Skateboarders, bicycle riders, skaters and walkers packed the Beltline Saturday morning near the Ponce City Market.
The festive crowd flowed past the old Murder Kroger, now capped by a futuristic building and offering a cool bar and a Starbucks with a deck overlooking the walkway.
Joyous at returning to public gathering after the long months of the pandemic's isolation, people streamed through Ponce City Market, many with kids in strollers, and most not wearing masks.
After shrimp po-boys at the Fish Camp and a visit to the crowded Posman Books, my daughter and I headed to Virginia-Highland, where my wife and I bought our first house more than 30 years ago after living in an apartment in Little Five Points right after getting married.
My daughter and I wanted to celebrate a new independent bookstore, Virginia-Highland Books, which had recently opened on Highland near the famed Virginia intersection.
Occupying two floors, the bookstore offered a wonderful selection of books and a friendly staff. The store wasn't crowded, allowing comfortable browsing. I ended up taking home Shirley Hazzard's "Collected Stories."
Sitting in the Perc coffee shop with my daughter watching people sitting at sidewalk tables and walking past on Highland, I thought that those benighted Buckhead residents seeking to secede from Atlanta despised this urban diversity. They wanted to withdraw into a cocoon. Yet Buckhead is part of neighborhoods like Virginia-Highland, Little Five Points and the Old Fourth Ward, receiving economic and social benefits from their vitality.
Atlanta's neighborhoods are connected in a city tapestry. One cannot stand alone without the others.
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