Weird Al Is In Town

Because we're tacky...

Weird as he may be Weird Al has nothing on daVille. At least when it comes to tacky.

Subway says "I'm with Stupid"

In the wake of the staked out tacky sign we now have its tacky offspring. It would appear there is only one way to keep lovely downtown Dunwoody from challenging Memorial Drive for the title of "armpit of the state," and that is to have these folks take their signs with them when they leave.

Somehow they have yet to realize you can buy a pretty good sandwich at Publix. Want to kick it up a notch? Shroom on across the street for a righteous hoagie. And how many choices do you have for a burger? Exactly.

If you need your locks chopped there are two Olde School shops a short walk away. And if you need a stylin' you can coif your doo at your choice of real shops. You know--where you'll stand a chance of getting your hair done by the same person two times in a row instead of hack job du jour based on notes someone entered into their computer.

So it looks like the responsibility for cleaning daVille rests solely on your shoulders. You need to vote with your dollars because it is the only vote that counts.

Everybody Gets A Haircut

Except for hippies and bald guys, everybody gets a haircut. And there are quite a few places in daVille to get yer style on. We are blessed with two classic, old school shops, a few high-styling shops and recently we've been blessed (or perhaps cursed) with one of the national, never-the-same-cutter-twice franchises. This cannot be news to anyone as their signs are planted throughout the right of way in daVille. Some folks find this signage out of place, even offensive. How do we know? Because these people are never quiet.

Bonner Brothers--NOT!

There they are. Somewhere between food on the shelf and food on the plate in daVille. These signs have been plastered up and down the street for months now. If they worked at all you'd think they'd have worked by now.

Apparently some sign vigilantes must have, some time in the past taken the sign ordinance into their own hands.

Paul Is Staying Put

Cannot cut that cable and it would cost a fortune to cut down that tree.

Tie Your Tacky Signage Round The Old Oak Tree

You may wonder what Alison thinks of all this but know this for certain: there is more than one place in daVille to get a haircut.

DeKalb Dumps On Dunwoody

You cannot live in daVille without putting up with a daily traffic grind now exacerbated by construction. Almost any construction requires utility marking which is usually done by a private utility locating service. You've probably seen the trucks in your neighborhood. Of late they've been canvassing the Linear Park, Spalding to Roberts and south on Roberts.

Unlike other utilities who farm out the location services, DeKalb County, the jobs works program, has decided to mark their pipes themselves.

On Roberts

Man With The Marker

Take note of the spare spray can on the cart paying particular attention to color. While this was on Roberts we find at the linear park the lines are marked.

Marked Near Dunwoody Road

But what's that? Over to the right. See, in the brush? That looks like a...

Isn't Easy Being Blue

...spray paint can...

Only The Best For Painting Grass

...indeed! That is exactly what it is! And it has a striking resemblance to the one in the second picture.

Now no one, at least not in The Other Dunwoody, is saying the individual pictured above discarded this or any other blue spray paint can, or even that these cans (there are at least two) have anything to do with DeKalb County Watershed. But you, dear reader, are one of the Smart Folk and TOD will rely on you to come to your own conclusions.

Concealed Carry

In order to legally carry a concealed weapon in the State of Georgia you need a Carry License and the associated FBI background check--ignore the fact that licensing is a responsibility of the states. But if you want to carry a bill, a campus carry bill, out of committee you need no license. You just need last minute agenda updates.

Which comes as quite a surprise to the opponents of licensed carry on University System properties. Bear in mind the facts of the current situation. Today's prohibition is not just against students, faculty, administration and employees of the University System, it prohibits all licensed carry by all legally licensed and background checked gun toters. And that applies to all University System property including off-campus properties which are often hard to identify as legally allowed gun free zones.

Most disappointing is not that Alan Powell pulled a fast one by tacking the legislation to the agenda but that he did not tack on a provision for licensed carry under the Gold Dome. 

Six Foot Over

If you develop or even renovate property on Dunwoody Parkway the law laid down at City Hall says you must install 12 foot wide sidewalks. You will note this happened in front of faux Georgian office building when it was rehabbed. Since this code carries the weight of law you might expect this dictate to be enforced evenhandedly. You might be forgetting the first principle of legislation--laws are for the wee people not for those writing them. After all it was the City that put in the current non-compliant sidewalks. Yes there was the property ownership/rights issue, but this is simply City blackmail--you want to develop? then you have to build our sidewalks.

And why demand 12 foot sidewalks (and install 6 foot) in the first place? There was a reason for the twelve footers, wasn't there? Not one with sufficient political clout to spawn a grant industry (think bicycles) but it had to be more than some architect's renderings ripped right off the Mad Men set. You know, A-Lines pushing baby buggies and suited gentlemen tipping a fedora as they pass, all in pencil and pastel. Is that what crafts our laws?

Or is it a code at all? The second principle, in the vernacular, is that all rules are meant to be broken. Now that we have our first major re-development on the Parkway the first thing they are likely to get is a pass on the 12 foot requirement. What about those Olde Farts and their walkers trying to 'Shroom On In? How will they pass? Or when their grandkids visit and want to walk with their strollers to the hardware store to pick up some Duct Tape? What if they have twins? These are real problems. At least as real as catering to all the bike commuters in Dunwoody. It must not look good in pastels.

When City waivers are there for the asking it makes you wonder what other codes and ordinances spilling out of City Hall fail to rise above a mere suggestion. 

It's Not About The Toilet Seat

You know how the story goes:

The gal gets up in the middle of the night heading to the bathroom to get some business done. She keeps it dark to avoid full awake and sits on the toilet. Except she all but falls in because the guy who'd visited earlier left the toilet seat up.

The guy may get a righteous raking over the coals. Or he may not. And it won't be related to whether or not the 'mode went full bidet. If the guy thinks really hard he just might figure out he'd done something earlier that really rubbed her the wrong way. He gets ripped a new one, but it isn't really about the toilet seat.

Here in daVille our toilet seat is called "theater." In this case the building, not so much the playas. Some power players have noted that Dunwoody has a theater,  albeit in need of repair, over at Brook Run. You know, where the doggies run, the skaters skate and the swingers swoop thru the trees. Oh, and the interstate lane the politicos like to call a "multi-use-trail" wends its way over there. That's also where the food trucks swarm when it is warm enough for swarming. Sounds like the perfect place for additional structured leisure activity, doesn't it?

Well, maybe not.

Opponents of renovating the existing theater are quick to talk about costs and bring up the asbestos boogey man. Not so quick to compare the renovation costs to even the land acquisition for another site. That's right, some have questioned if Brook Run is the right location suggesting that the reuse, recycle, repurpose mantra of the greenies is just so much rubbish. If you boil away the talking points about cost it really comes down to location because locating elsewhere requires acquiring very expensive land.  Which isn't to say the City hasn't noodled around in real estate before.

Some who want a well-rounded community center (as in City Hall/Community Center/Theater) cannot envision a City Hall that is far removed from the center of money and power : Perimeter Center. One must also consider that Police are not moving out of the Perimeter area if for no other reason than having to drive through too much traffic to get to their Mall jobs. Of course no one at City Hall cares if the mere Citizens of Dunwoody have to drive through that crap.

Until the proponents of the Brook Run Theater understand it isn't about the toilet seat they are not part of the real conversation and will end up watching City Hall ram thru something completely different.

If You Can, You Must

If you can get a Georgia Weapons Carry License, must you? If you have a carry license must you own a gun? If you own a gun must you carry it? Always? Everywhere?

The high priests and priestesses of Common Sense Gun Control (AKA: you get no guns while we get armed guards) suggest that the answer to all is a definitive YES! At least when we're talking about licensed carry on college campus. While they tend to stay on point regarding guns and drunken frat parties (but isn't that the real problem?) every now and then they drop their guard suggesting this is a good first step.

But neither side of tug of war over guns are very good friends with facts. So if we go with "yes" to these questions how many gun toters are we going to see at UGA? Let's pick on UGA because it is hard to tell where campus starts and stops and we might note how reluctant UGA is to call the cops about a rape but quick to pull the trigger on a hotel guest with a gun in his room.

Thirty five percent are 22 and up. That's a lot of guns. But thirty percent are under 19. That's a lot of targets. The split between 20 and 21 requires estimation as this bracket is reported as a group which split evenly is 17.5 percent each. An equal number of guns and targets. That's 10.5 percent more guns than targets so if you subscribe to the "can equals must" argument you are more likely than not to run across a gun-toter on UGA campus.

If campus carry passes what are parents of high school seniors to do? Probably the best plan is to schedule a few gap years and when your little snow flake turns twenty one round up one of the "can equals must" logicians to take your darling down to the court house to get a license and stop by the pawn shop to buy them a pistol. 

Million Dollar View

There is a second, more viable, proposal for McCondos for Old Farts in the dilapidating low rise office park on the Parkway. Prices are likely to start in the mid-700's but with added upgrades and an elevator a $1M price tag is not out of reach.

Depending on the unit an owner is a short lift ride away from a window sporting a view something like this.

That's right. One million dollars to look at the arse-end of a decaying US Post Office. The salt in this wound is that the USPS attempted to close this office consolidating operations at the delivery facility on Shallowford near 285 an industrial area where such views are more in context. Folks who claim to be more Dunwoody than you would have none of it, claiming that where they are from, so long ago, the center of any city was anchored by the post office. The USPS caved to pressure closing the Shallowford facility moving those operations to daVille. As a result the Dunwoody Green Market (yes, there once was a farmer's market in Dunwoody) lost use of the USPS side parking lot and you get to pay a fortune to enjoy the sights and sounds of the USPS in all its glory.

Lacking Qualifications

This is pulled from the muck bucket labeled "You Cannot Make This Up" often known as "DeKalb County." DeKalb has become such an odious crock that even some who shat in it can no longer abide the stench even though Dad pointed at some of them saying "you did that, didn't you?"

Dad was mad. And that led to further investigation such that the bad little shats said they'd clean the crock. So they established a DeKalb Audit Oversight Committee. Not cleaning the whole crock, but at least skimming the floaters.

But as smart betters would wager it devolved into Good Ole DeKalb Politics. One of the appointers to this committee, Senator Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain, appointed Harmel Codi to a five year gig on the Audit Committee. But... After the deadline for making the appointment but before the first Committee meeting Butler had an epiphany--what polite folks call "got her panties in a wad"--and decided that Codi had undergone a sudden and tragic transformation making Codi unacceptable. Butler rescinded the appointment.

What is interesting is not that Codi has been outspoken in support of Lee May moving on but that Butler claims Codi does not possess the minimum qualifications for the position. This leaves even the casual observer wondering what qualifications Codi has permanently misplaced. Certainly Butler is not now saying that Butler herself was unqualified to qualify an appointee to the Committee, right? Wouldn't that be political suicide? Perhaps in most places, but not in DeKalb where open admissions of incompetence by elected officials is little more than stating the obvious. After all it only takes an appropriate level of melanin, the right kind of mouthiness and an affinity for cameras to get elected in DeKalb.