Trip to Atlanta

July 28, 2004

Let's start with the good: the Madonna concert started with Vogue, and the concert could have ended at the end of that number. We would have said something like, "she could have sung a few more songs, but man, it was really good."

Lessons Learned

Go ahead and shell out the bucks for floor seats. The effects were cool, but would have been so much better up close.

I support whatever law made them close the bars before the end of the show. I would have kept drinking more, and God knows that wasn't necessary.

The show is fantastic. The stage had elevators moving people up and down. It had a long Jetson's-style dog walk that slid people from one side of the stage to the other while they sing or dance. There was a big V-shaped catwalk that stretched out over the floor audience. There were tons of video effects and costume changes. There were accrobats on trapezes, and there were bagpipe players. Fun fun fun.

Atlanta, on the other hand, has to be added to the list of cities that I don't like. It is a sprawling city with a nondescript skyline. Downtown is strictly for business, all but dead on the weekend. My current list of cities as weekend destinations looks like this:

Cool Cities	Lame Cities
Boston	Dallas
Chicago	Houston
Seattle	Atlanta
San Francisco	Los Angeles (although the towns outside of LA can be cool)
New York (as long as you stay in Manhattan)

Miami, Washington DC, and Vancouver are on the list of cities to try, and cities that I expect to be exciting. Phoenix and Denver are suspected drags, but I haven't been to either, so I'll hold off judgment. New Orleans and Las Vegas don't count. They're in a league of their own. If you think your home town belongs in that stratosphere, let me know -- but don't bother if you can't take your open drink from one building to another.

Back to Atlanta. There was an article in their paper one day while we were there about bible study in Hooters. (2024 update: no surprise, but the link is dead.)

This takes place in the suburb of Kennesaw, which happens to be where Sarah (from the post just before this one) lives. Neither Sarah nor the paper bothered to mention that Kennesaw may have the most thriving community of racist, right-wing nuts in the east. But perhaps the Hooters group can bring a more christian attitude to town.