Over on Visit Decatur GA, Mary’s got a list of the artists who will be taking to the streets of Decatur this Saturday from 3p-6p to spread a little song, dance, art etc around Downtown Decatur and Oakhurst.  Here’s her list of participating artists for April along with Mary’s descriptions.

•  Elizabeth Dulemba:  a noted children’s book illustrator, Elizabeth will turn her talents to sidewalk chalk art. She will mix serious illustration with interactive illustration where kids can pose in the art for fun pictures.
• Larkin Taylor-Parker:  plays an incredible variety of songs on her tuba
• Lew Lefton and Joel Byars:  will assemble an entourage of local comedic talent
• Luis Stefanell:  a conga drummer and singer whose repertoire includes cha-cha mambo, samba and afro-cuban funk
• Troy Cono:  singer, songwriter and acoustic guitarist
• Maria Nicholas, on violin
• Valero Flamenco. Flamenco! I love flamenco!

Artists will be out and about each Saturday between 3p-6p in April, May and June as part of Sidewalk Saturdays.

Oh and I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass along Mary’s postscript, which includes a great link!

If you are interested by the idea of surprise public performances, you will love this story by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post. It has nothing to do with Sidewalk Saturdays but it’s a terrific piece about violinist Joshua Bell performing in the D.C. Metro. Thought provoking. And Weingarten won a Pulitzer for it.

Pic of Troy Cono courtesy of VisitDecaturGA

• Scott Drake reported that he had attended a homeowners meeting at the Renaissance condo building about “problems they’re going to be having with some construction issues….very similar to what happened at the Artisan where they had to scaffold the whole building and slowly make some repairs.
• Mayor Baskett spoke to the fact that at his request he and the City Manager had a meeting with Superintendent Phyllis Edwards and Board Chair Marc Wisniewski to discuss the upcoming Beacon Hill renovation and the planned apartment developments downtown.  Then the mayor added, “No where in that discussion did they mention that they were going to be voting on a bond issue tomorrow night or do those large construction plans at the high school and middle school, but maybe I guess we still have work to do on your communications.”
• “We need to think about our decision from last December…Yes, there’s a sense that there wasn’t enough public engagement for this project.  It was our thought that there had been plenty of public engagement for the project, because in addition to all that, we had a task force working on a number of issues including that for more than a year.  And they had had several public input sessions in which those very issues were raised.  All of that, we had tight enough guidelines that we could proceed doing that permit.  Having said all of that, there is not a person sitting up here who doesn’t have some kind of concern about the way this worked and we’ll be having discussions about that. I can tell you that that’s going to happen.  Whether it’ll lead beyond that or not, I can’t say. But there will be discussions.” – Mayor Jim Baskett responding to a 335 resident who spoke about the 315 West Ponce approval process during the “Requests and Other Business” portion to a meeting