City-Dwellin' Vagabonds are We.
Not American Apparel models. At any rate, something in this series of photos comes very close to the core of whatever it is about this town that fills me with both a deep satisfaction and an ineluctable longing. I'm back visiting Atlanta this week, the city where where I lived for six love/hate/hate filled years. The dirty politics, the unplanned development, as if all decision-making is taking place in a vacuum with no template or precedent whatsoever, meanwhile, everything just vibrates with this burgeoning hum, of art, community, kudzu. The way crumbling old buildings with decrepit storefronts sit cheek-by-jowl with crumbling old buildings with shining new storefronts. The side-streets lined with crazy old houses with original works of arts-and-crafts beside ancient oaks in the front yards between the porch and the broken sidewalk. And right nearby, those old train tracks, and crawling all over everything is the kudzu, whose leathery green bulletproof leaves curl around all of this: old industrial-era architecture, Civil War shells half-buried in the woods in the backyards, the Wal-Mart up north of the city.

9:52 a.m., this local coffeeshop: The punks and the climbing businessfolk clad in bluetooth and the clutch of neighborhood men whiling away the morning at the local coffeeshop arguing about economics and local politics.

It all just makes me sigh and sigh, even as I'm here again, visiting. There's something telling you you can grasp it but it all moves so fast. Any. Way.

Here're some observations from Creative Loafing's Ken Edelstein that link to this series of eerie photos.
Drink and enjoy, Henshaw. And I hope you're having a nice week, too, and thinking of your own only love sprung from your only hate.