Morning Metro: When Sycamore was a Street, Black Bears, and the Future of Punctuation
Decatur Metro | October 24, 2011
- Great 1972 photo of Sycamore Street readying for MARTA construction [GSU]
- Black bears are moving into Atlanta’s northern suburbs [AP]
- Video from the Avondale Estates auction [YouTube]
- Avondale Estates candidates forum tomorrow night [Avondale]
- No one’s really talking about it, but Lanier is back near historic lows again [AJC]
- Some tech execs in Silicon Valley send their kids to tech-free Waldorf School [NYT]
- “Is This the Future of Punctuation!?” [WSJ]
Photo of Atlanta police assembling around Woodruff Park this morning sent in by Lindy
Latest from Decaturish
This snark is now determined to figure out how to insert a point d’ironie into his comments
Alanis Morisette would probably find it ironic what I figured out how to insert a ¿, and even a ‽, when all I really want is a backward damn question mark!
You are looking for this ؟‽ It’s a little small.
Now you’re just taunting me. I hate being taunted, damn you!
You can have my apostrophes when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
+1
I always liked hederas. They look classy and now I know they have a name.
“Punctuation , is? fun!”
– Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
Thanks for including the story about Lake Lanier being at historic lows. Strange how this drought is being ignored. Guess we realize that our government won’t do anything about it anyway.
I see it as sort of like gas prices. People freak out the first time it gets to $3, but the second time it’s pretty much ignored.
You’re probably right. Guess we need to fix issues when we have the attention of the public. It even seems like people tuned out the debt crisis in a similar fashion – we’re all so used to bad economic news that it hardly registers anymore.
To keep a close eye on levels you can look at this chart.
http://water.sam.usace.army.mil/acfcharts.pdf
I don’t have a reference But the record low is all from 2007 and 2008
Question stemming from the GSU photo linked to above: was Sycamore a one-way street in 1972?
That striping looks temporary, as though they’d already started adjusting traffic in advance of construction. If you look at the upper left, though, you’ll see a little triangular traffic island. Beyond that, looks like Sycamore is operating as 2-way and westbound traffic is diverted around the square.
All traffic moved around the square one-way counterclockwise. If you went north on McDonough to the square, and went all the way around, you could go west on Sycamore.
Sycamore was two-way with parking on one side only. What is interesting about the photo is that it really has nothing to do with the design of the MARTA station. The station design probably wasn’t completed at the time and construction on the East Line didn’t start until 1975. The markings on the street are an outline of the 1972 Central Business District Development Plan and a plan by Muldawer & Associates for the redevelopment of the Square. The clues are the markings that show a mall, a fountain and cascade, and the corner note that shows the expansion of the DeKalb County courthouse. The plan at the time showed all of those features. The fountain and cascade followed the centerline of North McDonough from the mall over the transit station to the new City Hall commission chamber, located in the middle of North McDonough in front of the existing City Hall. I don’t know this for sure, but I bet Mayor Bill Breen, an architect, was behind the markings on the pavement as a way to explain the plan to the residents of Decatur.