April 23, 2007 – Time and distance are out of place here.

Athens, Georgia. For a music fan, a lot comes to mind when those two words are spoken. To an REM fan, it’s Mecca.

But I’ll get to that.

Somehow I’ve managed to get days all screwed up on this blog. I thought I had written one yesterday, but I didn’t, so I’ll start there. (And the last one said that I was leaving ‘tomorrow,’ but it was dated the 21st. I’m all messed up.)

Yesterday I didn’t do much of anything. I hung out at Julie’s place and watched tv and futzed around on the computer. I’m lame.

Then my old BBV buddy Ben called me. He and his wife, Leslie, were back in town and wanted to hang out. After a little dinner with Julie and Cameron, I took off.

Ben lives near Marietta in a beautiful suburb in a beautiful house. Leslie, whom I had never met…I haven’t seen Ben in probably 10 years, was really cool. We hung out for a couple of hours talking about travels, movies and the old days. It was a good way to end my time in Atlanta. Even if I didn’t get to do everything that I probably should have done in Atlanta, my time was well spent if I got to rekindle an old friendship.

Today, I left Atlanta a little later than I thought I was going to mainly because I woke up late, but partly because, after packing everything up and going to the Atlanta Bread Company to eat lunch, I realized that I HAD FORGOTTEN TO GET ALL OF THE BOOKS THAT MELANIE AND ED MAILED TO ME!!!! They were sitting on Julie’s couch…where I wouldn’t forget them.

FUCK!!!!

Oh well. ABC wasn’t too far from her place, so I went back to get them and was finally on my way.

I had found a place on Gawd that looked interesting, so I took a little detour through a residential area just on the other side of Marietta. It was called Chattahoochee Plantation. Must be a plantation, right?

Wrong. It was just a REALLY FREAKIN’ RICH NEIGHBORHOOD. I spent about 20 minutes driving around it thinking, ‘Where is this plantation?’ Then I realized that there wasn’t just one plantation. Every house there was a fucking plantation. They were HUGE!! And amazingly beautiful. If I were forced to live in Atlanta, this is where I would want to live. Yes, it’s pretty far from the city…well, that’s kinda the point, huh? I would WANT to be far from that city.

Anyway, my next stop was Stone Mountain. The relief that I thought was carved into Pine Mountain? Yeah, that’s actually on Stone Mountain about half an hour east of Atlanta. Cool. I’ll get to see that.

WRONG!!! They wanted $8 to park up there. All I wanted to do was get out of the car, take a picture and leave. But you have to pay $8 just to go up there.

Oh well. Bang goes that idea.

Off to Athens!

As I got into Athens (which is only about an hour away from Atlanta…but it took me longer because of all the scenic detours) I started to get a little discouraged. This was supposed to be an awesome little town. What’s with all the strip malls?!

But that was just suburbia. Of COURSE there are strip malls there. We can’t have a suburb without strip malls, now can we?

But then I hit the actual town…and it was pretty much everything I wanted it to be. The University Of Georgia is on one side of the main street and the restaurants, bars, clubs and coffee shops are on the other.

I was (sort of) home.

The first thing I did was go to a hotel that my AAA guide said was the cheapest (but still nice) in town. I was going to get a fat discount, too!

Whoa, there, buddy! Calm down on that discount.

It appears that local boys Widespread Panic are playing their first Athens shows since 2000. So, of course, every hotel in town was near capacity and not taking any coupons. Which meant that I got my AAA discount, but not the coupon discount.

$71 per night.

I guess I only stay here one night. Better make it last.

So I immediately started looking for all of the REM stuff I could find…’cause I’m lame like that.

After a little trouble I managed to get online and found a walking tour of Athens music. They pointed out every single place that has any significance to any band that ever came out of Athens. It was amazing.

I didn’t care too much about the people I had never heard of (there are a LOT of those), so I mainly focused on the REM lore.

The first place I stopped was The Church. When REM were still a fledgling band, they practiced in an old church. They played their first gig there on April 5^th 1980. It was a birthday party. Only the steeple still stands and it’s kind of in danger of being torn down. The thing is pretty dilapidated, but it looks like it’s probably sturdy enough to stay up for a little while longer. Hopefully, someone will come along and buy it and restore it so that a little piece of Athens history doesn’t fall over. It’s in the parking lot of an apartment building, appropriately enough called The Steeplechase Condominiums…or something like that.

Someone had, of course, scrawled ‘REM’ on the side of it in chalk.

Time for downtown. I parked pretty close to City Hall, which doesn’t have any direct REM significance, but there is something very cool in the front lawn: a double barreled cannon.

In 1863, a man named John Gilleland built this thing thinking that, if you loaded two cannonballs in it with a chain between them, the chain would mow down Union soldiers.

Well, that’s not exactly what happened. You see, there was no way to make the two barrels fire at the exact same time. Here’s a witness’ account:

The cannonballs “had a kind of circular motion, plowed up an acre of ground, tore up a cornfield, and mowed down saplings. The chain broke, the two balls going in opposite directions; one of the balls killed a cow in a distant field, while the other knocked down the chimney from a log cabin. The observers scattered as though the entire Yankee Army had been turned loose in that vicinity”

Yeah. Not such a successful test. Gilleland donated it to the city of Athens and it’s been sitting in the City Hall yard ever since…pointing North. Just in case.

So, yeah. It’s not just REM that makes this little southern town awesome.

Next up on the tour was the 40 Watt Club. This place has been moved around more than one of Pamela Anderson’s implants, but it’s always kept its reputation as THE place for Athens music. The original location in 1979 was above a Schlotzsky’s. (Austin and Athens collide!) It was lit by a single 40 watt bulb…hence, the name.

Six locations later (ok, really five…it was in one place twice), it has finally come to rest here.

(Yeah. Right there. Behind that big-ass tree.)

Of course, it’s closed Mon.-Wed.

I also managed to find Wuxtry Records, where Peter Buck worked in the late 70s and early 80s. It’s where he and Michael Stipe met and the foundation of REM was laid.

I would have taken a picture, but there was really nothing special about the building. No sign. No light outside. Just an office building with cool records inside. It was a pretty awesome little record store. Something that John Cusack and Jack Black would have loved.

Then I decided to take a walk through the campus. I went through the Arch (three pillars that represent the three pillars on the Georgia flag…Wisdom, Justice and Moderation. Heh Funny that this Arch sits right across from so many bars.) and saw a pretty amazing campus. There are more trees, I think, than there are students. And there are a LOT of students. Just about every building has Greek columns in front of it (of course) and it gives everything a touch of class that I’m sure the students…um…don’t even notice.

But it really is a beautiful campus. So beautiful, in fact, that I got completely and utterly lost.

I actually got lost because I found a railroad trestle that somewhere online I had read was the one on the back of REM’s first album, Murmur. But I had also read that it was in a park…which is much more likely. So I followed the tracks for a bit. Probably a little too far.

(I found this kudzu covered cemetery. It was closed, but DAMN it loked cool.)

(Yeah. I walked over this bitch. I’m stupid. I know.)

I had to ask directions from a girl who was walking to her dorm. She laughed at me when I asked her where Broad Street was.

‘Like, the main street? You want to walk there?!’

‘I walked FROM there.’

‘Omigod! That’s really far!’

She told me where I needed to go and wished me good luck. It wasn’t quite as far as she made it seem, but it was really far. I have blisters forming on my feet now…which really sucks because the walking ain’t gonna stop anytime soon.

So, I got back to my car, went to the hotel and found out where I could eat.

I ended up eating at a place called The Grill, which is a 24 hour 50s style diner. I had the best hamburger I’ve had in a long time there.

And, of course, it is where that old Schlotzky’s used to be.

I have to leave town tomorrow, unfortunately, but I still have some exploring to do. I found Weaver D’s and The Tree That Owns Itself, but it was too dark to take pictures. So you’ll just have to wait for those stories until tomorrow when I get to Savannah.