[ale] Heya folks! Any suggestions for a geek moving to/near Atlanta?

[Thompson Freeman]

On 06/10/2007 03:26:50 PM, Sean Kilpatrick wrote:
> On Sunday 10 June 2007 11:08, Brian Schenken wrote:
> | I've been to the south, my wife hasn't yet. ?It's going to be quite
> a
> | culture shock. ?On my last trip some ladies lit up inside a
> restaurant
> | and it was bizarre to me! ?Smoking... indoors... AND ... near.....
> | food? ?While people are trying to ... taste? ?To me it's like
> having
> | someone take a poop in the booth next to you. ?Might as well pay
> the
> | bill and go buy some drive though that you can eat without
> marinating
> | it in someone else's stink. ?But of course everyone's still used to
> it
> | in the south.
> |
> | We're Atheists too, which I understand is even_worse_than_gay down
> | there. ?Might be time to peel off the Darwin fish if we wan't to
> keep
> | from having our windows smashed... ?I can live with treating my
> ideals
> | like a terrible secret, but I don't think I'll be buying a gun...
> ?I
> | qualified with my m16 in the Army and ?haven't any reason to pick up
> a
> | gun since. ?Plus with kids around... ?I prefer the mouse.
> 
> I'm going to have to respond to this, because the South has been
> fighting this kind of nasty regional bigotry for decades.
> 
> Smoking in public places is almost totally outlawed now in the
> Atlanta
> area. Certainly in the city, Fulton and Dekalb counties. Can't vouch
> for
> Gwinnett and Cobb, but I think they have taken the same path.  I can't
> 
> remember the last time I had someone light up nearby while I was
> dining.
> 
> And, no, you won't have to peel off your Darwin fish. The Atlanta
> area
> also is surprisingly gay tolerant as well.  Why?  The gay community
> has too
> much money!  Your atheism won't cause many problems -- unless you
> insist on
> standing outside a church on Sunday morning proclaiming your views
> with
> a bull horn! :)  Certainly no one is going to be vandalizing your
> house
> because you have a Darwin Fish on the back of your car. You will
> notice a
> surprising number of your neighbors are in church on Sunday, however,
> including members of the LGTG community (lesbian/gay/trans-gendered).
> 
> Atlanta was the home of Martin Luther King, Jr., after all, NOT Jerry
> 
> Falwell; the intolerant fundamentalists haven't had a strong
> political/religious leader here since Lester Maddox left the
> governor's mansion.
> 
And as a former Georgian, I remember Lester Maddox as a _lot_ more  
complex than his public persona appeared. Didn't he tour for a while  
with a black sidekick on some entertainment gig? I'm not going to claim  
Lester was a paragon of sweetness and light and open armed tolerance,  
but his bark was a lot more reactionary than his bite.

YMMV.

FWIW, my gay brother-in-law loves living in Atlanta.