Free-For-All Friday 11/18/16

Feel free to use this post to make comments and ask questions about local issues not yet discussed here over the past week.

70 thoughts on “Free-For-All Friday 11/18/16”


  4. Question regarding parking in Decatur: Can I pay at one kiosk, for example by Taco Mac, and then move my car to the horseshoe parking area near the Brick Store without paying again (assuming I am still within my paid time)? And if so, does this apply across all of Decatur (say, from the Marlay up to the Rec Center)?

      1. This applies as long as you are within the same zone. Most of downtown Decatur is 7801, but if memory serves, part of it is something else. Just make sure wherever you move to is the same one.

          1. Not sure. I just remember moving my car once, shortly after paying, and realized the zone had changed. It may not have been specifically *downtown.*
            I have been trying to look up a map, but cannot find one.
            I have both Zone 7801 and 7802 saved in my Parkmobile app as my recently used Decatur zones.

          2. All of the city’s metered parking is 7801. The confusion happens because there are other operators downtown who also use Parkmobile — next to Waffle House, next to Victory, across from the Rec, the ARLO, etc. Those lots have a different number and different terms. So, yeah, you can always move your car. You just need to make sure you move it to another spot with the same zone number.

    2. Oooooh. Did not know that. This may have finally tipped me in favor of the kiosks. I have needed a few more advantages to off-set the fact that it usually takes me 8 minutes to walk to the kiosk from my spot which is always the furthest one for biophysical reasons I do not understand, start the process, then realize I STILL haven’t memorized the license number of whichever family car I am driving, then run back to the car and look cool while I write the number on my hand, then go back and restart the process, make a mistake, restart again, etc. etc. etc. Meanwhile, it only used to take me 3 minutes to find enough quarters in my wallet, bottom of my purse, and under car seat to pay in the old meters. But I admit that I also like the “add more time” feature. And the “you’ve run out of time and it’s still before 6 PM and you could ticketed so hurry up and get back to the car” feature.

      1. If you use the ParkMobile app, you can save multiple license plates and not have to worry about remembering them. You can also save favorite zones that you can choose from when you park.

        There is a small additional fee (I think) but I find the convenience to be worth it.

  6. Question on our recycling pick-up…..as we all know this Summer we had to separate our glass (by placing in a different container) from the other recyclables. This was done to keep the glass from contaminating the other recyclables. We also all started paying an additional $25 per year for this new separate glass recycling collection. This week I saw my and my neighbors glass being put into the recycling truck along with the other recyclables, into the same garbage truck, same truck bed; in other words, the gentleman threw my separated glass in with all the paper, plastic, metal, etc. In the past, the recycling truck had a small separate partition for the glass. This time, no separate place for the glass. What gives? Are we getting the “separate glass” recycling that we are no being charged?

    2. Same thing happened in our neighborhood. I didn’t report anything though. Guess I should’ve.

    4. I thought the same thing a few weeks after the new glass pickups started but when I looked closer I noticed the truck now has a separate bin just or glass and it looks like the guy was mixing in the glass with the other recyclables but he wasn’t’.

      Now in your case it might have been just as you thought and I would of course complain to the city if that’s the case.

      A side note, I happened to be behind the recyclables truck one day on Clairmont when the guy pulled the lever on the truck to compact the glass section, of course the next thing I know the street has glass all over it which I had to figure out how to navigate thru

      And I guess now recycling companies can mix clear, brown and green glass? No way they can separate the glass once it is broken into pieces right?

  8. Good morning! I am seeking recommendations for a reputable, comfortable place to sell a diamond tennis bracelet. I have recent appraisal paperwork from a local Decatur jeweler but I don’t think they buy this type of jewelry. Anybody have experience, recommendations? Thanks!

  10. Just an FYI:

    If you can’t make the Million Women March on DC in January, a march has been organized in Atlanta for the same day. Description: The Atlanta March for Social Justice & Women is a peaceful demonstration of solidarity with members of underrepresented communities and women’s issues in Georgia. It is a statement of people who value diversity, inclusion, and who will not, and do not, accept the threat of, or violence against, people and their civil and human rights.

    We are allied with the Women’s March on Washington.

    Assembly date/time:
    January 21, 2017 at 1:00 p.m. at the Center for Civil and Human Rights

    There is an event page in Facebook.

  12. Hello everyone! Did you know that FAVE, Renfroe, and DHS use styrofoam trays EVERY SINGLE DAY in their cafeterias? DHS student Cora Kandetzki wants to bring new solutions to CSD so that this waste can stop. Please sign the petition to show your support. Thanks!
    https://www.change.org/p/cora-kandetzki-eliminate-styrofoam-and-plastic-in-the-dhs-cafeteria?recruiter=10812558&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-share_petition-custom_msg

    1. I’m vegetarian, not vegan, but I wholeheartedly endorse either the Gardein “roast” or the Trader Joe’s version, which is just Gardein repackaged as far as I’ve ever been able to tell. It’s a soy-based roast with stuffing and gravy, it’s yummy, and it’s what I’m bringing this year. (Gardein also makes individual stuffed “turkey” servings – Whole Foods may carry it – if you don’t want to make a whole roast.) And I am a huge fan of the “Pear, pomegranate, and roasted butternut squash” salad from inspiralized dot com, which is hearty enough to be a meal (chop the butternut squash however you want if you don’t have a spiralizer. (I don’t think I can post links here, but just search the site.) Hope that helps!

    2. I haven’t tried this quinoa and cranberry stuffed acorn squash but it looks good:http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/vegan-quinoa-cranberry-stuffed-acorn-squash.html

      I have made the braised carrots with cumin from NY times and they would make a tasty Thanksgiving side: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013922-braised-carrots-with-cumin-and-red-pepper
      They can be served at room temperature.

      Use olive oil and garlic in mashed potatoes?

    3. Reminds me of the new official Thanksgiving song: “You Name It!” If y’all haven’t seen this remix, get on it.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olu36QuHUWc

      Then there’s the vegan version:

    4. “I’m going to make you these chips,” he said. “You’re going to eat them and say, ‘Thank you.’ The time we spent together making them is a valuable piece of the hospitality equation. The taking in that equation is even more important than the giving. But here in this country, we have decided to replace ‘thank you’ a great deal with ‘I can’t eat that.’”

      “Unless you have a medical bracelet that says celiac, shut up and eat the food,” he said. “We want to be so special. We not only want to be special for our cooking, we want to be special for our eating. There are times when vegetarians should shut up and eat the pork chop.”

      -Interview with Alton Brown.

      1. Would you say “shut up and eat the pork chop” to a Jewish person who keeps kosher? I don’t think so. For most people who are vegetarian or vegan, deciding not to eat meat / animal products isn’t just some trivial personal preference. It’s based on serious ethical considerations.

          1. You’re the one quoting him saying “shut up and eat the pork chop,” so I’ll take it up with you instead. Or do you not agree with him?

            1. I agree on a certain level. If I had people over and they said, “I don’t eat gluten”, then I’d agree with him. I agree with his overall theme, but I understand there are different degrees. But to answer you original question, if they were at my house, I would tell them that those kind of religious rules are silly and that they should try my pork. It’s tasty.

            2. Interesting religion analogy TOK.

              Could you expound on your perspective that believers of Abrahamic religions should not be compelled to take actions that may conflict with their religious beliefs, resulting in serious personal ethical considerations?

              “Would you say “shut up and eat the pork chop” to a Jewish person who keeps kosher? I don’t think so. For most people who are vegetarian or vegan, deciding not to eat meat / animal products isn’t just some trivial personal preference. It’s based on serious ethical considerations.”

              1. Hi Marty. Sure, I’m happy to spell out the analogy a little further.

                What I object to is the assumption by Alton Brown that vegetarians are being bad guests for insisting that their personal whims be catered to, like Van Halen insisting that all of the brown M&Ms be removed from their bowl of M&Ms backstage. (Brown says that vegetarians think that they’re “special.”) Most vegetarians don’t regard their decision not to eat meat as merely a personal whim, and I thought the religious analogy would help illuminate things.

                Most people who are Jewish and keep kosher regard keeping kosher as a serious religious obligation. And most of us, I think, are going to respect their religious commitment and not serve our Jewish guest pork chops. If we’re aware they keep kosher, we’ll make sure there is some kosher main dish available for them. I appreciate that Walrus responded to me immediately above, but–to be honest–I was a little surprised that he’d tell his Jewish guest that their religious rules are silly and they should just try a tasty porkchop. I doubt that that would go over well, and it would appear to be dismissive of their deeply-held religious convictions. (I say this as somebody who doesn’t think that the Lord gave the dietary laws in Leviticus to Moses and Aaron.)

                Now, most vegetarians and vegans don’t eat meat because of serious ethical reasons. (These vary from person to person, but most often these have to do with animal welfare and how animals that become food are treated. (Google “meatrix” for a fun introduction to some of the issues with regard to factory farming in particular.) It’s not that they just prefer not to eat meat, they think that it would be morally wrong for them to eat meat. Just just like we’d respect the religious conviction of our Jewish guest, we should respect the ethical conviction of our vegetarian guest and make sure there is some suitable dish available for them.

                There are some cases where respecting others’ religious or ethical convictions is problematic–think of parents who refuse to give their childreb blood transfusions, for instance.

                1. In point of fact there was a very good reason for Van Halen to ask in their rider for the brown M&M’s to be removed. Van Halen required immense stages to be built, with many tons of expensive equipment perched atop a great deal of scaffolding, and relied on local contractors to supply the labor. One step they took to ensure their own safety (since they couldn’t personally supervise construction) was to send ahead a lengthy rider with all their demands, and close to the bottom of that document was the M&M thing. What seemed like the entitled demand of a bunch of rock ‘n roll divas actually served as a canary in the coal mine as to whether their real concerns were being taken seriously enough by the local crew.

                  1. Thanks for the tidbit about the rider in Van Halen’s contract. That actually makes sense. I wonder if other performers have weird riders for the same reason.

                2. “And most of us, I think, are going to respect their religious commitment.”
                  While others castigate similarly religious individuals as clinging to their religion.
                  Thanks for the discussion TOK.

      2. ” There are times when vegetarians should shut up and eat the pork chop.”

        There are times when anti-vegetarian carnivores should shut up, period.

        1. There is a lot of talk these days about “privilege” and “first world problems.” I have to wonder if those concepts have some relation to a post like this.

      3. For someone who has profited from the silly media fetishization of food, maybe Alton Brown should be the one shutting up and saying thank you.

    5. Tofurkey!!! It’s the best. Also, mashed potatoes are easy to make vegan friendly for your guest.

  16. There’s still time to sign up for your free home (or business) solar evaluation through Solarize Decatur-DeKalb. For residential, we’re 1 system away from hitting Tier 5, which gets all participants an additional $0.05/watt discount.

    Deadline is end of the year to sign up, and you can do so at http://www.solarizedecatur-dekalb.com

  18. Any suggestions on where to go to be fingerprinted? I have to send my prints to an out-of-state agency for a background check.

    1. You can have it done at the Dekalb County Police permit office on Camp Circle. You have to supply your own cards (which the agency should send you) and a photo id. The fee is $5 per card.

    2. Call Decatur Police and ask if they’ll do it for you. They may charge a small fee–most agencies do–but that’s my best suggestion.

    4. The shopping plaza at Lawrenceville Hwy and N. Druid Hills (CiCi’s Pizza and Public) has either a FedEx or UPS that used to do it. Call first in case my info is outdated.

    5. I might be wrong but I think I remember the Agnes Scott police did it for us when we were going thru the adoption process, but now that has been almost twenty years ago.

  20. Hey, folks, would you please not drive straight from the right turn lane on McDonough heading south? I’ve been in contact with Hugh Saxon, and he said that they are aware of the problem. I see they put up a “right turn only” sign, but it’s being ignored.

    Just moments ago, I was almost hit by a BMW SUV. Let’s not hurt one another out there please.

  22. Oooooh. Did not know that. This may have finally tipped me in favor of the kiosks. I have needed a few more advantages to off-set the fact that it usually takes me 8 minutes to walk to the kiosk from my spot which is always the furthest one for biophysical reasons I do not understand, start the process, then realize I STILL haven’t memorized the license number of whichever family car I am driving, then run back to the car and look cool while I write the number on my hand, then go back and restart the process, make a mistake, restart again, etc. etc. etc.

    1. For this very reason I have taken a picture of my license plate and keep it on my phone. Then all I have to do is pull up the pictures on my phone whenever I need to use one of the parking kiosks.

    2. Sorry about the double post, guys. I wasn’t quick enough on the draw with the Delete function.

  24. I have communicated recently with the city of Decatur about a proposed tear down/rebuild of the downtown McDonald’s restaurant. The project was blocked by the city, because it would require a new permit for the drive thru. New drive thrus are no longer allowed in downtown Decatur.

    This is another example of the non-friendly business climate in downtown. The city is anti-visitor. This is shown by the narrowing of the streets such as Church Street and McDonough. There has been talk about the narrowing of other streets like Commerce. They actually think that with an aging population people will ride their bicycles several miles to come to downtown Decatur.

    A fee must be paid for any new parking. The city wants to make a walkable city. They fail to remember that most of the people in Decatur daily do not live in downtown Decatur.

    There are credible rumors that they want to kick the county government out of downtown.

    I would never locate a business in downtown Decatur.

    2. Unlike you, I can only speak for myself. I’m pretty aged, I walk in to town. On the occasions when I drive, it is not inconvenient. I don’t understand your beef.

    3. Now that you mention it, It seems downtown Decatur is one of the last vestiges of small independent businesses. IMO, whatever they’re doing is working!

      1. Restaurants, maybe. Retail has been struggling thanks to high rents and changing shopping habits. Some shop owners I know are singing the blues. We’ll probably have a couple more gone after the holidays.

    4. Where do get that Decatur has an aging population? If you mean all the kids are getting older, OK sure.

    5. I patronize that McDonalds for coffee, and sometimes a breakfast sandwich, at 6 am on weekdays. I specifically detour into Decatur for the purchase, I would really miss the convenience of the drive-thru. The City can provide a variance for the drive-thru, if it desires to do so.

    6. What are the rumors about kicking county government out of downtown? Lee May himself has been proposing this for nearly two years. I don’t know that the city has anything to do with it.

      1. What Telemachus said. And hardly a secret! Not rumors, and not Decatur originated. It came straight from Lee May’s “State of the County” speech in 2015.

        http://www.decaturish.com/2015/01/dekalb-ceo-proposing-downtown-dekalb/

    7. To your comment about the management of roadways;
      form the New York Times;
      Closing off a section of Broadway in 2009 has been a boon for the area: Travel times improved on Seventh Avenue by 4 percent even as pedestrian counts have grown as high as 480,000 a day from 320,000 a decade earlier.
      “Taking out the five Broadway blocks and pedestrianizing them flew in the face of all the thinking: Traffic would back up to Albany, and so on, which didn’t happen. And it immediately filled with pedestrians. So you can design streets where the space is shared. Times Square’s not exactly my favorite place in the world, but it spawned the city’s plaza program. That is where you can have a real impact on the social capital of a city. If you look at Astor Place, where all sorts of things are going on, creating plazas and widening sidewalks, it’s transformative. There’s so much potential all across the city, and it’s good for the local economies, too.”

      David J. Burney, Former commissioner of design and construction; Pratt architecture professor

  26. my wife had to go dairy-free after we had our first baby who had an allergy to cow’s milk protein and I discovered a great vegan recipe website, http:///www.ohsheglows.com. The recipes have bee amazing from here (and I’m a tried and true carnivore). The site author has as section on holiday recipes including thanksgiving: http://ohsheglows.com/categories/recipes-2/holiday/holiday-thanksgiving/ . I definitely recommend the vegan caesar salad and vegan enchilada casserole..have been very impressed with her recipes.

  28. Did anyone make it to the DeKalb Ave Corridor Improvement meeting yesterday? I was stuck in traffic and missed it.

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