Thomas Wheatley has an excellent in-depth profile in the latest Creative Loafing of Your DeKalb Farmer’s Market, including a rare interview with owner Robert Blazer.

History, behind the scenes looks, interviews with staff members, future plans.  It’s all in there.

Oh and according to Wheatley, if plans to triple the store’s size over the next 10 years play out, it will become the largest grocery store in the United States and could employ upwards of 1,500.

As many of you know by now, Creative Loafing’s latest issue features a “Do” list for many of Atlanta’s most interesting and entertaining “neighborhoods”.  Here’s Decatur’s intro…

Just a few miles from downtown Atlanta down Ponce de Leon Avenue sits what’s arguably metro Atlanta’s most desired suburb — a progressive enclave of quaint homes, solid restaurants, a walkable downtown, and tight-knit neighborhoods that are very protective of the community they’ve created. And with well-performing schools and a high quality of life, the city’s managed to attract young families, its laid-back attitude has lured the LGBT community, and its proximity to Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives it an academic vibe.

DM may have even received a mention.  A very pleasant surprise.

Creative Loafing’s Omnivore blog received word from a restaurant manager, that popular Sichuan Restaurant, “Tasty China” is planning a third location “near Emory”.  As detailed in the post, Tasty China is where the now famous Peter Chang got his start…

Those addicts know that the infamously peripatetic Peter Chang was chef at the original Tasty China. Then he left. Then he came back to open “Peter Chang’s” with the Tasty China folks. Last month, he left town again — back to Richmond, Va. — and the restaurant has been renamed Tasty China 2. Chang retains no interest in the restaurant, according to [restaurant manager] Lissandra.

Seems like Emory Point would be the most obvious location, but who knows!

If you haven’t yet done so, you might want to check out Thomas Wheatley’s cover story in Creative Loafing this week, which does a most excellent job of summing up the unresolved “problems” with Atlanta’s biggest revitalization project – “south downtown”.   After detailing the area’s vibrant past…

Grocery stores sold everything a person would need to make three meals a day, as well as specialty items such as pig’s feet to pig heads. At Roy’s, where you could select a live chicken, get its head chopped off, and watch the decapitated fowl run around the store. Another shop sold “rat cheese” — cut from a block of sharp New York cheddar — for rodent traps or sandwiches. Yet another bar-be-qued chicken.

…and less vibrant recent past…

Nearly 30 homeless men and women huddled together, resting underneath the long ramp leading to the Garnett Street MARTA station. Others slept on the steps of the police department headquarters in the shadow of the city jail. Even more wandered the streets, asked motorists passing through for help, or stood alone in parking lots.

…Wheatley starts to think about possible solutions and dives head first into a Pandora’s Box of urban fun…

Everyone’s in agreement about the key ingredient needed to help south downtown grow: more people. Which raises the obvious question: How do you coax new residents and tourists to a historic area that has very few vestiges of its glorious past, offers little in the way of decent shopping, and which becomes a ghost town after workers hop in their cars at 5 p.m. to head to the ‘burbs? How do you build retail when the number of residents hasn’t reached critical mass and probably won’t if such basic amenities as grocery stores aren’t nearby? It’s a chicken-or-egg scenario, one that leaves many interested parties scratching their heads.

h/t: ATL Urbanist

How did I miss this?  Wait.  How did YOU ALL miss this?!

Though far from being the two-wheelers’ playground it could be, Atlanta’s made some inroads when it comes to cycling. The most welcome addition to the metro region’s disparate bicycle network: Decatur’s new bike lanes along West Ponce de Leon Avenue and West Trinity Place. Wide and well-marked, the lanes clearly show where cyclists are supposed to pedal and motorists are supposed to yield. Designers even threw in a “bike box,” an area that allows cyclists to skip in front of cars at the red light and make a safe turn across traffic when the light changes to green. Decatur could’ve just tossed down a strip of paint on a busy road, but it went one step further and placed West Ponce on a “road diet” — actually reducing the number of automobile lanes in order to discourage drivers from roaring down the street. Sure, it’s one small $550,000 project. But it’s a great step for a city that’s building on its reputation as a paradise for progressives.