Things I miss about Atlanta

September 15, 2007 - Reading time: 3 minutes

Note: 13 years later, I still miss all of these things about Atlanta, and many more.  Cactus Car Wash (the one on Ponce) is still there but it's called something else now.  I've grown to hate Houston, and Texas, much more in the last decade.

So I've lived in Houston for a couple of months now, and am finally starting to find my way around.  While I still don't think of Houston as home, I definitely feel somewhat settled in (when Clio and my furniture get here, the illusion will be mostly complete).

But there are a few things that Atlanta really did better than Houston:

• Your Dekalb Farmers Market.  I really miss that place.  I don't know if it's technically a "farmers market," but it's clean, it's convenient, and it has a huge selection of food - in particular produce, meat, beer and wine, and the range of international foods.  I haven't found anything that comes close, though someone mentioned Central Market so I'll probably try that out at some point.
• Cactus Car Wash.  This car wash place isn't native to Atlanta, but it definitely hasn't been duplicated in Houston.  I finally decided to get the car washed this morning and ended up at Classy Chassis on Bay Area Blvd - they did a pretty good job washing the car, but went a bit overboard on the shiny greasy dash cleaner stuff inside.  Also, to get a decent wax job you have to wait around for several hours, which I didn't have time to do today.
• Road quality.  The road quality around Houston SUCKS.  No, don't deny it; you're lying.  Concrete roads are wonderfully low maintenance for decades, but at some point it's time to stop pretending they're still OK.  The roads around South Houston have reached that point and passed it.
• Wayfinding.  Outside of the city, it's not too hard to find your way around.  Inside the city is just madness.  You can't get off an interstate and expect to get right back on in the city - the entrance ramp may be half a mile away from the exit.  Furthermore, signage is really bad, and sometimes downright misleading.  GPS would really help here.
• City and County offices.  In Houston, at least in Harris County (where I live), county offices are open 8-5, Monday through Friday, and that's all.  So any kind of business you might have (getting license plates, drivers license, etc) requires taking time off work.  That's stupid - who has time for that?  I sure don't.  It's a real hardship.
• Clear windshields.  In Atlanta, you get a single sticker for your car each year, and it goes on your (single) license plate, and that's it.  No insurance card, no emissions sticker.  Not so in Texas.  Two gigantic stickers get plastered on your windshield, and the front plate is required (the standard license plate has a silly inaccuracy that I'll get to later).  So much for the "no sticker" philosophy I've been holding to ...

Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of nice things about Houston (such as NASA).  They've just fallen a bit short on details.

No shit, there I was ...

June 21, 2003 - Reading time: 3 minutes

So a friend of mine was on TV today -- specifically, he was a guest on the show Tech Support on People TV, which is broadcast live to whoever is watching in metro Atlanta. Since it's not everyday that most people get on TV, and there was supposedly room in the studio for 3 friends to watch, I went with two other people to watch David be on TV. Which was going to be fun.

So we get to People TV, which was highly reminiscent of UHF, but it was really neat to be hanging around the studio, and we were going to be sitting in the control room watching the show.

At least that was the plan until about 40 seconds (literally) before the show started, when the producer of the show asks us "are you three on camera?" We thought that he was asking us if we were going to be on the show, so we said "no" -- to which he said "Well, you are now," and started herding us through the door into the studio. We were trying to tell him that we weren't on the show until we realized that what he wanted us to do was operate the cameras.

So we operated the cameras, which was cool. Since none of us knew what we were doing, it was a bit interesting at first, but we had lots of fun and really got the hang of it by the end. And we got on the credits of the show, which was neat even though they spelled my name wrong. Plus we learned lots of neat things like how to zoom and focus and roll the cameras around, plus some cool TV cameraman phrases like "I need a two shot, left."

After the show, we were hanging around outside the building waiting for David to take care of some paperwork to get a VHS copy of the show, but he was taking too long so we went inside to get some free pizza and escape some weird drunk guy. So we're eating pizza in the hallway, and the producer comes out and says "hey, do you want to run cameras for the next show?"

Of course we said yes, and this time even got a more active role in the production process, which is really hectic by the way -- especially for live broadcasts.

Oh, and they spelled my name wrong on the credits again, but differently this time.

So anyway, definitely an interesting day. I wonder if I can go and operate the cameras more; that was fun. He said we could come back; maybe we can take him up on his offer :)