I used to love all the life that ebbed and flowed out of this place while I lived in Atlanta. It added spice to the punk rock goulash of borderline-haute cuisine and bingo night atmosphere. The wood paneling was appropriately warm in the winter when licked by the hearth flames, and alternately cool in the summer when Atlanta had turned into a molten tar pit. Everything about this place begged you to stay.

The conversation next to me on the day I took this picture was everything I missed about the place, rolled up neatly into one tongue-crafted package:

“Steve, I don’t care if your boyfriend’s family is coming to this wedding. You need to realize that there’s two types stress - good and bad. Good stress is…you know, good, and the bad stress is what we need to filter out. Okay? Just hang in there. That taffeta isn’t going to tie itself if you freak out.”

I don’t miss Atlanta, really, but I do miss the life in it. The small stories.

Microcosms of odd.