Category: Commentary

Many Europeans seem amused (at best) or downright angry (at worst) by something Anglo-American author Bill Bryson termed the “London, England Phenomenon”. It’s the tendency of the American media to mention a city’s full name in newspaper articles or news broadcasts. “Why”, these Europeans must wonder, “do American broadcasters say ‘London, England’ or ‘Paris, France’ when everyone else in the world seems to know where London and Paris are?”

Well, part of it is because there are thousands of American cities named after more familiar cities. Just in my home state of Georgia, for instance, there’s Rome, Athens, Dublin, Vienna, Geneva, Berlin, Dover, Hull, Bethlehem, Damascus, Oxford, Bristol, Cairo, Kingston, Manchester, Bremen and – just to be complete – Smyrna, hometown of actress Julia Roberts, although that’s cheating, since the city in Turkey has been known as Izmir since 1922 (according to the Greeks) or the mid 1400s (according to the Turks).

There are at least five American cities named Venice, seven called Belfast, nine called Glasgow, sixteen named Paris, twenty each named Athens or Manchester, twenty-one named Berlin, twenty-three named Bristol and twenty-four each named either Florence or Oxford. Many Europeans have heard of Cambridge, Massachusetts because of Harvard University, but not many know about the fifteen other cities of the same name in the US. During the Cold War, it might have seemed like one Moscow was enough… but there are sixteen US towns with the same name. There are even fourteen Birminghams in the US… and two of them are in Ohio and three of them are in Pennsylvania!

Continue reading “The “London, England” Phenomenon”

Dick Winters, World War II veteran, winner of the Distinguished Service Cross, and main character in the mini-series Band of Brothers, has died. He was 92.

I tried to think of something poetic to say, my feeble words just won’t cut it. Instead, I’ll just quote Alan Sepinwall, who called Winters “a calm, selfless, inspiring, exceedingly decent man, and the very model of what Tom Brokaw dubbed ‘The Greatest Generation’.”

Read his Wikipedia entry here, and tear up a little as you watch this memorable clip:

“We are paratroopers Lieutenant; we are supposed to be surrounded.”

“Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?” “No”, I answered, “But I served in a company of heroes.”

As a young adult, my two favorite Atlanta bars were the County Cork Pub and Churchill Arms. Both were located in Buckhead, and were actually across the street from each other. But they were very different watering holes.

The County Cork was a loud, rambunctious Irish bar, with college students packed in like sardines. The Cork served cold Guinness and had a self-service popcorn machine that popped up all the free popcorn you could stuff in your mouth. On weekends the bar usually had an actual Irish musician on stage, singing drinking songs from the British Isles, tunes so ribald that soldiers and sailors would blush when they heard them.

The Churchill Arms, on the other hand, was much more sedate. When I hung out there in the early to mid 90s, the average patron was probably in his late 40s. There were singalongs of old British songs on Friday nights, but other than that, there was no music in the pub… just older people talking, drinking and smoking, or perhaps playing darts. In the winter months, it gave me great pleasure to sit on the raggedy leather sofa by a roaring fire, drinking ale and smoking cigars.

But all things change. The County Cork lost their lease, moved to a different location, and eventually went under by trying to appeal to a more “upscale” crowd. The older couple who owned Churchill Arms gave it to their children, who took over the empty space next door and added pool tables and loud music, turning it into a frat bar.

So you can imagine my joy when I found this clip on YouTube. It’s from a 1985 North DeKalb Community Television (public access) show called Club Scene, with host Brian Smith. Smith says that the show is dedicated to showing people Atlanta’s other bars, “places you might have never noticed”. And one of the clips is about Churchill Arms!

Have a look:

Wow! What a fun (yet cheesy) trip in the Wayback Machine! I never knew the Churchill Arms was modeled after a genuine English pub, and it’s cool that the original is still in business!

I never saw the barbershop quartet at Churchill Arms, but I remember the lady playing the piano… although the lady I remember was English, and I always thought it was the owner’s wife. Speaking of, I remember owner Arthur Mitchell as an older man with grey hair… and I’ll never forget the St. Patricks’ Day when he gave me an armload of free St. Pat’s swag. I had partied hardy at the County Cork for a few hours and went to Churchill Arms to escape the mob and cool down. The Arms’ clientele wasn’t one for wearing Bushmill’s buttons, Harp Lager beads or giant foam Guinness hats, so Mr. Mitchell loaded me up with all the free stuff I could carry! Good times, good times!

And man alive… was Brian Smith a total hipster or what? I bet chicks totally dug that guy! And yes, I’m kidding, folks.

There’s another clip of Club Scene visiting the legendary Stein Club; check it out after the jump!

Continue reading “Every kind of AWESOME there is!”

In July 1975, a 17 year-old British man named Erskine Lawrence Ebbin died in Hamilton, Bermuda. He was riding a moped and was fatally struck by a taxi driver.

That’s not an especially interesting story.

But what if I told you that in July 1974 Erskine’s older brother Neville, then also 17 years-old, was also killed on a moped in Hamilton, Bermuda… on the same street, by the same taxi driver, who was carrying the same passenger. And Erskine was riding the same moped that Neville was.

It sounds made up, but I promise you that it’s absolutely true (see item #3 on the linked page from The Independent, a respected British newspaper).

Although I’ve traveled through a good chunk of the United States, most of that has been through the air. I haven’t really driven all that much outside Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas.

This may be a regional thing here in this part of the world… but for years I noticed these weird “candy canes” on the side of interstates here in the South.

• They’re made out of metal, and look to be about the same diameter as dryer duct.
• They’re always painted the same shade of green as the electrical or telephone boxes you sometimes see on the edge of people’s yards, although they’ve usually been sitting there so long that they’ve beached to a milky green shade.
• They appear to be slightly larger than a mailbox.
• They are usually located well off the road, as if they’re not for public use. In other words, they don’t appear to be covering up one of those call boxes you used to see on side of the road, for instance.
• The “hook” of the cane always points towards the road, never away from it.
• I’ve never seen any writing on one, and I feel they’re too common and too uniform in appearance to be some weird “Jesus Saves” kind of thing.

Are there any civil engineers out there who know what those things are? When I was a teen, I thought they might be venting some type of gas, but they seemed too numerous for that, and why have the hook facing the interstate? As I got older, I wondered if they were capturing some type of air quality data, but then… why the “candy cane” form factor?

Having said all that, I don’t think I’ve actually seen one in a while. At any rate, this is one of those things I’ve googlefailed at for years, and it’s really been bugging me. Anyone who could answer this would be my hero or heroine!