Southern hospitality

NY Times (registration required) | A Tab of Two Cities: Atlanta, Old and New
Bright, shiny Atlanta with its gleaming skyscrapers, roaring expressways and world-class shopping centers has become the unrivaled capital of the New South, a booming island of modernity anchored in a sea of Southern tradition. And though the New South has much to admire, on a weekend getaway on a $1,000 budget, I found old Atlanta, with its gracious, leafy neighborhoods, its smoky honky-tonk rib joints and an entire district devoted to the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., more intriguing.

It's actually a more positive story than I expected it to be. (But then, when a reporter from New York spends a three-day weekend in Atlanta for the express purpose of writing a story about it, I expect something of an "oh, look, it's like a real city, only smaller" attitude, for which I must apologize. It was an unworthy assumption, and I was pleased to be proven wrong.)

I'd like to know, though, how Mr Kirby decided which establishments to grace with his presence. I'm particularly curious what led him to believe that the hotel that would best deliver the New South ambience he was looking for... was Swissôtel. Not that I have anything against Swissôtel, nor in fact any direct experience of it at all, I'm sure it's a lovely place (at its room rate it had better be). But when I think of Atlanta...Henry Grady's "brave and beautiful city", home of Coca-Cola, Ralph McGill, and Maynard Jackson...I don't think of Swissôtel. But then, where would I send him instead?

But he didn't hold it against us, so why complain.

I'm amused that his satisfaction at the restaurants he sampled was inversely proportionate to the amount of money he spent there. I'm curious that he didn't point that out. His Saturday lunch at Fat Matt's Rib Shack ("The beamingly friendly woman behind the counter...called me 'baby.' Nobody in New York ever calls me 'baby.'") cost $15, and became the benchmark that almost every subsequent meal suffered in comparison to.

If that's what New Yorkers think of when they think of Atlanta, well, I'm OK with that.