a mile really can be?__
RL: We often have a hard time understanding things that we take for granted. We take for granted things that are just given in our lives. It's a very different reality to be in a community that's cut off by major interstates, where bus routes may not be as convenient as you would like. The means of transporting your products, if you can even get to them, is not easy. ... There has to be consideration of sidewalks, streets, bus routes, access to transportation of all kinds.
MAA: You see now more seniors who are using electronic motorized wheelchairs. We've seen people using these to go into these corner stores since we've been out doing this. When you're in a chair, and you have a bag, and you're trying to go down the street and the sidewalks are not accessible, that mile seems a long, long way. For the people that we deal with every day, they clearly understand a mile and what a burden a mile is.
RL: All that, and then don't let it be cold or raining.
[image-3]
__Does any of the money go to help fund the store owners or are you working to convince them that this is the right decision for their business?__
RL: We've been trying to make a business case. We've been trying to make the case on a number of different fronts with the store owners, but it's not been a, "Hey, we'll give you $500." We haven't had that sort of luxury in this initiative. ... There's a start small sort of approach. It's generally not wise, on any sort of program, to launch it before you have any evidence of feasibility. That's where we are, is launching and establishing feasibility.
__What can a corner store add to a culture of a neighborhood?__
RL: I think some of the things that we haven't gotten to yet that we still have on our to-do list is outreach. Outreach to logical community organizations and partners to increase awareness of what's going on. I think the NPUs can help us with that, but there'll be some additional outreach. The other thing is connecting things like urban gardening to this movement. There's a lot of it going on here. It says that there is a community of people that have a real interest in sustainable, healthy products and foods. I think to the extent that we can bridge those gaps right now, I think there's a lot of value in that.
What I've seen with gardens is that they are an important source of community cohesion and community social capital. Community building is maybe a better way to say it. I've seen where people have put in gardens, those gardens that then the county says, or the city says, "We're going to invest. We're going to put a pavilion in." People are barbecuing there now. We're going to put signage in. People raise money, and now there's a trail around the community garden so people can get physical activity. Then you get a grant, and there's a manager for the garden, and it's growing. It's sort of something that can build momentum over time.
MAA: When we look at all these potential partners and the possibilities for community gardens and for healthy corner stores and for community partners we're bringing awareness to a generation of young kids who are looking at what we're doing, because these kids also frequent these stores. I think it's important for us to remember that what we're doing now is going to impact them. It's educating them now. It's going to affect them for generations to come."
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string(9610) " 046806 Neighborhood Stores1 3 48 2019-02-07T22:39:30+00:00 046806_neighborhood_stores1_3_48.png neighborhood issue 2016 GSU, Morehouse, and the CDC collaborate on a Healthy Corner Store Initiative 13391 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 Neighborhoods - A Corner Store Diet ben.eason@creativeloafing.com Ben Eason Debbie Michaud 1223919 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 There's no shortage of convenience stores on Atlanta's west and southwest sides. Supermarkets are another story. A number of neighborhoods in the area such as Capitol View qualify as food deserts — places with poverty rates higher than 20 percent and more than a third of residents living at least a mile from a grocery store. Not surprisingly, chronic disease tends to show up in areas where access to fresh, healthy foods is limited. To begin addressing these issues, Georgia State University professor Rodney Lyn, in collaboration with the Morehouse School of Medicine, has launched a Healthy Corner Store Initiative. It's being implemented across an area that includes Neighborhood Planning Units T, V, X, Y, and Z (from Lakewood and Sylvan Hills up through Adair Park and West End) with $400,000 from the CDC's Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Health, or REACH, grant program. Lyn and his team, which includes Mary Anne Adams and Margaret Hooker, who work in GSU's School of Public Health's Center of Excellence on Health Disparities Research, are working directly with neighbors, neighborhood groups, and store owners to make healthy foods available to more Atlantans. Their goal is to have 21 stores enrolled by the time the three-year program wraps in fall 2017.
What issues do you see where you're working in Atlanta?
Rodney Lyn: When you go NPU-V all the way up through the westside, where we've been doing work in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, the profile is fairly similar in terms of the burden of chronic disease, HIV, diabetes, heart disease, obesity. Hypertension is a major burden. Mental health is another issue.
Mary Anne Adams: What we're seeing day-to-day are people really impacted by poverty. They're either unemployed or underemployed, folks who have huge transportation barriers so they have to rely on these corner stores because they don't have the transportation to go to a big-box store nor do they have the resources to do that. A typical customer in a lot of these corner stores goes in for sodas, lottery tickets, tobacco. People are not going in to utilize these stores for groceries.
If you're HIV positive, you have diabetes or cardiovascular disease, you need to be eating nutritional foods. If you don't know what they are or you can't afford them, then you revert back to what's familiar, what you know, and what's cheap.
What work are you doing in the neighborhoods at this point?
MAA: We are giving store owners information about health disparities, about who's in their neighborhood, and making them more aware of what these health disparities are and how they can really help by increasing the healthy foods that they carry in their stores. We're not trying to do this on a large scale, but maybe three to four offerings. Maybe if you just carry bananas now. Maybe you can carry some apples, some grapes, low-sodium foods. We're trying to do it in the context of where the store is and who their customer base is and currently what they have. The store owners, by and large, it has not been difficult to enroll them. ... We are very pleased with the owners who have readily enrolled into this program, and who really sincerely want to do something different. They just didn't know how to do it.
RL: When we started this, we didn't envision that this initiative was going to turn food access on its head in these communities. It was: Here's where the community is. What can we do to get the ball rolling? We don't have a lot of money. The resources are limited. Can we look at the existing infrastructure in the communities? These convenience and corner stores are a part of that. Can we leverage them as a part of the effort?
image-2
Are you working on any partnerships?
MAA: Wholesome Wave is very much interested in partnering with us. ... We want to do a neighborhood cleanup. That would be a way to get people invested. And not just one time but hopefully we can build this into the culture. We also are interested in developing recipes and doing workshops with the community residents and having food demonstrations at these stores. I think these are partnerships that we can develop that will be vital, and that will continue to cause awareness, and get people involved and invested.
What are you seeing as some of the source issues for the lack of information about food and how to cook it?
RL: Educating people alone, we've been doing that for decades, and the needle hasn't really moved on nutrition, physical activity. The approach over the last, going on 10 years now, has been to create environments and policies and systems that support healthy choices. If I put people in an environment where it's easier to make a healthy choice, then they're more likely to do that. If people don't have the environments or the access to the healthy products then it's sort of all for naught. That's part of what this effort is. Can we create the environment that at least facilitates healthier behaviors?
People often have a hard time understanding why a mile is far away to travel for food. What you do say to help people understand what a burden a mile really can be?
RL: We often have a hard time understanding things that we take for granted. We take for granted things that are just given in our lives. It's a very different reality to be in a community that's cut off by major interstates, where bus routes may not be as convenient as you would like. The means of transporting your products, if you can even get to them, is not easy. ... There has to be consideration of sidewalks, streets, bus routes, access to transportation of all kinds.
MAA: You see now more seniors who are using electronic motorized wheelchairs. We've seen people using these to go into these corner stores since we've been out doing this. When you're in a chair, and you have a bag, and you're trying to go down the street and the sidewalks are not accessible, that mile seems a long, long way. For the people that we deal with every day, they clearly understand a mile and what a burden a mile is.
RL: All that, and then don't let it be cold or raining.
image-3
Does any of the money go to help fund the store owners or are you working to convince them that this is the right decision for their business?
RL: We've been trying to make a business case. We've been trying to make the case on a number of different fronts with the store owners, but it's not been a, "Hey, we'll give you $500." We haven't had that sort of luxury in this initiative. ... There's a start small sort of approach. It's generally not wise, on any sort of program, to launch it before you have any evidence of feasibility. That's where we are, is launching and establishing feasibility.
What can a corner store add to a culture of a neighborhood?
RL: I think some of the things that we haven't gotten to yet that we still have on our to-do list is outreach. Outreach to logical community organizations and partners to increase awareness of what's going on. I think the NPUs can help us with that, but there'll be some additional outreach. The other thing is connecting things like urban gardening to this movement. There's a lot of it going on here. It says that there is a community of people that have a real interest in sustainable, healthy products and foods. I think to the extent that we can bridge those gaps right now, I think there's a lot of value in that.
What I've seen with gardens is that they are an important source of community cohesion and community social capital. Community building is maybe a better way to say it. I've seen where people have put in gardens, those gardens that then the county says, or the city says, "We're going to invest. We're going to put a pavilion in." People are barbecuing there now. We're going to put signage in. People raise money, and now there's a trail around the community garden so people can get physical activity. Then you get a grant, and there's a manager for the garden, and it's growing. It's sort of something that can build momentum over time.
MAA: When we look at all these potential partners and the possibilities for community gardens and for healthy corner stores and for community partners we're bringing awareness to a generation of young kids who are looking at what we're doing, because these kids also frequent these stores. I think it's important for us to remember that what we're doing now is going to impact them. It's educating them now. It's going to affect them for generations to come. Eric Cash FRESH TO GO: Mary Anne Adams (left) and Margaret Hooker in Capitol V at Metro Foods, one of the shops participating in their Healthy Corner Store Initiative "neighborhood issue 2016" 13086784 17065994 http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/046806_neighborhood_stores1_3_48.png http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/046808_neighborhood_stores1_1_48.png Eric Cash Capitol View's Metro Foods http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/046809_neighborhood_stores1_2_48.png Eric Cash FRUIT FULL: The team is starting small by educating owners and encouraging manageable changes such as adding bananas near the register. Neighborhoods - A Corner Store Diet "
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string(2863) "Google Fiber has finally fired up its gigabit-speed Internet service in metro Atlanta. Last January, Google’s young ISP arm unveiled plans to weave its web of Internet and TV service into nine metro Atlanta cities. And now two apartment complexes — one in Marietta and one in Duluth — are getting to experience the region’s first Google Fiber network.
Atlanta already has hyper-fast Internet offerings. So why is Google’s arrival such a big deal? In an industry dominated by ISP moguls AT&T and Comcast, Google Fiber introduces the option of unlimited high-speed Internet and TV service at competitive prices. Plus, Google Fiber could be a pleasant outlier in the field of customer service. So should the veterans be shaking in their shorts? Or will this hype train run out of steam?
image-1
WHAT IS IT?
To build Atlanta’s network, crews are encircling the city with a ring of fiber-optic cable hung on telephone poles or buried. The gigs of network data snake inward, routed by Fiber Huts and telecom cabinets, which bundle chunks of Internet to send off to consumers.
image-2
HOW IT WORKS
To achieve lightning Internet speeds, fiber-optic services use lasers to shoot beams of data through glass fiber wire at nearly the speed of light. Those fiber-optic threads, about as thick as a human hair, are wrapped in a plastic coating to contain the light carrying the data.
image-3
SPEED
Gigabit speed service means customers reap download speed upward of a thousand megabits a second. You could rip the original Star Wars trilogy and have the opening credits rolling in less than two minutes.
image-4
COST
Google Fiber does not disclose project costs. For $70 a month, Fiberhood residents can reap gigabit-speeds sans data caps. For $130 a month, Fiber will toss television service into the mix. Fiber also offers a basic plan: $50 a month for 100-mbps broadband, which is more than three times faster than the 31-mbps industry average.
image-5
TIMELINE
Google Fiber’s people remain tight-lipped as to when the rest of the metro region’s service will be wired. “We are making good progress in metro Atlanta,” says a Google spokesman.
image-6
COMPETITION
Fiber’s competitors claim their gigabit-speed offerings are up to par with Google’s. Comcast has been signing “right of entry agreements” with metro Atlanta apartment complexes to prohibit Google from setting up shop.
EQUITY
Google Fiber recently partnered with the federal ConnectHome initiative, a Department of Housing and Urban Development program designed to bring gigabit speed Internet to residents in public and affordable housing properties. Atlanta’s chapter of ConnectHome has selected more than 100 low-income families to receive electronics, Internet, and training to help them better compete in the job market."
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[image-1]
WHAT IS IT?
To build Atlanta’s network, crews are encircling the city with a ring of fiber-optic cable hung on telephone poles or buried. The gigs of network data snake inward, routed by Fiber Huts and telecom cabinets, which bundle chunks of Internet to send off to consumers.
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SPEED
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COST
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[image-5]
TIMELINE
Google Fiber’s people remain tight-lipped as to when the rest of the metro region’s service will be wired. “We are making good progress in metro Atlanta,” says a Google spokesman.
[image-6]
COMPETITION
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string(3930) " 0486c1 Fiber Online1 2019-02-20T05:45:56+00:00 0486c1_fiber_online1.png neighborhood issue 2016 cable Besides a helluva hype train, what is Google Fiber? 13885 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 Neighborhoods - Fiberhoods are coming ben.eason@creativeloafing.com Ben Eason Sean Keenan 14282338 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 Google Fiber has finally fired up its gigabit-speed Internet service in metro Atlanta. Last January, Google’s young ISP arm unveiled plans to weave its web of Internet and TV service into nine metro Atlanta cities. And now two apartment complexes — one in Marietta and one in Duluth — are getting to experience the region’s first Google Fiber network.
Atlanta already has hyper-fast Internet offerings. So why is Google’s arrival such a big deal? In an industry dominated by ISP moguls AT&T and Comcast, Google Fiber introduces the option of unlimited high-speed Internet and TV service at competitive prices. Plus, Google Fiber could be a pleasant outlier in the field of customer service. So should the veterans be shaking in their shorts? Or will this hype train run out of steam?
image-1
WHAT IS IT?
To build Atlanta’s network, crews are encircling the city with a ring of fiber-optic cable hung on telephone poles or buried. The gigs of network data snake inward, routed by Fiber Huts and telecom cabinets, which bundle chunks of Internet to send off to consumers.
image-2
HOW IT WORKS
To achieve lightning Internet speeds, fiber-optic services use lasers to shoot beams of data through glass fiber wire at nearly the speed of light. Those fiber-optic threads, about as thick as a human hair, are wrapped in a plastic coating to contain the light carrying the data.
image-3
SPEED
Gigabit speed service means customers reap download speed upward of a thousand megabits a second. You could rip the original Star Wars trilogy and have the opening credits rolling in less than two minutes.
image-4
COST
Google Fiber does not disclose project costs. For $70 a month, Fiberhood residents can reap gigabit-speeds sans data caps. For $130 a month, Fiber will toss television service into the mix. Fiber also offers a basic plan: $50 a month for 100-mbps broadband, which is more than three times faster than the 31-mbps industry average.
image-5
TIMELINE
Google Fiber’s people remain tight-lipped as to when the rest of the metro region’s service will be wired. “We are making good progress in metro Atlanta,” says a Google spokesman.
image-6
COMPETITION
Fiber’s competitors claim their gigabit-speed offerings are up to par with Google’s. Comcast has been signing “right of entry agreements” with metro Atlanta apartment complexes to prohibit Google from setting up shop.
EQUITY
Google Fiber recently partnered with the federal ConnectHome initiative, a Department of Housing and Urban Development program designed to bring gigabit speed Internet to residents in public and affordable housing properties. Atlanta’s chapter of ConnectHome has selected more than 100 low-income families to receive electronics, Internet, and training to help them better compete in the job market. Illustration by Rachel Hortman "neighborhood issue 2016" cable 13086794 17069510 http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/0486c2_fiber_online2.png Illustration by Rachel Hortman http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/0486c3_fiber_online3.png Illustration by Rachel Hortman http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/0486c4_fiber_online4.png Illustration by Rachel Hortman http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/0486c6_fiber_online5.png Illustration by Rachel Hortman http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/0486c7_fiber_online6.png Illustration by Rachel Hortman http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/0486c8_fiber_online7.png Illustration by Rachel Hortman Neighborhoods - Fiberhoods are coming "
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string(4767) "It's the Friday before Valentine's Day at McKinnon's Louisiane and the only open table in the bar is tucked away in a dark, quiet nook. The table remains empty even as people begin to gather in the lobby, waiting for seats. The room is long and narrow and painted a deep royal blue. At the opposite end of the room from this table, on the other side of a partial wall too high to see over, is the piano. A thin gentleman in a cowboy hat with a red kerchief tied around his neck, likely in his 70s, stands in front of the piano with a microphone and finishes the last few notes of a familiar song.
Soon after, a petite woman in a sparkly green fedora and gold scarf, also probably in her 70s, takes the mic and begins strutting up and down the aisle, feigning to smoke a cigarette as she sings a version of "Is You is or is You Ain't (Ma' Baby)." She bellows the words, letting them vibrate up out of her body, shaking her hips and shimmying her shoulders.
Out of view of this campy improv cabaret, the table remains empty.
At the piano is Fran Irwin, a wisp of a woman with a fiery red coif who's been playing the keys at McKinnon's for more than 30 years. She's built a cult open mic frequented by martini-swilling regulars who come to croon old standards. McKinnon's specializes in a New Orleans-style menu and is one of a dwindling number of schmancy old-school eateries in Atlanta. Buckhead's pirate ship-themed fondue and live jazz hot spot Dante's Down the Hatch closed a few years ago. Red sauce hole-in-the-wall Alfredo's will soon leave its longtime Cheshire Bridge location to make way for condos. But McKinnon's persists, packing the bar on weekends with regulars ready to sing.
The people who sing here know their songs word for word, beat for beat. They return week after week to refine their performances.
"We don't call it karaoke. It's open mic," Irwin says.
Irwin, 78, started playing piano at age 4. By age 13, she was playing professionally, working an "American Idol"-style showcase at a small theater in North Carolina. She moved to Atlanta from Greensboro in 1962. Divorced and with two young children, she found work singing and playing piano at various lounges around the city.
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She lived Downtown in a hotel at first. There was no MARTA. One of her first gigs in Atlanta was at the swanky Ship Ahoy supper club on Luckie Street across from Herren's Restaurant.
"Buckhead was not anything like it is now," Irwin says "In fact, all the prominent hotels and clubs were Downtown."
Irwin keeps a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and lounge postcards promoting her appearances. There's one for a saloon in Underground Atlanta, "a profusion of fine shops, exciting restaurants and fun hideaways," where she performed alongside a banjo player. There was a club called New Year's Eve that had a New Year's Eve theme every night.
Irwin has a soft raspy delivery that's slow and soothing. Her vocal chords "disappeared" in the 1970s, she says, and she now has plastic ones. She attributes their decline to the secondhand smoke she played in pretty much nightly for decades. She thought she'd never perform again after the loss so she left for Birmingham. There she met her husband Julian Menter. They returned to Atlanta seven years later and she landed the job at McKinnon's. (Menter often accompanies her on bass.)
Multiple mirrors hang behind Irwin's setup. One of them hovers at a 45-degree angle directly above her so the audience can watch as her fingers travel across the keyboards. There are boxes of index cards handmade by Irwin with the lyrics to songs. A large fishbowl serves as a tip jar. A poster board holds pictures of Irwin as a young woman making her way as a pianist in Atlanta in the '60s. On the walls, dozens of framed headshots crowd together. Irwin began taking pictures of her regulars and hanging them up in the mid-'80s.
"People really want to be up there," she says. "We have a rule now. You have to be a regular for two years before we put the pictures up."
Being a regular means you show up every week to sing, just like Irwin.
"I don't plan to retire," she says. "I plan to stay right here."
Erik Meadows KEY PARTY: Fran Irwin has played piano at McKinnon’s Louisiane for 31 years.
Erik Meadows REMEMBER THE TIME: Irwin keeps a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and lounge postcards promoting her appearances.
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The people who sing here know their songs word for word, beat for beat. They return week after week to refine their performances.
"We don't call it karaoke. It's open mic," Irwin says.
Irwin, 78, started playing piano at age 4. By age 13, she was playing professionally, working an "American Idol"-style showcase at a small theater in North Carolina. She moved to Atlanta from Greensboro in 1962. Divorced and with two young children, she found work singing and playing piano at various lounges around the city.
"Most of the hotels had a lounge. There were some places like after-hours clubs, but primarily it was just hotels," Irwin says. "It was overwhelming because, of course, it was nothing like living in North Carolina in a smaller town, but there were so many venues here. There were possibilities. It just seemed like the right place to be at the time."
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"Buckhead was not anything like it is now," Irwin says "In fact, all the prominent hotels and clubs were Downtown."
Irwin keeps a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and lounge postcards promoting her appearances. There's one for a saloon in Underground Atlanta, "a profusion of fine shops, exciting restaurants and fun hideaways," where she performed alongside a banjo player. There was a club called New Year's Eve that had a New Year's Eve theme every night.
Irwin has a soft raspy delivery that's slow and soothing. Her vocal chords "disappeared" in the 1970s, she says, and she now has plastic ones. She attributes their decline to the secondhand smoke she played in pretty much nightly for decades. She thought she'd never perform again after the loss so she left for Birmingham. There she met her husband Julian Menter. They returned to Atlanta seven years later and she landed the job at McKinnon's. (Menter often accompanies her on bass.)
Multiple mirrors hang behind Irwin's setup. One of them hovers at a 45-degree angle directly above her so the audience can watch as her fingers travel across the keyboards. There are boxes of index cards handmade by Irwin with the lyrics to songs. A large fishbowl serves as a tip jar. A poster board holds pictures of Irwin as a young woman making her way as a pianist in Atlanta in the '60s. On the walls, dozens of framed headshots crowd together. Irwin began taking pictures of her regulars and hanging them up in the mid-'80s.
"People really want to be up there," she says. "We have a rule now. You have to be a regular for two years before we put the pictures up."
Being a regular means you show up every week to sing, just like Irwin.
"I don't plan to retire," she says. "I plan to stay right here."
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string(5620) " 048984 Neighborhood Buckhead1 2 48 2019-02-20T13:55:26+00:00 048984_neighborhood_buckhead1_2_48.png neighborhood issue 2016 karaoke A closer look at the restaurant's charming, campy improv cabaret 13888 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 Neighborhoods - Behind the keys at McKinnon's with pianist Fran Irwin ben.eason@creativeloafing.com Ben Eason Debbie Michaud 1223919 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 It's the Friday before Valentine's Day at McKinnon's Louisiane and the only open table in the bar is tucked away in a dark, quiet nook. The table remains empty even as people begin to gather in the lobby, waiting for seats. The room is long and narrow and painted a deep royal blue. At the opposite end of the room from this table, on the other side of a partial wall too high to see over, is the piano. A thin gentleman in a cowboy hat with a red kerchief tied around his neck, likely in his 70s, stands in front of the piano with a microphone and finishes the last few notes of a familiar song.
Soon after, a petite woman in a sparkly green fedora and gold scarf, also probably in her 70s, takes the mic and begins strutting up and down the aisle, feigning to smoke a cigarette as she sings a version of "Is You is or is You Ain't (Ma' Baby)." She bellows the words, letting them vibrate up out of her body, shaking her hips and shimmying her shoulders.
Out of view of this campy improv cabaret, the table remains empty.
At the piano is Fran Irwin, a wisp of a woman with a fiery red coif who's been playing the keys at McKinnon's for more than 30 years. She's built a cult open mic frequented by martini-swilling regulars who come to croon old standards. McKinnon's specializes in a New Orleans-style menu and is one of a dwindling number of schmancy old-school eateries in Atlanta. Buckhead's pirate ship-themed fondue and live jazz hot spot Dante's Down the Hatch closed a few years ago. Red sauce hole-in-the-wall Alfredo's will soon leave its longtime Cheshire Bridge location to make way for condos. But McKinnon's persists, packing the bar on weekends with regulars ready to sing.
The people who sing here know their songs word for word, beat for beat. They return week after week to refine their performances.
"We don't call it karaoke. It's open mic," Irwin says.
Irwin, 78, started playing piano at age 4. By age 13, she was playing professionally, working an "American Idol"-style showcase at a small theater in North Carolina. She moved to Atlanta from Greensboro in 1962. Divorced and with two young children, she found work singing and playing piano at various lounges around the city.
"Most of the hotels had a lounge. There were some places like after-hours clubs, but primarily it was just hotels," Irwin says. "It was overwhelming because, of course, it was nothing like living in North Carolina in a smaller town, but there were so many venues here. There were possibilities. It just seemed like the right place to be at the time."
She lived Downtown in a hotel at first. There was no MARTA. One of her first gigs in Atlanta was at the swanky Ship Ahoy supper club on Luckie Street across from Herren's Restaurant.
"Buckhead was not anything like it is now," Irwin says "In fact, all the prominent hotels and clubs were Downtown."
Irwin keeps a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and lounge postcards promoting her appearances. There's one for a saloon in Underground Atlanta, "a profusion of fine shops, exciting restaurants and fun hideaways," where she performed alongside a banjo player. There was a club called New Year's Eve that had a New Year's Eve theme every night.
Irwin has a soft raspy delivery that's slow and soothing. Her vocal chords "disappeared" in the 1970s, she says, and she now has plastic ones. She attributes their decline to the secondhand smoke she played in pretty much nightly for decades. She thought she'd never perform again after the loss so she left for Birmingham. There she met her husband Julian Menter. They returned to Atlanta seven years later and she landed the job at McKinnon's. (Menter often accompanies her on bass.)
Multiple mirrors hang behind Irwin's setup. One of them hovers at a 45-degree angle directly above her so the audience can watch as her fingers travel across the keyboards. There are boxes of index cards handmade by Irwin with the lyrics to songs. A large fishbowl serves as a tip jar. A poster board holds pictures of Irwin as a young woman making her way as a pianist in Atlanta in the '60s. On the walls, dozens of framed headshots crowd together. Irwin began taking pictures of her regulars and hanging them up in the mid-'80s.
"People really want to be up there," she says. "We have a rule now. You have to be a regular for two years before we put the pictures up."
Being a regular means you show up every week to sing, just like Irwin.
"I don't plan to retire," she says. "I plan to stay right here."
Erik Meadows KEY PARTY: Fran Irwin has played piano at McKinnon’s Louisiane for 31 years.
Erik Meadows REMEMBER THE TIME: Irwin keeps a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and lounge postcards promoting her appearances.
Erik Meadows KEY PARTY: Fran Irwin (left) has played piano at McKinnon's Louisiana for 31 years, hosting an open mic frequented by regulars who come to sing old standards. McKinnon's Louisiane (itemId:2013 trackerid:1) "neighborhood issue 2016" karaoke 13086785 17066019 http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/048984_neighborhood_buckhead1_2_48.png Neighborhoods - Behind the keys at McKinnon's with pianist Fran Irwin "
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string(16737) "When Pam Majors was a child, her father would come home each night with his truck filled with random items he'd purchased that day in metro Atlanta shops that were going out of business. Her parents would sift through the day's haul, which her dad would then sell in one of his salvage shops. When her father retired in 1981, Majors, then in her early 20s and living in Candler Park in a house she purchased for $29,500, went through the flotsam and jetsam of his life. She discovered rare finds and gems such as old Beatles notebooks and 1950s leather jackets and saw a chance to put her spin on the wares. In 1982 she opened a shop next to a former methadone clinic in the business district nearby called Little Five Points. The store's name was biographical and authentic: Junkman's Daughter.
In the mid-1970s, Majors says, half the neighborhood was vacant. The other half was "old mom-and-pop things that had been there forever." But that quickly started to change as people started moving to the neighborhood.
"It was my type of energy that was going on," Majors says. "A lot of artists, creative people, and students. And we all at one point kind of knew each other. You'd go to places and it would always be the same group. As the neighborhood living situation was evolving, the retail neighborhood started evolving. Everything was starting to grow. New energy was coming in and people were starting things."
In the following years, Little Five Points would establish itself as Atlanta's most eclectic, independent, and bohemian retail area, a shopping and entertainment district that catered to locals, OTPers, and tourists looking for offbeat items and up-and-coming bands, and drifters ranging from the down-on-their-luck to train kids looking for a handout. But for all the colorful murals that adorn the walls and dreadlocks that wave in the wind, L5P is not just an enclave of hippies, gutter punks, and punks — it's arguably Atlanta's most full-service community, with a grocery store, pharmacy, dentist, counselor, optometrist, pizza joint, shoe store, bicycle shop, and even a credit union. Some businesses have been located there 30 years.
Little Five Points is also in a peculiar spot. It's sandwiched between two affluent neighborhoods in a booming corner of Atlanta. As more and more people move to the area, bringing with them their own ideas of community, the question comes to mind, as it has every time a new business that might not jibe with the retail district's DNA opens nearby: How long can a neighborhood keep its personality?
NAMED AFTER THE INTERSECTION where multiple trolley lines and five streets met, the commercial district grew in 1920 after the former city of Edgewood, now Candler Park, was incorporated into the city and the trolley lines were built. Around that time, Downtown's Five Points was a mini-Manhattan packed shoulder to shoulder with businessmen and families in their Sunday best out to do their shopping or catch a show. Scott Ball, an Inman Park resident and principal with Commons Planning, a nonprofit civic design firm, says Little Five Points was the alternative to that Downtown glitz. Instead of buying a top-of-the-line bowler hat, you could find a more affordable brim. Rather than shelling out a large chunk of your paycheck to see a staged production, you could go to one of the four nickelodeons in L5P.
"You could pay a nickel to get on a streetcar in Marietta, see a movie in Little Five Points, go to a soda fountain at the Pendergrast Pharmacy that's now the Clothing Warehouse," Ball says. "And there for a nickel you could get a malted."
The area was, according to Robert Hartle Jr.'s thorough The Highs and Lows of Little Five: A History of Little Five Points, "ordinary." But as Atlanta grew outward, Little Five Points, just like Five Points, saw investment and interest turn elsewhere. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the business district that Hartle says once boasted "three grocery stores, four drugstores, three barbershops, and three movie theatres," was largely rundown thanks to white flight and the imminent arrival of a freeway that would have likely replaced all of Little Five Points with pavement, hotels, and gas stations. The storefronts had turned into oddball junk and antique shops. On the corner of Euclid and Moreland avenues sat the Redwood Lounge, a notoriously rambunctious watering hole that earned a reputation as the first stop for newly released inmates of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
Were it not for a tight band of mostly young residents and activists, the surrounding neighborhoods would be a far cry from the affluent, picturesque communities they are today. Hippies, families, and young singles unable to afford Virginia-Highland prices or who were flushed out of Midtown started moving in to Candler Park's modest bungalows and Inman Park's mansions that had been chopped up into boarding houses. They started fixing up homes and building a community. They were of a progressive bent.
image-2
"A lot of people who are committed to diversity wanted to live in a neighborhood where there would be different economic classes, spiritual traditions, races," says Linda Bryant, the founder of Charis Books, a feminist bookstore that opened in 1974. "There were a lot of people who shared those values."
Residents created a cooperative pre-school. With the leadership of Inman Parkers John Sweet and Stan Wyse, a group of active residents called the Bass Organization for Neighborhood Development, or BOND, created a credit union after the C&S Bank branch on Moreland Avenue wouldn't issue loans. The C&S branch is now Star Bar. The credit union is still in Little Five Points and accepting deposits.
The residents were militantly active. They famously faced off bulldozers trying to build a freeway that would have blasted through much of Inman Park and Candler Park. There's a reason why Moreland is so wide near Euclid Avenue and Freedom Park exists. After residents scored what appeared to be a cease-fire from the state, they realized they could turn Little Five Points, an area that was mapped for demolition and a freeway exit, into a true community asset. In addition to potentially warding off a second wave of bulldozers, it could just be good for the neighborhood.
Making that vision become a reality would not have happened without Don Bender and Kelly Jordan. Bender, a Mennonite turned Quaker from Delaware who came to Atlanta to work with impoverished communities after claiming conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, settled in Candler Park in the early '70s. So did Jordan, a jovial Summerville, Georgia native who bounced around the Southeast as a child with his father, who worked for Sears. They were attracted by the neighborhood's activist energy, small-town vibe, and promise.
In 1972, Bender helped start Atlanta Intown Development Corporation, a group of neighbors who would pool whatever cash they had to purchase and renovate the most dilapidated house on a block. "There were too many marriages going down the toilet because people were renovating their houses while they tried to live in them," he says. They would then sell or rent them. Profits were used to purchase another property.
After the group renovated six houses, it bought a strip of storefronts that wrapped around Euclid and Seminole avenues. After pleas to the owner of the Redwood to try to clean up the joint, the group purchased it as well and turned it into the Little Five Points Community Pub, an open-to-all gathering spot where residents could hold meetings, imbibe, and hang out. Bender tended bar, a sight considering most Quakers abstain from alcohol. The process continued. Jordan, who was only 25 at the time, rounded up people to chip in $1,000 or $2,000 to help purchase the Point Center Building located at the intersection of Euclid and Moreland avenues, which was then home to Charis Bookstore, Sevananda's original location, and a junk shop known as Mr. Ed's. The second floor was completely vacant.
In 1975, the communities came together to create a plan for Little Five Points' future. They went door to door to inform neighbors about meetings and surveys in the credit union's newspaper called the BOND Community Star. The results would guide neighborhood leaders in recruiting tenants. What came back wasn't incense shops or places to buy tapestries. Residents wanted a pharmacy, a dentist's office, a restaurant, a grocery store — the building blocks of a community. And they wanted independent businesses.
Jordan dropped off fliers promoting the Point Center Building around town, including Emory medical school. The area caught the eye of Richard Shapiro, a Brooklyn exile. He opened a dental office in the building despite its crumbling walls and obvious evidence of squatters, he says, because the district reminded him of Greenwich Village. "It had a real neighborhood vibe," he says.
Newly elected Mayor Maynard Jackson named Little Five Points and Lakewood Heights as intown revitalization districts, helping to connect the neighborhood groups and investors with funding, government grants, and the strongest ally possible in City Hall. When the owner of the theaters that later became Variety Playhouse and 7 Stages threatened to demolish the then-vacant buildings, Jackson helped tap the brakes, giving Jordan and Bender a chance to save the buildings. Word-of-mouth plus cheap rents attracted upstart businesses with nothing to lose and everything to gain: Wax n' Facts, which opened its doors in 1976; Unidentified Flying Objects, a store dedicated entirely to Frisbees and disc golf; Crystal Blue, an outlet selling mystical gems and geodes; Junkman's Daughter; and others. At the same time, everyday independent businesses, such as the pharmacy and dry cleaner, also moved in. Over time, the crowds attracted more crowds and Little Five Points became known as a community unlike any other in metro Atlanta.
A narrative has been peddled over time that the men and women who bought the buildings, helped bring businesses into L5P, and helped stabilize it over the years were hellbent on creating a hippie utopian experience. Jordan disagrees with that idea. Bender says it's been overstated.
"The Pub probably had more PhDs than any other business ever ... These were people many of them just ... well, very progressive in their point of view. Very much believing in self-determination," Bender says.
"This was serious community grassroots activity," says Jordan, who was influenced by community revitalization efforts he saw taking place across the country as he drove to the West Coast after his sophomore year at Emory University. "Serious get your hands dirty with the real way the world works for people who were not — none of us were — trained to do it ... Seriously. People started a federally chartered community credit union. Like only 2 percent in the whole country were community credit unions."
image-3
AS THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED, so has Atlanta. Neighborhoods once considered places to avoid are now outside many people's budgets. The Clermont Hotel, a former flophouse, is becoming a boutique hotel. Murder Kroger will become a 12-story office building.
Inman Park and Candler Park today are two of Atlanta's most desirable intown neighborhoods with listing prices starting around $525,000 for a three-bedroom house. The Atlanta Beltline is only a half-mile away. The generation that watched Little Five Points go from anonymous to quirky will, over time, be outnumbered by younger families and people with no connection — or sense of loyalty — to the business district. What's preventing Crystal Blue from becoming a bougie boutique with $50,000 couches? Could Crate and Barrel edge out Rag-O-Rama? In other words, how long can Little Five Points remain Little Five Points?
One thing in the neighborhood's favor, Shapiro says, is its zoning. Little Five Points was Atlanta's first neighborhood commercial district, a special type of zoning category that sets a community-decided limit on the number and size of businesses that can locate in a specified area. For example, no stores larger than 5,000 square feet can locate in certain properties, helping to protect it from some big-box chains. The controversial arrival of the Edgewood Retail District down Moreland, which brought Lowe's, Best Buy, and Target, helped chill some of that threat in the area. And the limited availability of parking could also ward off some big-name retailers that bank on serving motorists more than pedestrians.
A potential new addition to the neighborhood has recently sparked chatter and some grumblings. In September, the Candler Park Neighborhood Organization heard from the new owner of a Moreland Avenue property Chipotle was considering opening in the space. A Chipotle spokeswoman said the chain does not comment on new openings until "a lease is signed and construction scheduled."
Corporate chains have posed a threat to L5P before. But they've been fought off or peacefully absorbed into the mix. Some chains and businesses might see little opportunity in the Little Five Points clientele. In the early 1990s, area residents scared off a corporate pharmacy chain that proposed a location near Little Five Points Pharmacy, a beloved early tenant that remains one of Atlanta's few independent apothecaries. An equally loud uproar erupted when Starbucks moved in on Moreland Avenue. People even expressed concern over the arrival of American Apparel. Yet Java Lords and Aurora are still brewing coffee. Boutiques have come and gone, but the independent vibe has remained.
Culture is another issue, and one that's been played out over the years. "Bohemian is a tricky identity," Ball says. "It's very easy for that to become an 'anything goes' environment. And really the owners of the property and shop owners do not have that attitude. They like and try to foster a sense of cultural and political openness. But they are very focused on a culture in a positive sense. They're not anarchists."
In 2014, the L5P Business Association created a special district to help fund infrastructure improvements in the area. High on its list — but still in its early stages — is building a parking deck that could be located underneath Bass Recreation Center playing field off Austin Avenue. The project could include mixed-income or senior housing circling the sports field. Bender and a team of others hope the facility could help sustain the district as an entertainment and cultural hub and help 7 Stages Theatre and Variety Playhouse pull in more patrons, plus attract more restaurants. Horizon Theatre recently won a highly competitive arts funding award that would help pay for street performances in Findley Plaza, which Ball says could help add another dimension to the street life.
The reality is that L5P has always been changing, just staying true to its DNA. Whether that continues is up to the various property owners and the next generation of people who flock to the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club, the Vortex, or any of the shops that line the multicolored strip of Euclid and Moreland, who move into nearby homes, or take the reins of existing businesses. Agon Entertainment, the owner of Athens' Georgia Theatre, last year purchased the Variety Playhouse from longtime owner Steve Harris, and is planning a $1 million renovation.
"I guess it will depend on the next generation." Shapiro says. "If there is the kind of love for the neighborhood that we've had for the last 20 to 30 years and if that carries over into the next generation."
Bryant says that new generation "is not going to do the same thing we did. If they did it would become passé pretty quickly. But that new generation is working in the same spirit of cooperation and desire for change — and a sense of wanting to create a place for independent voices."
Majors is retiring this year and passing Junkman's Daughter on to her son, who's moving from Los Angeles to oversee the business (he's keeping the name). She says he's already putting his spin on some of the inventory, moving some items out of circulation. The change is exciting but can occasionally make Majors bite her nails.
"He totally remodeled the shoe department this week," she says with a laugh. "He got every semblance of me out of there ... They've been doing a lot of things on their own. It's going to be interesting to see what it becomes. It's going to stay the same but it will definitely have a little bit different personality — just as it did when I took the goods from my parents' stores and added my own twist.""
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string(17124) "When Pam Majors was a child, her father would come home each night with his truck filled with random items he'd purchased that day in metro Atlanta shops that were going out of business. Her parents would sift through the day's haul, which her dad would then sell in one of his salvage shops. When her father retired in 1981, Majors, then in her early 20s and living in Candler Park in a house she purchased for $29,500, went through the flotsam and jetsam of his life. She discovered rare finds and gems such as old Beatles notebooks and 1950s leather jackets and saw a chance to put her spin on the wares. In 1982 she opened a shop next to a former methadone clinic in the business district nearby called Little Five Points. The store's name was biographical and authentic: [business-1855-Junkman's-Daughter|Junkman's Daughter].
In the mid-1970s, Majors says, half the neighborhood was vacant. The other half was "old mom-and-pop things that had been there forever." But that quickly started to change as people started moving to the neighborhood.
"It was my type of energy that was going on," Majors says. "A lot of artists, creative people, and students. And we all at one point kind of knew each other. You'd go to places and it would always be the same group. As the neighborhood living situation was evolving, the retail neighborhood started evolving. Everything was starting to grow. New energy was coming in and people were starting things."
In the following years, Little Five Points would establish itself as Atlanta's most eclectic, independent, and bohemian retail area, a shopping and entertainment district that catered to locals, OTPers, and tourists looking for offbeat items and up-and-coming bands, and drifters ranging from the down-on-their-luck to train kids looking for a handout. But for all the colorful murals that adorn the walls and dreadlocks that wave in the wind, L5P is not just an enclave of hippies, gutter punks, and punks — it's arguably Atlanta's most full-service community, with a grocery store, pharmacy, dentist, counselor, optometrist, pizza joint, shoe store, bicycle shop, and even a credit union. Some businesses have been located there 30 years.
Little Five Points is also in a peculiar spot. It's sandwiched between two affluent neighborhoods in a booming corner of Atlanta. As more and more people move to the area, bringing with them their own ideas of community, the question comes to mind, as it has every time a new business that might not jibe with the retail district's DNA opens nearby: How long can a neighborhood keep its personality?
__NAMED AFTER THE INTERSECTION__ where multiple trolley lines and five streets met, the commercial district grew in 1920 after the former city of Edgewood, now Candler Park, was incorporated into the city and the trolley lines were built. Around that time, Downtown's Five Points was a mini-Manhattan packed shoulder to shoulder with businessmen and families in their Sunday best out to do their shopping or catch a show. Scott Ball, an Inman Park resident and principal with [http://commonsplanning.org/Leadership.html|Commons Planning], a nonprofit civic design firm, says Little Five Points was the alternative to that Downtown glitz. Instead of buying a top-of-the-line bowler hat, you could find a more affordable brim. Rather than shelling out a large chunk of your paycheck to see a staged production, you could go to one of the four nickelodeons in L5P.
"You could pay a nickel to get on a streetcar in Marietta, see a movie in Little Five Points, go to a soda fountain at the [http://saportareport.com/45878/|Pendergrast Pharmacy] that's now the Clothing Warehouse," Ball says. "And there for a nickel you could get a malted."
The area was, according to Robert Hartle Jr.'s thorough ''[https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9781596298743/The-Highs-and-Lows-of-Little-Five-A-History-of-Little-Five-Points|The Highs and Lows of Little Five: A History of Little Five Points]'', "ordinary." But as Atlanta grew outward, Little Five Points, just like Five Points, saw investment and interest turn elsewhere. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the business district that Hartle says once boasted "three grocery stores, four drugstores, three barbershops, and three movie theatres," was largely rundown thanks to white flight and the imminent arrival of a freeway that would have likely replaced all of Little Five Points with pavement, hotels, and gas stations. The storefronts had turned into oddball junk and antique shops. On the corner of Euclid and Moreland avenues sat the [http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/atlphotos/id/6473|Redwood Lounge], a notoriously rambunctious watering hole that earned a reputation as the first stop for newly released inmates of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
Were it not for a tight band of mostly young residents and activists, the surrounding neighborhoods would be a far cry from the affluent, picturesque communities they are today. Hippies, families, and young singles unable to afford Virginia-Highland prices or who were flushed out of Midtown started moving in to Candler Park's modest bungalows and Inman Park's mansions that had been chopped up into boarding houses. They started fixing up homes and building a community. They were of a progressive bent.
[image-2]
"A lot of people who are committed to diversity wanted to live in a neighborhood where there would be different economic classes, spiritual traditions, races," says Linda Bryant, the founder of Charis Books, a feminist bookstore that opened in 1974. "There were a lot of people who shared those values."
Residents created a cooperative pre-school. With the leadership of Inman Parkers John Sweet and Stan Wyse, a group of active residents called the [https://bondcu.com/our-story/|Bass Organization for Neighborhood Development], or BOND, created a credit union after the C&S Bank branch on Moreland Avenue wouldn't issue loans. The C&S branch is now Star Bar. The credit union is still in Little Five Points and accepting deposits.
The residents were militantly active. They famously faced off bulldozers trying to build a freeway that would have blasted through much of Inman Park and Candler Park. There's a reason why Moreland is so wide near Euclid Avenue and Freedom Park exists. After residents scored what appeared to be a cease-fire from the state, they realized they could turn Little Five Points, an area that was mapped for demolition and a freeway exit, into a true community asset. In addition to potentially warding off a second wave of bulldozers, it could just be good for the neighborhood.
Making that vision become a reality would not have happened without Don Bender and Kelly Jordan. Bender, a Mennonite turned Quaker from Delaware who came to Atlanta to work with impoverished communities after claiming conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, settled in Candler Park in the early '70s. So did Jordan, a jovial Summerville, Georgia native who bounced around the Southeast as a child with his father, who worked for Sears. They were attracted by the neighborhood's activist energy, small-town vibe, and promise.
In 1972, Bender helped start Atlanta Intown Development Corporation, a group of neighbors who would pool whatever cash they had to purchase and renovate the most dilapidated house on a block. "There were too many marriages going down the toilet because people were renovating their houses while they tried to live in them," he says. They would then sell or rent them. Profits were used to purchase another property.
After the group renovated six houses, it bought a strip of storefronts that wrapped around Euclid and Seminole avenues. After pleas to the owner of the Redwood to try to clean up the joint, the group purchased it as well and turned it into the Little Five Points Community Pub, an open-to-all gathering spot where residents could hold meetings, imbibe, and hang out. Bender tended bar, a sight considering most Quakers abstain from alcohol. The process continued. Jordan, who was only 25 at the time, rounded up people to chip in $1,000 or $2,000 to help purchase the Point Center Building located at the intersection of Euclid and Moreland avenues, which was then home to Charis Bookstore, Sevananda's original location, and a junk shop known as Mr. Ed's. The second floor was completely vacant.
In 1975, the communities came together to create a plan for Little Five Points' future. They went door to door to inform neighbors about meetings and surveys in the credit union's newspaper called the BOND Community ''Star''. The results would guide neighborhood leaders in recruiting tenants. What came back wasn't incense shops or places to buy tapestries. Residents wanted a pharmacy, a dentist's office, a restaurant, a grocery store — the building blocks of a community. And they wanted independent businesses.
Jordan dropped off fliers promoting the Point Center Building around town, including Emory medical school. The area caught the eye of Richard Shapiro, a Brooklyn exile. He opened a dental office in the building despite its crumbling walls and obvious evidence of squatters, he says, because the district reminded him of Greenwich Village. "It had a real neighborhood vibe," he says.
Newly elected Mayor Maynard Jackson named Little Five Points and Lakewood Heights as intown revitalization districts, helping to connect the neighborhood groups and investors with funding, government grants, and the strongest ally possible in City Hall. When the owner of the theaters that later became Variety Playhouse and 7 Stages threatened to demolish the then-vacant buildings, Jackson helped tap the brakes, giving Jordan and Bender a chance to save the buildings. Word-of-mouth plus cheap rents attracted upstart businesses with nothing to lose and everything to gain: Wax n' Facts, which opened its doors in 1976; Unidentified Flying Objects, a store dedicated entirely to Frisbees and disc golf; Crystal Blue, an outlet selling mystical gems and geodes; Junkman's Daughter; and others. At the same time, everyday independent businesses, such as the pharmacy and dry cleaner, also moved in. Over time, the crowds attracted more crowds and Little Five Points became known as a community unlike any other in metro Atlanta.
A narrative has been peddled over time that the men and women who bought the buildings, helped bring businesses into L5P, and helped stabilize it over the years were hellbent on creating a hippie utopian experience. Jordan disagrees with that idea. Bender says it's been overstated.
"The Pub probably had more PhDs than any other business ever ... These were people many of them just ... well, very progressive in their point of view. Very much believing in self-determination," Bender says.
"This was serious community grassroots activity," says Jordan, who was influenced by community revitalization efforts he saw taking place across the country as he drove to the West Coast after his sophomore year at Emory University. "Serious get your hands dirty with the real way the world works for people who were not — none of us were — trained to do it ... Seriously. People started a federally chartered community credit union. Like only 2 percent in the whole country were community credit unions."
[image-3]
__AS THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED,__ so has Atlanta. Neighborhoods once considered places to avoid are now outside many people's budgets. The Clermont Hotel, a former flophouse, is becoming a boutique hotel. Murder Kroger will become a 12-story office building.
Inman Park and Candler Park today are two of Atlanta's most desirable intown neighborhoods with listing prices starting around $525,000 for a three-bedroom house. The Atlanta Beltline is only a half-mile away. The generation that watched Little Five Points go from anonymous to quirky will, over time, be outnumbered by younger families and people with no connection — or sense of loyalty — to the business district. What's preventing Crystal Blue from becoming a bougie boutique with $50,000 couches? Could Crate and Barrel edge out Rag-O-Rama? In other words, how long can Little Five Points remain Little Five Points?
One thing in the neighborhood's favor, Shapiro says, is its zoning. Little Five Points was Atlanta's first neighborhood commercial district, a special type of zoning category that sets a community-decided limit on the number and size of businesses that can locate in a specified area. For example, no stores larger than 5,000 square feet can locate in certain properties, helping to protect it from some big-box chains. The controversial arrival of the Edgewood Retail District down Moreland, which brought Lowe's, Best Buy, and Target, helped chill some of that threat in the area. And the limited availability of parking could also ward off some big-name retailers that bank on serving motorists more than pedestrians.
A potential new addition to the neighborhood has recently sparked chatter and some grumblings. In September, the Candler Park Neighborhood Organization heard from the new owner of a Moreland Avenue property Chipotle was considering opening in the space. A Chipotle spokeswoman said the chain does not comment on new openings until "a lease is signed and construction scheduled."
Corporate chains have posed a threat to L5P before. But they've been fought off or peacefully absorbed into the mix. Some chains and businesses might see little opportunity in the Little Five Points clientele. In the early 1990s, area residents scared off a corporate pharmacy chain that proposed a location near Little Five Points Pharmacy, a beloved early tenant that remains one of Atlanta's few independent apothecaries. An equally loud uproar erupted when Starbucks moved in on Moreland Avenue. People even expressed concern over the arrival of American Apparel. Yet Java Lords and Aurora are still brewing coffee. Boutiques have come and gone, but the independent vibe has remained.
Culture is another issue, and one that's been played out over the years. "Bohemian is a tricky identity," Ball says. "It's very easy for that to become an 'anything goes' environment. And really the owners of the property and shop owners do not have that attitude. They like and try to foster a sense of cultural and political openness. But they are very focused on a culture in a positive sense. They're not anarchists."
In 2014, the [http://www.little5points.com/|L5P Business Association] created a special district to help fund infrastructure improvements in the area. High on its list — but still in its early stages — is building a parking deck that could be located underneath Bass Recreation Center playing field off Austin Avenue. The project could include mixed-income or senior housing circling the sports field. Bender and a team of others hope the facility could help sustain the district as an entertainment and cultural hub and help 7 Stages Theatre and Variety Playhouse pull in more patrons, plus attract more restaurants. Horizon Theatre recently won a highly competitive arts funding award that would help pay for street performances in Findley Plaza, which Ball says could help add another dimension to the street life.
The reality is that L5P has always been changing, just staying true to its DNA. Whether that continues is up to the various property owners and the next generation of people who flock to the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club, the Vortex, or any of the shops that line the multicolored strip of Euclid and Moreland, who move into nearby homes, or take the reins of existing businesses. Agon Entertainment, the owner of Athens' Georgia Theatre, last year purchased the Variety Playhouse from longtime owner Steve Harris, and is planning a $1 million renovation.
"I guess it will depend on the next generation." Shapiro says. "If there is the kind of love for the neighborhood that we've had for the last 20 to 30 years and if that carries over into the next generation."
Bryant says that new generation "is not going to do the same thing we did. If they did it would become passé pretty quickly. But that new generation is working in the same spirit of cooperation and desire for change — and a sense of wanting to create a place for independent voices."
Majors is retiring this year and passing Junkman's Daughter on to her son, who's moving from Los Angeles to oversee the business (he's keeping the name). She says he's already putting his spin on some of the inventory, moving some items out of circulation. The change is exciting but can occasionally make Majors bite her nails.
"He totally remodeled the shoe department this week," she says with a laugh. "He got every semblance of me out of there ... They've been doing a lot of things on their own. It's going to be interesting to see what it becomes. It's going to stay the same but it will definitely have a little bit different personality — just as it did when I took the goods from my parents' stores and added my own twist.""
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string(18151) " Neighborhood Issue - Little Five Points - Kelly Jordan and Don Bender Photo by Eric Cash 2019-02-07T21:09:00+00:00 04764e_neighborhood_l5p1_1_48.png Great article. So fun to learn details of a hood that I have loved for decades. neighborhood issue 2016 And how long can it stay that way? 13385 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 Neighborhoods - How did Little Five Points get weird? ben.eason@creativeloafing.com Ben Eason Thomas Wheatley Thomas Wheatley 2016-03-24T08:00:00+00:00 When Pam Majors was a child, her father would come home each night with his truck filled with random items he'd purchased that day in metro Atlanta shops that were going out of business. Her parents would sift through the day's haul, which her dad would then sell in one of his salvage shops. When her father retired in 1981, Majors, then in her early 20s and living in Candler Park in a house she purchased for $29,500, went through the flotsam and jetsam of his life. She discovered rare finds and gems such as old Beatles notebooks and 1950s leather jackets and saw a chance to put her spin on the wares. In 1982 she opened a shop next to a former methadone clinic in the business district nearby called Little Five Points. The store's name was biographical and authentic: Junkman's Daughter.
In the mid-1970s, Majors says, half the neighborhood was vacant. The other half was "old mom-and-pop things that had been there forever." But that quickly started to change as people started moving to the neighborhood.
"It was my type of energy that was going on," Majors says. "A lot of artists, creative people, and students. And we all at one point kind of knew each other. You'd go to places and it would always be the same group. As the neighborhood living situation was evolving, the retail neighborhood started evolving. Everything was starting to grow. New energy was coming in and people were starting things."
In the following years, Little Five Points would establish itself as Atlanta's most eclectic, independent, and bohemian retail area, a shopping and entertainment district that catered to locals, OTPers, and tourists looking for offbeat items and up-and-coming bands, and drifters ranging from the down-on-their-luck to train kids looking for a handout. But for all the colorful murals that adorn the walls and dreadlocks that wave in the wind, L5P is not just an enclave of hippies, gutter punks, and punks — it's arguably Atlanta's most full-service community, with a grocery store, pharmacy, dentist, counselor, optometrist, pizza joint, shoe store, bicycle shop, and even a credit union. Some businesses have been located there 30 years.
Little Five Points is also in a peculiar spot. It's sandwiched between two affluent neighborhoods in a booming corner of Atlanta. As more and more people move to the area, bringing with them their own ideas of community, the question comes to mind, as it has every time a new business that might not jibe with the retail district's DNA opens nearby: How long can a neighborhood keep its personality?
NAMED AFTER THE INTERSECTION where multiple trolley lines and five streets met, the commercial district grew in 1920 after the former city of Edgewood, now Candler Park, was incorporated into the city and the trolley lines were built. Around that time, Downtown's Five Points was a mini-Manhattan packed shoulder to shoulder with businessmen and families in their Sunday best out to do their shopping or catch a show. Scott Ball, an Inman Park resident and principal with Commons Planning, a nonprofit civic design firm, says Little Five Points was the alternative to that Downtown glitz. Instead of buying a top-of-the-line bowler hat, you could find a more affordable brim. Rather than shelling out a large chunk of your paycheck to see a staged production, you could go to one of the four nickelodeons in L5P.
"You could pay a nickel to get on a streetcar in Marietta, see a movie in Little Five Points, go to a soda fountain at the Pendergrast Pharmacy that's now the Clothing Warehouse," Ball says. "And there for a nickel you could get a malted."
The area was, according to Robert Hartle Jr.'s thorough The Highs and Lows of Little Five: A History of Little Five Points, "ordinary." But as Atlanta grew outward, Little Five Points, just like Five Points, saw investment and interest turn elsewhere. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the business district that Hartle says once boasted "three grocery stores, four drugstores, three barbershops, and three movie theatres," was largely rundown thanks to white flight and the imminent arrival of a freeway that would have likely replaced all of Little Five Points with pavement, hotels, and gas stations. The storefronts had turned into oddball junk and antique shops. On the corner of Euclid and Moreland avenues sat the Redwood Lounge, a notoriously rambunctious watering hole that earned a reputation as the first stop for newly released inmates of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
Were it not for a tight band of mostly young residents and activists, the surrounding neighborhoods would be a far cry from the affluent, picturesque communities they are today. Hippies, families, and young singles unable to afford Virginia-Highland prices or who were flushed out of Midtown started moving in to Candler Park's modest bungalows and Inman Park's mansions that had been chopped up into boarding houses. They started fixing up homes and building a community. They were of a progressive bent.
image-2
"A lot of people who are committed to diversity wanted to live in a neighborhood where there would be different economic classes, spiritual traditions, races," says Linda Bryant, the founder of Charis Books, a feminist bookstore that opened in 1974. "There were a lot of people who shared those values."
Residents created a cooperative pre-school. With the leadership of Inman Parkers John Sweet and Stan Wyse, a group of active residents called the Bass Organization for Neighborhood Development, or BOND, created a credit union after the C&S Bank branch on Moreland Avenue wouldn't issue loans. The C&S branch is now Star Bar. The credit union is still in Little Five Points and accepting deposits.
The residents were militantly active. They famously faced off bulldozers trying to build a freeway that would have blasted through much of Inman Park and Candler Park. There's a reason why Moreland is so wide near Euclid Avenue and Freedom Park exists. After residents scored what appeared to be a cease-fire from the state, they realized they could turn Little Five Points, an area that was mapped for demolition and a freeway exit, into a true community asset. In addition to potentially warding off a second wave of bulldozers, it could just be good for the neighborhood.
Making that vision become a reality would not have happened without Don Bender and Kelly Jordan. Bender, a Mennonite turned Quaker from Delaware who came to Atlanta to work with impoverished communities after claiming conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, settled in Candler Park in the early '70s. So did Jordan, a jovial Summerville, Georgia native who bounced around the Southeast as a child with his father, who worked for Sears. They were attracted by the neighborhood's activist energy, small-town vibe, and promise.
In 1972, Bender helped start Atlanta Intown Development Corporation, a group of neighbors who would pool whatever cash they had to purchase and renovate the most dilapidated house on a block. "There were too many marriages going down the toilet because people were renovating their houses while they tried to live in them," he says. They would then sell or rent them. Profits were used to purchase another property.
After the group renovated six houses, it bought a strip of storefronts that wrapped around Euclid and Seminole avenues. After pleas to the owner of the Redwood to try to clean up the joint, the group purchased it as well and turned it into the Little Five Points Community Pub, an open-to-all gathering spot where residents could hold meetings, imbibe, and hang out. Bender tended bar, a sight considering most Quakers abstain from alcohol. The process continued. Jordan, who was only 25 at the time, rounded up people to chip in $1,000 or $2,000 to help purchase the Point Center Building located at the intersection of Euclid and Moreland avenues, which was then home to Charis Bookstore, Sevananda's original location, and a junk shop known as Mr. Ed's. The second floor was completely vacant.
In 1975, the communities came together to create a plan for Little Five Points' future. They went door to door to inform neighbors about meetings and surveys in the credit union's newspaper called the BOND Community Star. The results would guide neighborhood leaders in recruiting tenants. What came back wasn't incense shops or places to buy tapestries. Residents wanted a pharmacy, a dentist's office, a restaurant, a grocery store — the building blocks of a community. And they wanted independent businesses.
Jordan dropped off fliers promoting the Point Center Building around town, including Emory medical school. The area caught the eye of Richard Shapiro, a Brooklyn exile. He opened a dental office in the building despite its crumbling walls and obvious evidence of squatters, he says, because the district reminded him of Greenwich Village. "It had a real neighborhood vibe," he says.
Newly elected Mayor Maynard Jackson named Little Five Points and Lakewood Heights as intown revitalization districts, helping to connect the neighborhood groups and investors with funding, government grants, and the strongest ally possible in City Hall. When the owner of the theaters that later became Variety Playhouse and 7 Stages threatened to demolish the then-vacant buildings, Jackson helped tap the brakes, giving Jordan and Bender a chance to save the buildings. Word-of-mouth plus cheap rents attracted upstart businesses with nothing to lose and everything to gain: Wax n' Facts, which opened its doors in 1976; Unidentified Flying Objects, a store dedicated entirely to Frisbees and disc golf; Crystal Blue, an outlet selling mystical gems and geodes; Junkman's Daughter; and others. At the same time, everyday independent businesses, such as the pharmacy and dry cleaner, also moved in. Over time, the crowds attracted more crowds and Little Five Points became known as a community unlike any other in metro Atlanta.
A narrative has been peddled over time that the men and women who bought the buildings, helped bring businesses into L5P, and helped stabilize it over the years were hellbent on creating a hippie utopian experience. Jordan disagrees with that idea. Bender says it's been overstated.
"The Pub probably had more PhDs than any other business ever ... These were people many of them just ... well, very progressive in their point of view. Very much believing in self-determination," Bender says.
"This was serious community grassroots activity," says Jordan, who was influenced by community revitalization efforts he saw taking place across the country as he drove to the West Coast after his sophomore year at Emory University. "Serious get your hands dirty with the real way the world works for people who were not — none of us were — trained to do it ... Seriously. People started a federally chartered community credit union. Like only 2 percent in the whole country were community credit unions."
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AS THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED, so has Atlanta. Neighborhoods once considered places to avoid are now outside many people's budgets. The Clermont Hotel, a former flophouse, is becoming a boutique hotel. Murder Kroger will become a 12-story office building.
Inman Park and Candler Park today are two of Atlanta's most desirable intown neighborhoods with listing prices starting around $525,000 for a three-bedroom house. The Atlanta Beltline is only a half-mile away. The generation that watched Little Five Points go from anonymous to quirky will, over time, be outnumbered by younger families and people with no connection — or sense of loyalty — to the business district. What's preventing Crystal Blue from becoming a bougie boutique with $50,000 couches? Could Crate and Barrel edge out Rag-O-Rama? In other words, how long can Little Five Points remain Little Five Points?
One thing in the neighborhood's favor, Shapiro says, is its zoning. Little Five Points was Atlanta's first neighborhood commercial district, a special type of zoning category that sets a community-decided limit on the number and size of businesses that can locate in a specified area. For example, no stores larger than 5,000 square feet can locate in certain properties, helping to protect it from some big-box chains. The controversial arrival of the Edgewood Retail District down Moreland, which brought Lowe's, Best Buy, and Target, helped chill some of that threat in the area. And the limited availability of parking could also ward off some big-name retailers that bank on serving motorists more than pedestrians.
A potential new addition to the neighborhood has recently sparked chatter and some grumblings. In September, the Candler Park Neighborhood Organization heard from the new owner of a Moreland Avenue property Chipotle was considering opening in the space. A Chipotle spokeswoman said the chain does not comment on new openings until "a lease is signed and construction scheduled."
Corporate chains have posed a threat to L5P before. But they've been fought off or peacefully absorbed into the mix. Some chains and businesses might see little opportunity in the Little Five Points clientele. In the early 1990s, area residents scared off a corporate pharmacy chain that proposed a location near Little Five Points Pharmacy, a beloved early tenant that remains one of Atlanta's few independent apothecaries. An equally loud uproar erupted when Starbucks moved in on Moreland Avenue. People even expressed concern over the arrival of American Apparel. Yet Java Lords and Aurora are still brewing coffee. Boutiques have come and gone, but the independent vibe has remained.
Culture is another issue, and one that's been played out over the years. "Bohemian is a tricky identity," Ball says. "It's very easy for that to become an 'anything goes' environment. And really the owners of the property and shop owners do not have that attitude. They like and try to foster a sense of cultural and political openness. But they are very focused on a culture in a positive sense. They're not anarchists."
In 2014, the L5P Business Association created a special district to help fund infrastructure improvements in the area. High on its list — but still in its early stages — is building a parking deck that could be located underneath Bass Recreation Center playing field off Austin Avenue. The project could include mixed-income or senior housing circling the sports field. Bender and a team of others hope the facility could help sustain the district as an entertainment and cultural hub and help 7 Stages Theatre and Variety Playhouse pull in more patrons, plus attract more restaurants. Horizon Theatre recently won a highly competitive arts funding award that would help pay for street performances in Findley Plaza, which Ball says could help add another dimension to the street life.
The reality is that L5P has always been changing, just staying true to its DNA. Whether that continues is up to the various property owners and the next generation of people who flock to the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club, the Vortex, or any of the shops that line the multicolored strip of Euclid and Moreland, who move into nearby homes, or take the reins of existing businesses. Agon Entertainment, the owner of Athens' Georgia Theatre, last year purchased the Variety Playhouse from longtime owner Steve Harris, and is planning a $1 million renovation.
"I guess it will depend on the next generation." Shapiro says. "If there is the kind of love for the neighborhood that we've had for the last 20 to 30 years and if that carries over into the next generation."
Bryant says that new generation "is not going to do the same thing we did. If they did it would become passé pretty quickly. But that new generation is working in the same spirit of cooperation and desire for change — and a sense of wanting to create a place for independent voices."
Majors is retiring this year and passing Junkman's Daughter on to her son, who's moving from Los Angeles to oversee the business (he's keeping the name). She says he's already putting his spin on some of the inventory, moving some items out of circulation. The change is exciting but can occasionally make Majors bite her nails.
"He totally remodeled the shoe department this week," she says with a laugh. "He got every semblance of me out of there ... They've been doing a lot of things on their own. It's going to be interesting to see what it becomes. It's going to stay the same but it will definitely have a little bit different personality — just as it did when I took the goods from my parents' stores and added my own twist." Eric Cash SHOW TIME: Kelly Jordan (left) and Don Bender, pictured in front of two theaters they helped save, led a group of neighborhood residents starting in the 1970s to preserve and revitalize the area. "neighborhood issue 2016" 13086799 17069654 http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/04764e_neighborhood_l5p1_1_48.png http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/047653_neighborhood_l5p1_3_48.png Eric Cash DO YOU LIKE POETRY: Findley Plaza was built on what once was a part of uclid Avenue to create a space for the public to gather. http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2016/03/047653_neighborhood_l5p1_3_48.png Eric Cash LOCAL BIZ BOOM: The business district was the city's first "Neighborhood Commercial" zoning area, which places restrictions on the number of shops and restaurants and their size, while helping to keep the area's charm. Neighborhoods - How did Little Five Points get weird? "
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