We were fortunate during our trip to stay with Audacia Ray, and to meet Belledame for cupcakes before we headed to PodCamp New York. Thanks y’all!

No one should perceive this as a bash, because it’s not, but spending some time in New York has made me appreciate Atlanta more.

It’s hard not to get caught up in all the negativity that people toss at Atlanta.

Its corrupt and inefficient government…
Its sprawl…
Its poor air quality…
Its racial tensions…
Its bastard transit system…
Its physical and philosophical isolation from the rest of the state…
Its lack of a coherent identity…
Its disappearing history, with rotten caretakers of what’s left…
Its sea of bland chain stores…
And sweet Jesus, the traffic.

There’s a lot to like about New York. You can get damn well near anywhere (except LaGuardia Airport) on public transportation in a reasonable amount of time. There’s a deli seemingly on every block. There’s always something to do, even after 9 p.m. I could feel the presence of people and life everywhere that’s often missing even in the innermost, heavily-populated parts of Atlanta.

The last time I’d been to New York, I was 13 or 14, and did all the touristy shit. Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, a Broadway show, etc. We stayed in Embassy Suites on Times Square.

I didn’t get the sense then that I got this time of just how massive the city really is. A lifetime wouldn’t be enough to see it all, and it defies a direct better or worse assessment versus another city. There isn’t anything I’ve ever been around like it.

There’s an awareness of space in all the construction that was foreign. The Brooklyn apartment I stayed in was big by New York standards, but would be small or on the low end of medium size for an Atlanta apartment. Passages and sidewalks and retail stores are cramped, with seemingly just enough space to function at all times, and often teetering precariously on the edge of a mob scene or a wreck. If Northerners perceive Southerners to express themselves with sweeping, dramatic gestures, I suspect that it’s because we lack that consciousness of space.

Sprawl is a relative term. Brooklyn is a sprawling area by New York standards, which means that the buildings are only two or three stories tall much of the time instead of 15 or 20 or more. There’s still enough density that most people don’t drive anywhere. Here, sprawl means houses with yards, and neighborhoods that don’t bother with sidewalks.

I’ve been a long-time advocate for building density and expanding mass transit. I still am after visiting New York, but there was a lot about seeing this extreme case study that made me understand critics’ reservations more than I did before.

Keeping the place clean seems to be an impossible task. New York makes Atlanta look immaculate. The infrastructure had the look, feel and spit smell of a theme park ride near the end of the season, when cleaning crews have fallen so far behind on their duties that they quit scraping the gum off the handrails and the snide penciled-in remarks off the “don’t ride this coaster if you’re an expectant mother or have heart problems” signs.

It was strange to see highway overpasses right next door to peoples’ apartments. The sky seemed to have an orange haze the whole time we were there, giving the place a surreal feeling.

Most of my interactions with people were with PodCamp folk, and you can see from the post-before-last I had some bizarre experiences with them. My general impression is that people are friendlier down here, but Amber told me on the MARTA ride back from the airport that she found people to be more or less as friendly when she lived there.

During our cab rides, people seemed to honk with much more gusto, and with a shorter burn time. One of our cabbies lollygagged a bit around one corner, and a mini-van driver behind us went batshit after only two seconds or so. There was much honking. And once I saw a cabbie blow through an intersection blaring his horn instead of stopping to see if there were any pedestrians in the way.

Me after the beer sample

A discussion Amber, Dacia and I had while I was downing the beer sampler at lunch Friday (see photo above) was about how historic preservation is a relatively new concept, not really gaining prominence until the 70s or 80s. There’s perhaps a misconception that a lot of the historic buildings in New York are still around, but the reality is that stuff gets bulldozed there even quicker than it gets torn down in Atlanta.

We checked out the Global Feminisms exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, which I may or may not write a separate blog post about at some point. The main thing it got me thinking about was the cyclical nature of life, and how history will tell you there’s much that’s inevitable and doomed to be repeated over and over and over again. Not a new insight, I reckon, but it never hurts to be reminded of that. I also learned there once was a female Pope, and that the next Pope tried to disappear her from the history books.

I guess I haven’t done much of a job explaining why I appreciate Atlanta more now. I’m not sure I have a tangible reason, other than missing it when I was there in a way I don’t miss it when I’m in other Southern towns.

Part of it might have been related to the episode with the British guy (see my PodCamp New York liveblogging post), and part something that happened on the final cab ride back to the airport from Brooklyn this morning.

The driver was a huge, jovial guy with a slight accent I couldn’t quite make. I had a lot of fun talking to him for most of the trip, but he started into a “I couldn’t live in the South because it’s too slow” missive as we approached the terminal. He had children who lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, so it’s not as if he was making a judgment purely based on site-unseen presumptions.

It’s good for people to be proud of where they’re from, but the South-bashing caused some regional pride to well up in me that I had forgotten about. That presumption that we’re all slow, backwards bumpkins didn’t leave me with a very good impression of them. It pissed me off, and made me want to defend my little neck of the woods despite it often living up to its reputation.

That defense mechanism forced me to think about all the things I love about Georgia. The trips we’ve taken to Savannah and Americus and half a dozen small towns. Walking to the Square in Decatur. The beautiful countryside and farms and mountains. The summers I spent playing baseball. Hearing stories from my mom about walking with her brothers and sister to the Fox Theater, and how my grandfather would only go with them when a John Wayne movie was playing. Podcast parties. Trivia. Living with Amber.

I got a little taste of how it feels to be bashed for my hometown’s perceived backwardness, and it wasn’t a good taste. There’s so much to this state, and not just in Atlanta. While I hope I’ve never written somebody’s opinion off simply because they were OTP, I acknowledge it’s possible I have, and I apologize to anyone I’ve ever done that to. I don’t ever want to do that again.

I’m glad to be home.