Looks like MARTA Bus #2 will soon return to Decatur Station at select times.  From an AJC article primarily focused on the restoration of the Braves Shuttle…

In addition to the shuttle, the MARTA board voted to add service to bus routes 2, 87, 99 and 181.

The original item under consideration regarding Route #2 was “…selected trips between North Avenue Station to Decatur Station via Ponce de Leon Avenue on all service days”.

Thanks to Steve and Craig for point this out!

See, you don’t need a historic structure like the Sweet Auburn Curb Market to cater to smaller food operations in your community. All you need is a parking lot.

From Anthony Bourdain’s “Medium Raw”…

If any good comes out of all the pain and insecurity [of the Great Recession], I can only hope the Asian-style food court/hawker center is one of them.  This institution is way overdue for an appearance (on a large scale) in America.  Scores of inexpensive one-chef/one-specialty businesses (basically, food stalls) clustered around a “court” of shared tables.  When will some shrewd and civic-minded investors (perhaps in tandem with their city governments) put aside some parking lot-size spaces (near commercial districts) where operators from many lands can sell their wares?  Sharing tables, as in classic fast-food food courts?  Why, with our enormous Asian and Latino populations, can’t we have dai pai dong – literally, “big sign street”, the Chinese version of the indigenous food court, like they do in Hong Kong – or hawker centers, like in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur?  Or “food streets,” like in Hanoi and Saigon?  The open-to-the-air “wet” taco vendors and quesadilla-makers of Mexico City?

Food preparation areas could be enclosed, as they are in Singapore, so food handling and sanitation issues can hardly be an unsolvable impediment: Singapore is the most rigorously nanny of nanny states – with the most vibrant hawker culture.

Where would you put one of these?

A lot has been made of Decatur’s almost-mythical, one-time refusal to become the railroad hub of the South.   As told by the Georgia Encyclopedia…

It is said that residents rejected a proposal by the Western and Atlantic Railroad to make Decatur a major stop on its new line because citizens did not want the noise, smoke, dirt, and confusion.

But few legends have ever been told about the city’s later plans to “macadamize” Ponce, College and Clairemont roads connecting to Druid Hills and Atlanta.

Why?  I have no idea!  But I found this great article from the April 24, 1911 edition of The Atlanta Georgian newspaper reporting on just that event! (Read it for yourself after the jump)

BTW: according to Merriam-Webster “macadamize” means :to construct or finish (a road) by compacting into a solid mass a layer of small broken stone on a convex well-drained roadbed and using a binder (as cement or asphalt) for the mass

Read the rest of this entry »

Sounds like Lil’ John’s Celebrity Apprentice team won their challenge last night.  And that means big things for a certain Decatur-based org.  From United Methodist Children’s Home’s Facebook page…

GO LIL JON!!! Thank you Lil Jon, Donald Trump and ACN! $40,000 will have a huge impact in providing safe homes to our children and families. Visit www.umchildrenshome.org to join them in supporting our ministry.

DHS teacher Chris Billingsley sends in a bunch of pics from Saturday’s Decatur Education Foundation RunDecatur 5k and writes…

Dozier Howard was more than the brother of former state senator Pierre Howard and great grandson of Governor Howard (Howard Ave.). He may have been the best pure shooter on the 1970 DHS state championship basketball team. Also pictured are Stephanie-Stuckey-Benfield, Mayor Bill Floyd, Commissioner Jim Baskett, Mr. DHS Clarence Strictland (head maintenanceDHS), Famous DHS Coaches Brad Pitt and Iris Gibbons, Famous DHS Teacher Kris Hellerstein, DEF Director Gail Rothman, CoD Rec Director Greg White, and several Close Up students. More than 40 students participated in this Close Up Club service project.