CULTURE-PICKIN’ It’s a recurring theme in conversation with my friends: while we love calling Atlanta home, we often find ourselves craving a city with more — more to see, more to do, more to discover. Atlanta affords us such a comfortable lifestyle that sometimes it’s easy to grow complacent. It’s this existential dilemma I have with Atlanta that causes me to threaten a cross-country move once every couple months. But the sad reality of this is, every time I leave (which I’ve done a handful of times), something about this city  always brings me back. I love to hate it, I hate to love it; it seems I’ll always be a magnet to the great clusterfuckery that is Atlanta. Sure, it can be backwards and uninspired at times; it’s also growing (read: sprawling) as fast as mutant kudzu. Part slow-minded Southerner, part Olympic metropolis, part projectile urban vomit, Atlanta seems so at odds with her own identity, it’s hard to imagine how she’ll ever mature. And maybe, in that regard, Atlanta and I deserve each other. I created this blog to cultivate all the parts of ATL that make it worthwhile — to weed through weirdness, to nurture the good crop in food, music, art, people, and scene. The Buckhead fratsters to the Bankhead rap stars. The Bible belt surrounding EAV’s hipster jeans. That damned traffic. From ITP to OTP to WTF, we may be a city at odds with itself, but I’d like to think it’s that contradictory cool that makes this city what it is. So whether you’re a native or one of our many transplants, feel free to chime in on all you discover down in the Dirty. As much we sometimes hate-ATL, there’s also a good crop of culture here that’s perfectly ripe for the pickin’.

CULTURE-PICKIN’

It’s a recurring theme in conversation with my friends: while we love calling Atlanta home, we often find ourselves craving a city with more — more to see, more to do, more to discover. Atlanta affords us such a comfortable lifestyle that sometimes it’s easy to grow complacent. It’s this existential dilemma I have with Atlanta that causes me to threaten a cross-country move once every couple months. But the sad reality of this is, every time I leave (which I’ve done a handful of times), something about this city  always brings me back. I love to hate it, I hate to love it; it seems I’ll always be a magnet to the great clusterfuckery that is Atlanta.

Sure, it can be backwards and uninspired at times; it’s also growing (read: sprawling) as fast as mutant kudzu. Part slow-minded Southerner, part Olympic metropolis, part projectile urban vomit, Atlanta seems so at odds with her own identity, it’s hard to imagine how she’ll ever mature.

And maybe, in that regard, Atlanta and I deserve each other.

I created this blog to cultivate all the parts of ATL that make it worthwhile — to weed through weirdness, to nurture the good crop in food, music, art, people, and scene. The Buckhead fratsters to the Bankhead rap stars. The Bible belt surrounding EAV’s hipster jeans. That damned traffic. From ITP to OTP to WTF, we may be a city at odds with itself, but I’d like to think it’s that contradictory cool that makes this city what it is.

So whether you’re a native or one of our many transplants, feel free to chime in on all you discover down in the Dirty. As much we sometimes hate-ATL, there’s also a good crop of culture here that’s perfectly ripe for the pickin’.