Kirkwood Part 3

Kirkwood began its life as a suburb of Atlanta and was incorporated in 1892. In the early 1920's it was annexed into the city of Atlanta.  An early tour book described it as an “area of beautiful suburban villas.”  Of course, that was written at a time when Kirkwood was considered suburban and not intown.

We moved from Kirkwood when I completed elementary school.  In those days there were no middle schools in Atlanta.  Completion of elementary school was at the end of 7th grade and high school started with the 8th grade. 

There were a combination of reasons we moved then.  My mother had a growing business teaching piano and she wanted a bigger house with a private entrance for her students.  The high school I would have attended was several miles from our house (Kirkwood Elementary was about four blocks from the house and was an easy walk).  And there was an unscrupulous real estate practice then called "blockbusting."  If people were considering moving from Kirkwood, this accelerated the process.  It instilled fears of rapidly declining real estate values and was unfair to both white and black families who lost money to the real estate companies.

Kirkwood did have some difficult years, but since the 1990's it's had a revitalization, as have many older Atlanta neighborhoods.  My old school is now home to many people who've purchased lofts there.  The school was built in 1910 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. 

 It's strange to see these interior photos of living spaces there and wonder which classroom this was (3rd grade, 4th grade...?).

And the public library I used is now a private residence, as well.  It was on the adjacent corner from the school and that made it easy to check out books there after school.  Here's a link to a website set up by the men who've remodeled the library and live there.  Also, on their site they have the video of  the HGTV show that featured their home.

http://www.kirkwoodlibrary.com/Library/Home.html

The library building is just across the street from a public park.  The park had a ball field where I played many softball games.

It's very nostalgic writing about this, but I have great memories.

DragonCon Part 2

Here's my follow-up on DragonCon 2010.  I've uploaded some photos taken today.  I walked around the lobbies of the Hyatt Regency and the Marriott Marquis.  I took some photos there, as well as on Peachtree Street.

As you can see from some of these photos, it was a dangerous place to be.  Menacing figures kept approaching me. 

Everything didn't look dangerous.  Here are some other people I saw.

I took just a few photos, but there are some other blogs with more photos uploaded.  If you're curious, I've put a couple of links here.

http://www.josephdickerson.com/2010/09/05/photos-dragoncon-2010/

http://comicbookcatacombs.blogspot.com/2010/09/dragoncon-2010-photo-report.html

Also, I read that Atlanta is now in the record books as having the largest assembled group of costumed Trekkies.  That happened on Saturday and it eclipsed a record set just last month in Las Vegas at the Star Trek convention.

DragonCon

Every year a large convention (con) is held in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend. The event is DragonCon.  DragonCon was first held in 1987 and has grown to an attendance of 35,000 fans.

It's a combination of sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, anime, costumes and more.  I haven't attended recently but I remember that the shows I attended some years ago were fun.

My interest in the show derived from a love of comic book and pop art.  Also, I've been a sci-fi fan for as long as I can remember.  As a little kid, I was hypnotized by the old Flash Gordon serials that had rockets that backfired.

At one DragonCon I remember going to a Q&A with some of the actors and writers from Star Trek, the Next Generation.  In particular, I remember that Marina Sirtis was there.  At another event (almost 20 years ago) I met a comic book dealer from Charleston, SC and when he heard about some of the books I had, he made a special trip back to Atlanta a few weeks later and visited me.  He had his eye on my issue of Green Lantern # 1.  So, he left with a few of my old Silver Age comic books.

Recently, PBA 30 has produced a documentary based on footage from last year's show.  It's been replayed a few times and I think they plan on distributing it in the next few months to other PBS stations around the country.  Here's a portion of it.