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Never let it be said that the city of Atlanta won’t chase a stupid marketing trick. This is a city whose main tourist attraction is a big sloppy kiss to the KKK and a big eff you to its African-American population. This is the city that gave us Whatizit / Izzy. This is a city that decided that public transportation shouldn’t travel anywhere in order to reach maximum ineffectiveness to the people that need it the most.
Now, the powers that be in Atlanta—namely one Doug Strachan, the Creative Innovations Manager for the City of Atlanta Department of Aviation—hae come up with a brilliant new useless scheme to make the airport sound and smell better. Not only will travelers be able to inhale a scent called “Breeze” (a combo of vanilla and lavender) that will help them feel better about their miserable lives:
The pleasant, relaxing scent is going over so well that Strachan said a custom scent that will be exclusive to Hartsfield-Jackson is being developed. “We want to make people feel better,” he said. “We wanted to give them an olfactory cue which suggested that the airport is opening day fresh and we want to enhance their travel experience.”
To go along with this olfactory manipulation (did you people not see Serenity?), Strachan and fellow Skinnerians have re-written three old R&B tunes to better suit their human experimentation. They bought the rights to three old jams: “Shake Your Groove Thing” by Peaches and Herb, “Bustin’ Loose” by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, and “Fantastic Voyage” by Lakeside. They are now–-with the help of the actual hard-up artists–-rewriting the lyrics to make them more airport-friendly. For example, the reworked “Shake Your Groove Thing”:
Opening Day fresh, Opening Day fresh,
Yeah, yeah
Hartsfield-Jackson do it now
Opening Day fresh, Opening Day fresh,
Yeah, yeah
Show ‘em how we do it now!
Show ‘em how we do it now!
I think we can all agree that the biggest problem with fun R&B classics is their pesky good-time lyrics. It’s nice to know that someone’s taking care of that. You know what would make my visits to airports better, guys? Letting me leave my shoes on when I go through security. Glad to see people can still have useless jobs and ideas in this economy!
Hey, wait a minute! As an Atlantan I…am always ashamed, actually.
@Gnosis: Pretty soon, Atlanta will eat Athens. We are all Atlantans now.
@Lucas Jensen: as a fellow atlantan (who’s sitting across from gnosis, actually), i gotta say i’d rather hear “opening day fresh” than that horrible dallas austin-penned “i love the ATL.”
Having spent way too many hours in that god-forsaken airport on delays, I applaud anything they do to help the weary traveler out that is not essentially a fishbowl for smokers.
@Lucas Jensen: As a Northerner not familiar, could you give a little background on this Stone Mountain Park? I’m intrigued.
@Lucas Jensen: As a Northerner not familiar, could you give a little background on this Stone Mountain Park? I’m intrigued.
@Lucas Jensen: As a Northerner not familiar, could you give a little background on this Stone Mountain Park? I’m intrigued.
@Lucas Jensen: As a Northerner not familiar, could you give a little background on this Stone Mountain Park? I’m intrigued.
@Lucas Jensen: As a Northerner not familiar, could you give a little background on this Stone Mountain Park? I’m intrigued.
@T’Challa: It’s a much smaller version of Ayers Rock, which is about 15 miles east of Atlanta. There’s a laser light show at which images are projected on the rock, and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, “Sweet Home Alabama”, and Lee Greenwood jams are played. There are also kid friendly tourist things like a rope climb, and motion rides.
I think the part Lucas is referring to is the carving of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, on the side of the rock. There’s also a restored plantation that is hardly triumphalist.
Not really sure it’s the main tourist attraction here, though. Way more people seem to go to CNN Center.
@T’Challa: @Audif Jackson Winters III: Perhaps more people go to CNN Center, but I’d say over the past half-century or so, it’s been a pretty big deal. The problem is that it was commissioned during the time of “Massive Resistance” and finished right around integration, in 1972. The Georgia Klan was re-energized there in 1910s or 1920s, after the lynching of Leo Frank, and continued to meet there until the 1970s, even, I think, donating money for the sculpture’s completion.
@Audif Jackson Winters III: i went to high school in stone mountain. the neighborhood’s a LOT different now – in fact, the Tupac Shakur Center for the Arts is located there. but in my day(ugh), you never really forgot where you were.
i once met the parents of a college friend. when i told them where i was from, they declared their love for stone mountain, saying, “we go to the park every year!”
@silkyjumbo: It IS nice up there. They have flowers up there that are called Confederate Daisies or something, though. During the 90s they started selling these reconciliation shirts that showed black and white hands clasped that had a peace symbol on the front or something. They said something very vague like:
There was a war.
Some people fought, and some people died.
They were very angry with each other.
Now it’s all better.
Seriously.
America is awesome.
@Lucas Jensen: Um, wow at all of that.
Do black families ever go near the place?
@Lucas Jensen: Um, wow at all of that.
Do black families ever go near the place?
@Lucas Jensen: Um, wow at all of that.
Do black families ever go near the place?
@Lucas Jensen: Um, wow at all of that.
Do black families ever go near the place?
@Lucas Jensen: Um, wow at all of that.
Do black families ever go near the place?
@T’Challa: I think so. It’s pretty nice up there and the laser show is rad. So, you know, all is forgiven.
Yeah, I mean, for the most part, it’s just a big park, and people go to take a gondola ride up to get a view of Atlanta. There were definitely plenty of black families there on the one occasion I visited. There’s also a resort hotel on the ground that hosts conventions, and again, plenty of black folks at the one I attended.
@T’Challa: What’s disappointing about the flare-ups in the 1900s was that Atlanta prided itself on being different (or at least trying), with Booker T. Washington speaking at the Cotton States Expo in Piedmont Park and stuff in the late 1800s. Their slogan was “The City Too Busy To Hate”!
Double wow. I need to spend more time in the South. Seriously.
Double wow. I need to spend more time in the South. Seriously.
Double wow. I need to spend more time in the South. Seriously.
Double wow. I need to spend more time in the South. Seriously.
Double wow. I need to spend more time in the South. Seriously.
As a former GA Studies teacher I say come on down! We’ll have a good time.
The last time I went hiking up there, September or so, I saw a lot of black folks on the mountain. I’m pretty sure it’s not really that big of a deal…anymore, at least.
Unfortunately the way the schools are here in Georgia, no one, black OR white know the history of Stone Mountain, so everyone can get away with it :) This coming from someone educated in the North, thankyouverymuch, so Lord knows I don’t know anything about anything.
I like the idea of the airport smelling better. You KNOW that is because they are making you take your shoes off, Lucas.
I traveled from Atlanta to Tokyo to Beijing and back last month, and you can leave your shoes on at both Narita and Beijing Capital. Viva la Asia/Communism!
(but they did tear apart my backpack looking for a lighter in Beijing. little did they know I had one in my bra. touche, China)
Oh – the PR company that did the Opening Day campaign at the beginning was fired shortly after launch and I was shocked they continued with that maddening of a slogan. Seriously? Opening Day? Thats the best we can come up with?
And because I like statistics, I looked for the ranking of the most visited/popular attractions in Atlanta just for you:
* Atlanta – Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site
* Atlanta – World of Coca-Cola
* Atlanta – Fernbank Museum of Natural History
* Atlanta – Georgia Aquarium
* Atlanta – High Museum of Art
* Atlanta – Historic Oakland Cemetery
* Atlanta – Rhodes Hall
* Atlanta – Stone Mountain Park
* Atlanta Botanical Garden
* Atlanta History Center
Interesting to note that there are apparently no black people here to answer the question of whether Stone Mountain is a recreation destination for black people.
I forgot about the World of Coke and the Aquarium. Duh.
Stone Mountain does have a few black tourist folk pictured on the website.
@KikoJones: Quite a few, actually!