What's Atlanta Driving?

When I was younger, I swore Atlanta drivers had some of the worst car taste imaginable. Mind you, this was when I still idolized Toyotas held together with zipties. I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, where the interesting cars are hidden away, spread apart, sometimes in pieces in a basement garage.

No matter where I go nowadays, I try to seek out the interesting cars that are still going. Now that I've branched out into the city a little more, I've found that the only way to discover the gems of the city is to explore the streets on foot with my camera in tow.

Today I took a trip to historic Grant Park and Cabbagetown, two neighborhoods east of downtown Atlanta. Here, the streets are lined with restored homes from the early 20th century. This area used to be a factory neighborhood. In fact, Cabbagetown's namesake is said to come from the poor Scottish and Irish immigrants who grew and cooked cabbage extensively. Now the area has become gentrified. The houses are painted in bright colors and restaurants like Tin Lizzy's Mexican Cantina line Memorial Drive.

Tin Lizzy's rooftop deck overlooking historic Oakland Cemetery.

A small sample of Cabbagetown's graffiti

Crown Candy, like many buildings in this part of Atlanta, used to be a candy factory, but has since been converted into loft apartments. 

The first car that caught my eye was this Land Rover Defender County. Defenders are actually scattered throughout Atlanta, usually found in neighborhoods like this. This Defender was an earlier model and looked like it hadn't been driven in quite a while.

Further into the neighborhood I came across another hip, Atlanta staple: an early model Mercedes 300d.

I then ran into this duo from Ford group. It's a Pinto, right? Well, sort of. It's the Mercury equivalent, the Bobcat. The Mercury Bobcat debuted four years after the Pinto and was essentially identical to the Ford.

A Ford that managed to do much better in both quality and style departments, the Falcon--this one's in especially-pleasing wagon form.

To round out the group, a Nash Metropolitan. These are unmistakable--I spotted it from several blocks away. And it's for sale!

(and my car next to some of the truly wild graffiti)

The Supercar Complex

I was driving around Buckhead today--an affluent neighborhood of Atlanta--desperately trying to cool myself down. 93 degrees is the norm here in the summer and a few minutes of walking around the block, trying to find interesting angles to photograph the giant fish in front of the Atlanta Fish Market, I was back in my decade-old Lexus, ferociously spinning the fan dial.

Pharr Road runs adjacent to West/East Paces Ferry road, which is the main thoroughfare of the area, and leads commuters on a tour through some of the most expensive real estate in Georgia. Pharr is different though. Arteries shoot off to the South--small roads lined with cars on either side, smaller-than-bungalow homes house cottage industries. A few fancy restaurants line the street alongside aging office buildings.

This is where I saw two Audi R8 V10s within ten seconds of one another. Boom, one spotted in front of a ritzy restaurant, top down, side windows up, staged properly. And another was pulling out of a Shell parking lot.

The intersection was busy and I was hesitant to leave a space for him to cut across the road. Did I want to see the practical man's six-figure Audi smashed? Of course not. But he kept edging forward. It was about this point that I started to think about the life of an Audi R8 driver compared to my own. His striking car is no doubt a conversation starter. Everyone takes photos of it. It reminds me of the time my mother texted me a photo of a Fisker Karma, because none of her schoolteacher friends could figure out what it was either. But they knew it was special.

Was this guy an asshole? I'm not sure. He did deign to use a signal, and whipped out in front of me as the light turned green. Maybe it was his friend's car. Maybe it was J.R. Bieber's car--nah, his is matte black, I think. What would I be like if I suddenly owned an R8?

Supercar drivers have to develop a complex. They just have to. Supercars are not subtle, they're the antithesis of subtle, of practical, of quiet. So it has to make you question the owners of these cars. Do they want the attention? Certainly, but I'm sure it has its limits, as explored by Doug DeMuro during his period of Ferrari 360 ownership (in Atlanta too, no-less).

After the blue R8 swooped in front of me, we both turned onto Piedmont Avenue, a six-lane monolith where he swiftly made his exit through the fast lane. I was left in the dust, which was all right because I was looking for a reclusive camera store, but mostly because the car sent off seismic waves of V10 velveteen.

Our mystery driver's personality profile is still full of holes, but I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Caffeine and Octane Atlanta, July 2014

When I think of a car show, I usually have a pretty clear image in my head. I see dozens of white-haired men and their wives sitting in folding chairs behind meticulously restored American luxo-barges and muscle cars. There are usually signs that read "Look, but please don't touch!" Some tired old Beach Boys song belts through the speakers of an antiquated p.a. system, conversations involving "matching numbers," "frame-off restoration," and "back in the day" drone on, and when the sun goes down, everyone packs up their chairs and trophies, and the cars return to their garage shrines to sit underneath a cover until the next show.

Don't get me wrong, I have immense respect for the work that goes into restoring an old car to showroom condition, but that kind of stuff only applies to a small portion of the car enthusiast community.

This is what makes Caffeine and Octane so great. This grassroots effort --inspired by the wildly popular Cars and Coffee in Irvine, California-- is a rebellious breakaway from the traditional classic car show.

There's no admission fee. There's no way to register your car for the show. You have just as much chance of parking your bone-stock Chevrolet S10 in the show area as Rick Babyboomer has in his numbers-matching Hemi Cuda. First to arrive? Well, then you get first pick of a parking space. It's that simple.

In one row, you'll see everything from that numbers-matching Cuda, to a Lamborghini Diablo, to a 1998 Acura Integra with clearcoat failure. You can see how this quickly becomes an event where anyone who attends can find something they like.

With a diversity in cars comes a diversity in crowd members. Sure, the majority is comprised of fathers and sons --my father and I included-- but there are also entire families who get up at the crack of dawn to make the trek to Caffeine and Octane. Pint-sized photographers and not-so-pint-sized photograpers zig-zag through crowds of reminiscers, couples, dogs, salespeople, police officers, and anyone and everyone in between.

The collection of special cars that congregates here on the first Sunday of every month does something special. It fosters relationships between strangers, friends, and families. Everyone is out to have a good time and share their enthusiasm for cars.

Caffeine and Octane, along with shows like it popping up across the country, are reinventing the way we all think about car shows. The formal, ritualized, and frankly outdated model of the car show that many of us grew up with is changing, and I couldn't be more thankful for that.