UPDATE: The Zoning Board of Approvals won’t address this issue until March.  Not on the docket for next Monday.

While the AJC’s recent follow-up story on the Peer Support and Wellness Center controversy details the arguments of those making zoning-related arguments about the Center….

“How can you be a resident if you only stay at most seven days? And 25 people who come every day, they are not just visitors,” said Soren Christensen, who has lived in the neighborhood for eight years.

…Dave Kell’s InDecatur and Decatur Heights blogs continue to focus on potential criminal elements.

Publishing an “Incident Address Report” requested from Decatur PD, Dave shows that there were 20 “incidents” called into the center and documented in the past 20 months.  Five of these incidents are tagged “EMS”, while six are labeled “disturbance”, two “location checks”, one “theft”, one “meet a person”, one “suicide threat”, one “criminal trespass”, one “suspicious person”, one “person down” and one “hang up”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Regator and InDecatur and are celebrating their respective 1st and 2nd birthdays tonight with a blowout at The Grange from 6p-9p.

As Dave has stated on InDecatur, there’s no sponsor, so there’s no open bar.  BUT if you come equipped with lots of InDecatur knowledge you might get yourself a free drink.   Personally, I’m banking on “goal weight” being one of the questions.

Happy birthday virtual Decatur brethren and sistren!

DHS teacher Chris Billingsley notifies us that he’s been using DM and InDecatur this week to teach a unit on local government!

Just to let you know that DHS students in the 9th grade have been looking at your Decatur Metro blog this week as part of a unit on local government. Many of my students complain that the only thing more boring than local government is yard work. Not true but it can be hard to get students excited about Decatur unless you mention zombies. The students were very interested in the information posted on Indecatur and Decatur Metro blog sites concerning the movies being filmed this week in Decatur. One of my students later told me, “Your class was not too boring today.” Thanks Decatur Bloggers!

What is the world coming to!

But seriously.  Wow.  I’m flattered!  As I’ve discovered for myself over the past year and a half, local activity is just as interesting, if not more so, than anything at the monolith, national level any day.  You just need to know where to look.

Thanks for stopping by DHS students!  Come back tomorrow (and the next day) and amidst the seemingly ENDLESS talk about development, I promise to incorporate more talk of zombies even when its completely unnecessary and inappropriate.

One more photo after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though there are rumors out there that I’m highly “elusive”, I still jumped at the chance this past week when the Georgia Podcast Network’s Amber and Rusty asked me to come over to Java Monkey and talk about DM and blogging in general with Dave of InDecatur.

The interview is now up can be found over on the Georgia Podcast Networks’ “Mostly ITP” page.

Here’s Amber’s summery of what we rambled about…

DeKalb County, particularly Decatur, has one of the more vibrant hyperlocal blogging scenes in Georgia. We discuss why this is the case and more in this interview with Dave Kell, proprietor of the inDecatur blog, and Nick, who runs Decatur Metro.

Also discussed:

• The origins of their respective blogs
• The Atlanta Journal vs. Atlanta Constitution vibe between their two respective blogs, and the nature of their (friendly?) competition
• The tedious topic of what will happen when newspapers go belly up
• Advantages and disadvantages of partial anonymity versus full public disclosure
• How Carl Black seems to be everywhere. (Now he’s in our podcast too)

We’ve known Dave through other various functions in the past, but this was the first time we’d met the elusive Nick.

This is the first interview they’ve given together. You heard it first on the Georgia Podcast Network!

(little joke there, you’ll have to listen to get it)

Thanks again Amber and Rusty!  Had a great time!

The venerable GriftDrift recently wrote up Decatur Metro and InDecatur as his #5 Blog Story of 2008.

We sure are getting a lot of love this year!  Thanks Grift!

He accurately notes that this blog was called “Blogging in Decatur” for its first three or four days before quickly switching to its more hip and slightly confusing current name.

In case you haven’t seen the latest issue of Atlanta Magazine, Decatur Metro and InDecatur have been awarded Atlanta Magazine’s 2008 “Best of Atlanta” award for “best neighborhood news”!

Along with Catherine and Lauren’s AsianCajuns, which won “best local style blog”, Decatur is very well-represented in the online section of the awards this year.

I had been holding onto this story until I could get my hands on a hard copy of the mag, but Catherine spilled the beans over at The Decatur Minute earlier today, so I thought I better just get it out there!

Oh, and make sure to click over to The Minute to check out all the brick-and-mortar Decatur winners!

Congrats all!

UPDATE: Here’s the blurb…

“InDecatur and Decatur Metro’s prespectives on this DeKalb berg may differ slightly – “The town you’d get if you bred Berkeley with Mayberry” and “An independent voice in an independent city,” respectively – but what these two blogs offer does not: copious posts on anything and everything Decatur.  Want to know what type of restaurant is opening on East Ponce?  InDecatur will provide an annotated photo of the space, along with the inside scoop gathered by intrepid sources (aka fellow Decaturites).  Want an update on development issues, such as with the citywide Wi-Fi will be in effect?  Decatur Metro will contact the city manager.”

Actually I’d contact Andrea.

After months of pilfering without acknowledgment, the AJC finally uttered the names of InDecatur and this site in a recent blurb about the city’s new “Decatur Minute” blog.  It’s not a feature in the NY Times (like the one a lady who blogged about a year of daily visits to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park got a while back – a great blog incidentally), but we’ll take it.

Also we get nice props from Linda Harris.  She sure knows how to make a blogger blush.

Speaking of The Decatur Minute, yesterday Catherine reminded us that tomorrow is the Oakhurst Arts and Music Festival (10a-7p).  The 5k Arts Run starts at 8a in front of One Step at a Time.

BTW: I pilfered this from InDecatur