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The King of Mayor's Park
Oct. 16th, 2011 02:07 am“Beware therefore! Love all, lest perchance is a King concealed! Say you so? Fool! If he be a King, thou canst not hurt him.” ~ Liber Al vel Legis, II, v.59
Travel west up Ralph McGill Boulevard long enough and when it crosses over Peachtree Street Northeast the road abruptly becomes Ivan Allen Junior Boulevard. Whatever motives the bureaucratic shamen who run our city government had in mind when they committed this magical act of renaming, the result wasn’t so much the creation of two boulevards as perhaps intended, but rather just gave a single one a multiple personality disorder. West of Peachtree and you enter the glass canyons of Downtown Country. East of Peachtree and it’s ghetto gentrification slowed down to a glacial crawl. West and the boulevard becomes Ivan, an influential anti-segregationist congressman. East, the Boulevard becomes Ralph, an influential anti-segregationist editor at the AJC. West you’ll find an Army Navy surplus store. East, a humble church. West, a yuppie Doc Jekyll. East, Hyde in plain sight.
This metropolitan personality shift is heralded on the journey west by the presence of a series of gaudily painted giant heads. These multicultural totems are Janus profiled, with one wildly painted face staring off south to the skyscraper forest and the other watching north over the flow of 75/85 that McGill passes over. Immediately on the other side of the highway, right there at the intersection before the shift, squats Mayor’s Park.
Mayor’s Park would barely pass muster as a backyard in the humblest of neighborhoods in Terminus. An anemic corner slice of dead grass with a decrepit tree or two squatting at the intersection before Ralph becomes Ivan. The park grounds however are usually full, packed with camped out homeless. Cats of all colors reading trash scavenged newspapers with plastic grocery bags over their heads, deranged grins holding conversations their ears aren’t a part of, crushed stares smoldering helplessly beneath hoods of raggedy blankets, a few together, most alone.
So there I am earlier today. Ten minutes to one on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m hung-over as fuck and in no mood for the human traffic hustle. I’m sore from a bout of caffeine fueled weight lifting. I’m sore from the hour long march up Peachtree to the Vampire Ball the night before. Sore from sporadic bursts of DUI – dancing under the influence. Flashes of the night pass between the blinks.
The show just before midnight. A chain link fence spread across the edge of the dance floor – from the person sized iron bird cage to the tables, a steel veil cast between the DJ booth and the floor. Next thing I know the troupe, possessed in a feral rage and vamped up to the red, attack the fence furiously with a screaming grinder tools. A spray of copper sparks showers over the empty floor as the soundtrack bass pumps up the agro. Eventually they tear a hole clear through the fence. They stalk the floor menacingly and work the crowd in their mock primal fury. They descend upon one of the performers planted in the audience, an old friend from back in the day (one taking a break between mom patrol and her medic stint with Occupy ATL). They pounce on her and drag her by her ankles to the middle of the dance floor. The whole show ends with them feasting on her with naked hunger.
I shake off the vision and the light still hasn’t changed, so I glance to my right to see if there’s any oncoming traffic, figuring I’ll dash the red if the coast is clear.
What I see instead is a man approaching me from across the other side of Ralph McGill.
Old black man with a scraggly ashtray gray beard covering a gaunt thin face. Thin of frame and with a gait measured with slow, deliberate steps. He’s outfitted as follows – white t-shirt, baggy sweatpants, beaten up sneakers, a big ass crown on his head and a regal red velvet robe flowing off the shoulders to the ankles.
The crown, while obviously not real, is still impressively solid enough and bejeweled sufficiently to pass for prop work at a decent staging of King Lear. We’re not talking a cardboard Burger King number here.
By the time he crosses the street and reaches over by where I’m standing, I can’t help but give a small curtsy at his passing – “Good afternoon, Your Majesty.”
His Majesty doesn’t say a word back, instead he continues to stroll on by as if I wasn’t there and close up I catch the patience etched in the wrinkles around the eyes that can’t be bothered to glance over a lowly peasant such as myself. With an amused snort, I watch as he walks down Peachtree, towards what court, what council, what war, what treaty, I cannot say. Yet none of the denizens of Mayor’s Park behind me, seem to pay his Majesty any special mind. I turn around…
… and the walk sign shifts back to don’t and a solid stream of traffic rumbles forth.
Looking back up north, I watch his Majesty continue to take a leisurely afternoon promenade towards denser parts of the city. I nod to myself, the way I do when I suddenly remember another fragment of a vague dream, here at the intersection of a road with two names, where a servant of the word briefly crossed paths with a king.
Travel west up Ralph McGill Boulevard long enough and when it crosses over Peachtree Street Northeast the road abruptly becomes Ivan Allen Junior Boulevard. Whatever motives the bureaucratic shamen who run our city government had in mind when they committed this magical act of renaming, the result wasn’t so much the creation of two boulevards as perhaps intended, but rather just gave a single one a multiple personality disorder. West of Peachtree and you enter the glass canyons of Downtown Country. East of Peachtree and it’s ghetto gentrification slowed down to a glacial crawl. West and the boulevard becomes Ivan, an influential anti-segregationist congressman. East, the Boulevard becomes Ralph, an influential anti-segregationist editor at the AJC. West you’ll find an Army Navy surplus store. East, a humble church. West, a yuppie Doc Jekyll. East, Hyde in plain sight.
This metropolitan personality shift is heralded on the journey west by the presence of a series of gaudily painted giant heads. These multicultural totems are Janus profiled, with one wildly painted face staring off south to the skyscraper forest and the other watching north over the flow of 75/85 that McGill passes over. Immediately on the other side of the highway, right there at the intersection before the shift, squats Mayor’s Park.
Mayor’s Park would barely pass muster as a backyard in the humblest of neighborhoods in Terminus. An anemic corner slice of dead grass with a decrepit tree or two squatting at the intersection before Ralph becomes Ivan. The park grounds however are usually full, packed with camped out homeless. Cats of all colors reading trash scavenged newspapers with plastic grocery bags over their heads, deranged grins holding conversations their ears aren’t a part of, crushed stares smoldering helplessly beneath hoods of raggedy blankets, a few together, most alone.
So there I am earlier today. Ten minutes to one on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m hung-over as fuck and in no mood for the human traffic hustle. I’m sore from a bout of caffeine fueled weight lifting. I’m sore from the hour long march up Peachtree to the Vampire Ball the night before. Sore from sporadic bursts of DUI – dancing under the influence. Flashes of the night pass between the blinks.
The show just before midnight. A chain link fence spread across the edge of the dance floor – from the person sized iron bird cage to the tables, a steel veil cast between the DJ booth and the floor. Next thing I know the troupe, possessed in a feral rage and vamped up to the red, attack the fence furiously with a screaming grinder tools. A spray of copper sparks showers over the empty floor as the soundtrack bass pumps up the agro. Eventually they tear a hole clear through the fence. They stalk the floor menacingly and work the crowd in their mock primal fury. They descend upon one of the performers planted in the audience, an old friend from back in the day (one taking a break between mom patrol and her medic stint with Occupy ATL). They pounce on her and drag her by her ankles to the middle of the dance floor. The whole show ends with them feasting on her with naked hunger.
I shake off the vision and the light still hasn’t changed, so I glance to my right to see if there’s any oncoming traffic, figuring I’ll dash the red if the coast is clear.
What I see instead is a man approaching me from across the other side of Ralph McGill.
Old black man with a scraggly ashtray gray beard covering a gaunt thin face. Thin of frame and with a gait measured with slow, deliberate steps. He’s outfitted as follows – white t-shirt, baggy sweatpants, beaten up sneakers, a big ass crown on his head and a regal red velvet robe flowing off the shoulders to the ankles.
The crown, while obviously not real, is still impressively solid enough and bejeweled sufficiently to pass for prop work at a decent staging of King Lear. We’re not talking a cardboard Burger King number here.
By the time he crosses the street and reaches over by where I’m standing, I can’t help but give a small curtsy at his passing – “Good afternoon, Your Majesty.”
His Majesty doesn’t say a word back, instead he continues to stroll on by as if I wasn’t there and close up I catch the patience etched in the wrinkles around the eyes that can’t be bothered to glance over a lowly peasant such as myself. With an amused snort, I watch as he walks down Peachtree, towards what court, what council, what war, what treaty, I cannot say. Yet none of the denizens of Mayor’s Park behind me, seem to pay his Majesty any special mind. I turn around…
… and the walk sign shifts back to don’t and a solid stream of traffic rumbles forth.
Looking back up north, I watch his Majesty continue to take a leisurely afternoon promenade towards denser parts of the city. I nod to myself, the way I do when I suddenly remember another fragment of a vague dream, here at the intersection of a road with two names, where a servant of the word briefly crossed paths with a king.