Same mission, different city: today, I'm in Augusta, Georgia, trying to win back the work of yet another former client, a chemical manufacturer for whom I worked from 1993 through 2003. Same van as yesterday, but a smaller crew, just me and Joe from Memphis.
Augusta is a city of about a half million located on the Savannah River, near the Fall Line, the boundary between the crystalline rock of the rolling Piedmont and the unconsolidated sediments of the flat Coastal Plain. Many stream characteristics change as they cross the Fall Line: rapids and shoals are common near the geologic contact, floodplains are considerably wider on the younger sediments, and the frequency of stream meanders increases.
Augusta is best known for hosting The Masters golf tournament each spring, and for being the hometown of James Brown, the godfather of soul. But in addition to Brown, Augusta's also the home of actor Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus from The Matrix) and Hulk Hogan, artist Jasper Johns, former president Woodrow Wilson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and opera singer Jessye Norman.
However, a certain elitist element in Atlanta refers to Augusta as "Disgusta." According to the Urban Dictionary, "Disgusta" is a "shitty little city in east central Georgia. . . A place so humid your underwear becomes permanently plastered to your ass. Devoid of Culture and Refinement. Lacking any redeemable qualities. Full of fat, white trash rednecks who think Applebee's is fine dining and go to Wal-Mart as entertainment. Populated by a plethora of fat women driving SUVs and Dodge Ram Pickups." I do not share this sentiment.
After we returned from Augusta, Joe had to return the van at the airport and catch a flight home to Memphis. From the airport, I took MARTA home. While taking public transit from the airport is not an extraordinary event in most other cities, a certain, mostly suburban element is so afraid to ride MARTA, with it's multi-cultural passengers and stops in less affluent neighborhoods, that they insist of carrying concealed weapons. Frankly, I'm more afraid of paranoid, pistol-packing, white suburban males on the train than I am of exhausted airport workers coming home from a long day at work.
Fortunately I saw none of the former and more of the latter. I took the MARTA light rail train from the airport to Arts Station, and then the bus from Arts Station to Piedmont Hospital, and walked the last mile home. No one tried to rob me, rape me, or register me to vote, and I actually got a little fresh air and exercise during the walk.
No big deal.
1 comment:
Well I don't know about the fat women driving Dodge Rams, but I can certainly understand why people call it Disgusta after having visited Augusta for the first time last week. The city is noticeably trashy and run down. The downtown had alot of boarded up buildings. Good restaurants were hard to find. I didn't expect 5 star dining, but really the options are pretty pathetic for a city the size of Augusta. We went to some Japanese place that the locals were just raving about as it was really authentic. It was very busy indeed, but hardly authentic Japanese. Ity was a chain, of course.. and the food was very mediocre..just your typical tepanyaki show.. but the food was like what you get in a mall food court..and the locals acted like this was Megu or La Cirque. People were noticeably much fatter. And I didn't see anyone walking except at the mall. And the smell... what was that horrid smell?? The whole city smelled like rotting cabbage, at times it was unbearable. There was stark segregation and there seemd to be a very noticeable racial tension and animosty, much moreso than in Atlanta. Overall the city was a hodgepoddge of 3rd world like ghettos of extreme poverty and desperation and bland suburban sprawl with no character or identity. I cannot imagine anyone going out of their way to see Augusta. The people who go to the Masters must be really dissappointed with the city.
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