where every day is closing day

at the inman park parade, one float had a great home made bumper sticker lampooning atlanta's shitty new slogan.

"atlanta--where every day is opening day."

and it's everywhere. blaring from the tv at the gates in the airport (is running it every 4 minutes really necessary?). on banners downtown. on the welcome sign leaving the airport. at the braves' baseball stadium.

this new marketing campaign blows. inspired by las vegas' wildy successful "what happens in vegas, stays in vegas" campaign, the atlanta effort is limp and lifeless. in two years, no one will remember it.

no one i have talked to likes it. dallas austin's song that goes with the campaign is equally bad. a theme song for a city? ok, i like creativity, but the song is just plain bad. i think the conversation went something like this:

shirley franklin: hey dallas, can you write a song for our new atlanta campaign?
dallas: hell ya. i'm a hip hop mogul. this will be one bad ass song. i'll call big boi, andre, the ying yang twins...
shirley: ooh, well, we don't want to make it too hip hop. there's a bunch of white folks in the burbs that are scared of black people. i just barely got them coming back to the city to see movies at atlantic station. no real rapping. just some, you know, synthesizers and stuff. a dance beat.

as result, this watered down something-for-everyone crap instead appeals to no one.

i hate to just bitch, so i've come up with some suggestions:

• atlanta: the capital of the south
• atlanta: not as racist as the rest of the south
• atlanta: segregated by choice
• atlanta: blue city in a red state
• atlanta: making white flight all right
• atlanta: julia roberts is from here. kind of.
• atlanta: letting sonny purdue screw martin luther king jr's legacy
• atlanta: a pit stop for new yorkers before they retire
• atlanta: we don't really get the rest of georgia, either