School Daze Revisited

Shot to Atlanta from the City of Light last weekend, and things done changed. I spent five college years in the ATL – 1988 to 1993 – studying first at Morris Brown College, then transferring to famed Morehouse (alum: MLK Jr, Spike Lee, Guru, Samuel Jackson, etc.). I came in Friday night and left Saturday night, and had your classic “can’t go home again” scenario.

The National Black Arts Festival was having their 20th anniversary and I thought I might see some things, since I had a trip to Atlanta on my agenda for that weekend anyway. I picked the Hyatt Park hotel for its proximity to the main downtown Hyatt, where the kickoff party was scheduled. After checking in around seven at night, I hit a local gas station for some toothpaste in my rent-a-car: 1) dude behind the bulletproof glass tried to sell me the fake Colgate in the language of a country that Colgate don’t make toothpaste in, and 2) before I drove off indignantly, Rising Down blaring in the stereo, a girl around 18 years old got jumped by a posse of females from the hood across the street. For both days I was there looking around, in fact, the city seemed full of a lot more poverty than I remembered from my school daze. (That’s Spike Lee’s School Daze above, should clarification be needed.) I would like to say I hopped out the ride to break up the girls, but I didn’t… the fight actually ended before I turned the corner anyhow.

The Arts Festival party sucked. I waited around for Derrick, an old frat brother still living in Georgia, but left word at the desk for him after he was an hour late. I only had the one night and wanted to see Atlanta: the Underground, a Waffle House, etc. I peeked into the Hyatt party (the type where the DJ plays Maze’s “Before I Let Go” to get things started), and decided to cruise instead. The Underground was abandoned; I’d already read that nobody goes there anymore. It wasn’t much of a hangout in my day either, but certainly tourist popular. I remember the Hooters and the smoothie stand with my favorite strawberry lemonade (10 points for whoever identifies the Prince reference), but it looked dead.

Drove to the Atlanta University Center ‘round midnight. Saw Borders Tower on the Morris Brown campus. No electricity, no campus security cars, no nothin. The school lost its accreditation some years back; it looked headed in that direction even when I transferred. Basically though, all my freshman memories of parties in the gym and peeping at girls getting out of the shower in adjacent Cochran Tower (Borders was male, Cochran female) and bald Greek frat pledges walking around in line… Morris Brown was a ghost town but I guess I brought the ghosts. Drove through Clark for five minutes before I recognized where I was: I spotted the liquor store we all looted the day of the Rodney King riot (sorry, “uprising”) my senior year and figured out the street I must’ve been on. Major changes. The old Morehouse/Spelman parking lot was now a three-story garage in progress, and I drove past buildings I’d never even seen before, constructed in the 15 years since my graduation.

For nostalgia’s sake, I rolled into Magic City (if you have to ask, Google it). Not a damn thing changed there, though for my $20 entry fee and the $20 parking fee, I stayed till 3am closing for my money’s worth. (The fact that I haven’t seen another woman naked in three years other than my lovely wife had nothing to do with it. Right.)

Saturday, I went by Morehouse again; T-shirts for the kids. The bookstore I remembered had closed, replaced by another three times the size. Summer graduation was that day, everything on sale, speaker Cory Booker did his thing. The old Collegiate paraphernalia store I remembered was long gone.

I hit Popeye’s for my old biscuits-and-iced-tea snack and headed out to Lenox Mall for The Dark Knight, passing on Spike Lee downtown talking about his black WWII film, Miracle at St. Anna, for the NBAF. But. Lenox had a whole extra level added to it since back in my day, when I could bump into T-Boz on the escalator. Rich’s department store (now a Macy’s) and the old Ruby Tuesday’s and Mick’s restaurants, gone. The movie theater, in fact: gone. I drove over to Phipps Plaza instead to see the Batman flick.

Loved it, but I was nervous about being late for my Paris flight by this point. Made it at 7:39 for a 7:45 check-in, after returning the Ford I rented from Enterprise, cleaning out the car and throwing my iPod away in the Popeye’s bag! My copy of Obama’s Dreams from My Father got tossed too, so I copped another before takeoff, and made it home safe and sound. I had thought about relocating to the ATL when I move back to the US, maybe teaching a hiphop course at Morehouse just for a semester (worked for Baldwin, Morrison, etc., the teaching thing). Atlanta’s totally different though, I don’t see making that move anymore. The days of Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest done gone.

New York on Tuesday. New iPod? You know it.