First off, we owe big-time thanks to E-Bar for hosting us. They could not have been more gracious. E-Bar's owner/manager has invited us to return whenever we want and I think we'll take him up on that. Good coffee, comfy chairs, and it's local! The live classical guitar was a nice touch as well. Thanks for residents for buying so much coffee, by the way; E-Bar really appreciated it ;)

More Notes

We had a lot of people, including quite a few new folks. There were around 30 people altogether I think. Great crowd. There were people from the William-Oliver, 90 Fairlie, 123 Luckie, the Metropolitan, the Muses, Peachtree Tower, the Landmark, Kessler City Lofts, the Art Building and a few more places. Our distributed flyer system seems to have brought up turnout so we'll do that again next month.

We had a really good discussion/announcements section. I went over the goals we set at the Executive Committee meeting, talked about the telecom legislation and let people know about the Atlanta Deputies Program. Two men from Kessler's came with flyers and made an announcement about their action to block the liquor license renewals for two liquor stores on Broad Street that are causing a lot of problems (selling single-serving liquor, single cigarettes, encouraging major street problems, etc.) We also had a guy talk about an public art project at that abandoned building by Five Points Station.

One of the big issues that came up was noise problems over by 90 Fairlie. The Leeches reported that they've having major, major problems dealing with noise from Karma (not the club itself, but the patrons, who scream, honk, blast music, litter, etc.) as well as middle-of-the-night trash collection. We talked about possible courses of action and just now I sent out email to Robb Pitts and Debi Starnes detailing the problems and asking for assistance on their behalf. If anyone on this list has connectiosn to the GSU Police or knows of any other way to work on this issue, please email downtownatl@hotmail.com.

Finally I did my MARTA presentation. I did an introduction and went over MARTA fares/passes, trains, gave details on local buses and told people how to go grocery shopping and use a two-wheeled cart. I handed out schedules for 4 different buses as well as tri-fold brochures and copies of MARTA's Go magazine. Hopefully some more Downtown residents will become MARTA masters. If anyone wants the brochure/guide I wrote up on MARTA for Downtowners, email downtownatl@hotmail.com with your name and address and I can send you a copy in the mail. You can also find a lot of the stuff I talked about online.

Thanks everyone!

- Wendy Darling, DNA Secretary/Treasurer/Webmaster