re: Atlanta is lost

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Well,the Atlanta "suburbs" keeps expanding and some are doing just fine (Forsyth,North Fulton,Cherokee,Bartow,etc) parts of Cobb,Gwinnett,Sandy Springs,Dunwoody not so much although still very nice neighborhoods in all those places.

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Tradeoff IMO.

You can get better politics in Forsyth, Cherokee, Bartow, etc. But the peer group for your kids in most schools is iffy, the colleges you're looking at decline, and you tend to get less around you of any interest.

I think the sweet spot remains the landlocked close in suburbs that have enough roots/economic might to protect themselves. Roswell, Sandy Springs, core East Cobb.

The fringe suburbs are ok, for now, but the cheaper prices and infinite expandability means they'll be flooded with people seeking cheap prices and new stuff. People in those places are counting on distance to save them. But it didn't work on the southside (Newnan, McDonough, etc.).

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Why do you patronize small businesses that probably hate you?

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says the guy who drove an hour up from newnan to eat at one of our restaurants. See my post earlier in this thread, it describes you to a T.

"Atlanta sucks and I hate it!!!! Well, except for the times when they have something I like and then I want to go, but besides from that it sucks!!!"

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Sunday was the first time I’d been there since 2016.

Growing up in the area, the only "cool' thing about Little Five Points was skipping school at 17 years old and hanging out in a place that would make your parents really mad, where you could smoke cigarettes on the sidewalk without being spotted by an adult who knew you.

No other reason to go to Little Five as an adult unless you have tickets at Variety Playhouse and are pregaming at Vortex or that Bridgetown carribean place.

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LOL. Easy bro,that's where I live (closer to N Decatur) While no doubt I'm surrounded by SJW's with Biden signs,I don't think of "freedom hating gulags" on my daily walks or at my local hangouts.

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I lived in that area for several years back in the late 1980s, and it was just as you describe then too. Used to frequent a bar right on the edge of the Village whose name I forget. It was within walking distance from where I lived. That fact saved me from a DUI or two I'm sure. Dekalb police used to be deadly. My heart sank when I read that Everybody's Pizza is on more though.

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This was my experience in Memphis. I had to go for business and heard all the horror stories and cautionary tales.

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Worked for a company that had only 2 hard and fast rules about expenses.

First was no fast food meals; they wanted us traveling sales reps to get out of the car and eat/decompress/etc. Second was we could not stay in a hotel in the city of Memphis. We had to say in the Mississippi suburbs. Said it was too dangerous.

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Only thing that would make Atlanta better would be an airport like OHare in North Georgia. Then Atlanta would finally die the proper death it deserves.

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The Airport Authority owns several hundred thousand acres north of Dawsonville or Dahlonega (I forget which) and the plan was always to build a second Atlanta airport up there. Should have built it 30-40 years ago.

It will likely never be built for 2 reasons- the NIMBYs up there and the fact that if it does get built, Hartsfield traffic will dwindle to zero as the airlines will prioritize there over Hartsfield and the majority of local passengers (who are from north of Atlanta) will use it over Hartsfield. It will become Chicago Midway or Dallas Love Field compared to O'Hare or DFW.

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The Airport Authority owns several hundred thousand acres north of Dawsonville or Dahlonega (I forget which) and the plan was always to build a second Atlanta airport up there. Should have built it 30-40 years ago.

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It's actually a 10,000 acre tract near Dawsonville (Dawson Forest), which Atlanta still owns. The plan to build a second airport pretty much died when the city decided to build the current Midfield Terminal in the late 1970s (the original nearby 1961 terminal had been overcrowded almost from the moment it opened).

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It will likely never be built for 2 reasons- the NIMBYs up there and the fact that if it does get built, Hartsfield traffic will dwindle to zero as the airlines will prioritize there over Hartsfield and the majority of local passengers (who are from north of Atlanta) will use it over Hartsfield. It will become Chicago Midway or Dallas Love Field compared to O'Hare or DFW.

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A few problems with the above assertion:

1. Both Midway and Love Field were the original airports that were too small to be expanded on site, hence the creation of O'Hare and DFW. This was not the case in Atlanta.
2. For Hartsfield to be mitigated to a secondary airport (forget traffic dwindling to zero), the new airport would have to add identical-or-larger infrastructure to the Dawsonville area, which would include a MARTA rail extension from North Springs (which if it followed GA 400, would be 45 miles long). This isn't happening in any sort of reality on sheer cost alone (plus as you mentioned, NIMBYs would have a stroke).
3. Even with the northern suburbs having a plurality of the region's population, Dawson Forest is simply too damn far north to be convenient to the majority of that part of the metro area (the closest commercial/office areas to that site are in the Windward area, which is still 35 miles away, Perimeter Center is 48 miles away, Cumberland and Buckhead about 55 miles, and Midtown and Downtown about 60+ miles).

The most rumblings I’ve heard regarding the suggestion of a second airport have been converting Dobbins to civilian use but I don’t think that is happening anytime.

I remember this getting significant traction when it was thought that Dobbins might be shuttered entirely by the military in the last round of BRAC.