*Sorry if you’re getting this post again! This originally posted August 16th, but I clicked the wrong settings so it did not send to everyone.
My father is an eccentric man and a serial entrepreneur. Throughout my childhood, he ventured into seemingly random and obscure business ventures. When I was born in Los Angeles, he was running an auto body shop in Koreatown. Before I started the third grade, to my mother’s dismay, he bought a big tan and orange Bounder RV that we drove to Dallas Texas. He started an artwork frame distribution company while we were living out of that RV for a short time. After a few years, he moved us to Charlotte North Carolina so that he could open up a scrap metal yard in the boonies outside of the city. A couple of years after that we moved down to Atlanta so that he could continue to pursue business ventures within the scrap metal industry.
I hated moving so much as a kid. Only having a few years to make new friends and get comfortable in a new city before picking up and doing it all over again was tough on all of us. When we moved to Atlanta, I was going into the 8th grade and I remember begging my dad to let us stay put so that I could have friendships that lasted longer than a few years. The thought of moving during my high school years felt heinous.
We did end up staying for a long time; from 8th grade to post-college I was able to put roots down in Atlanta. I loved and still love Atlanta. I loved growing up in the South. I grew to love the hot and humid summer days because the more humid it was the more refreshing the evening thunderstorms would be. I love that we regularly went to Waffle House. I love that my LimeWire library was full of Usher, Ludacris, D4L, Outkast, T-Pain, Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, and Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz. I loved loitering outside of a QT gas station with my friends until 2 AM. I loved spending summers smoking terrible dro with my friends before tubing on the Chattahoochee River. The South was formative for me.
Eventually, I forgot how I used to beg to stay in one city for longer than a couple of years. Perhaps subconsciously I grew accustomed to uprooting my life and starting over every few years and I grew restless. I was bored and I was a terrible student without much direction. So I dropped out of college and moved to Kansas City Missouri to become a christian missionary for a few years in 2011. I started cooking there, traveled to parts of the world that I could have never imagined going to, and experienced some crazy shit. But again, three and some years later, I was restless but a little more mature. The maturity manifested in a self-driven desire to go back to Atlanta and finish my degree.
I came back to Atlanta a different person, but also to a different city. Maybe the city was the same, just seen from a different perspective… I started up my sophomore year again as all my old friends were already graduated, I got a job at a restaurant, and eventually moved into the city.
Back in 2015, the city was popping. Thank God I moved into the city when I did because the city felt like it was going through a growth spurt. Artists were hosting regular art shows around the city as murals started to pop up around the city. The East side of the Beltline was finishing up, Krog Street Market and Ponce City Market just opened, Edgewood was constantly bumping, and East Atlanta always had a party popping off.
Restaurants like Staplehouse, Kimball House, Ticonderoga Club, and 8Arm were in their prime. The restaurant scene in general was fucking exciting. Trying to hit all the Buford Highway institutions (like Pho Da Loi #2, Yet Tuh, and El Rey Del Taco) and hidden gems (like Quoc Huong for the banh mis and Pollos Mi Tierra for the mole de pollo in Fiesta Mall) was fun. New restaurants, pop-ups, bars, and breweries were popping up everywhere.
This was when I busted my ass off to get into fine dining while going to school full time. Doing pop-ups with close friends just because it was fun. Biking from one homie’s art show to another. Casual kickbacks at friend’s cribs that lasted all day. All memories I deeply cherish.
As much as I loved Atlanta, I wanted to go to a bigger city to cook in different kitchens (lol can you spot the pattern?). I graduated from school, cooked full-time at Staplehouse for another year then packed up and drove out to Los Angeles in 2019. Three years, two cities, and one pandemic later, I’ve only been back home twice. Each time feeling a little more alienated than before.
I spent a few days in Atlanta last week to celebrate my mom’s birthday with her and for days I’ve been trying to put words to a swirl of emotions that I was feeling after coming back to NYC. Everything is the same, yet everything is different. My parents live in the suburbs where it feels like a strange time capsule. The roads are repaved and stop lights have been replaced with roundabouts. But the businesses that survived the start of the pandemic look the same as if nothing ever happened and the empty shells of shuttered businesses are scattered around; collecting dust as if no one has inquired to take over the lease in years. I only went into the city once to visit my old chefs, but damn. The wrath of gentrification did not hold back on Edgewood where old bars and clubs we used to frequent have turned into modern luxury condos.
The deeper you drove into the city, the more townhouses and condo buildings seem to come out of nowhere. Friend’s telling me over a beer how rental costs of apartments even in the suburbs fare just under Brooklyn prices. Friend’s telling me that townhouses that are selling for $700k in what used to be affordable neighborhoods along Buford Highway that was home to so many POC immigrant communities. My old chef telling me how they can only open for a few days a week because there just aren’t any cooks to hire anymore.
I felt like I woke up from a coma after a few years only to wake up to a different reality. Sure, the roads are a little nicer… some blocks are cleaner (mostly because it’s been bulldozed and built over). But more than anything, maybe I was overcome with a sense of sadness. Many of our old cultural establishments are no more. The restaurants seem to have lost steam and feel exhausted from feeling the effects of so many cooks and wait staff leaving the industry for good after the pandemic hit. The old Atlanta that I loved deeply just felt different. I felt like Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, scrambling to remember Kate Winslet in his memories as faces and surroundings slowly started to blur out.
When I got back to NYC I started writing about feeling sad, disgruntled, and upset about how things have changed. But decided to start over with a different attitude (which is why you’re getting this on Tuesday… instead of the usual Monday post…)
Again, I have one of Van Neistat’s YouTube videos to thank for the perspective shift. In this particular video, he talks about nostalgia:
"Nostalgia I think serves two purposes:
It returns us to our people. It encourages us to return to our people if we’re far away.
“We experience nostalgia so that when we have an experience that we know we’ll be nostalgic about, an experience that will go into our nostalgia bank. Our nostalgia, the strength of that feeling of nostalgia, encourages us to surrender to the experience.
Nostalgia is a license to surrender to the meaningful experiences of our future.”
It doesn’t sit right with me to shit on my hometown just because it has changed so much from gentrification. It doesn’t sit right to say that Atlanta has lost its culture and its charm. To shit on Atlanta means that I am shitting on my friends who are still there and the communities that are still going strong there.
Sure, many of my friends who chose to stay in Atlanta are disgruntled and saddened when another memorable spot gets replaced by another real estate developer. Sure, it can feel hopeless when the grim reality of how landlords will almost always prefer a Chipotle over a mom&pop small restaurant to sign a lease settles in.
But at the end of the day, who am I to say that Atlanta’s lost its culture war to gentrification? Who am I to say that Atlanta has lost the sauce? The moment I moved out of the city is the moment I lost my privilege to shit on that city. I am no longer contributing to the local community and to the culture there anymore. It would be audacious and dense of me to talk about it as if I still was. The homies that are still there are rolling with the punches and making the best out of it. They’re getting their bag, starting to own their own homes, growing their families, supporting the restaurants that are still going, they’re still doing the pop-ups, and contributing to their local communities.
When I first started writing this, I didn’t know what I was feeling - nor did I know even what I was saying. But now, I can understand a little better, what exactly I was saddened about. Naturally, when you visit your hometown you’re constantly dipping into your nostalgia bank. You can’t help but compare the present with the past. Maybe the pandemic and the economic shit show have turned me from my usual optimistic self to a bit more of a nihilist; subconsciously looking back on memories through rose-tinted lenses.
I was only home for a few days, barely a toe dip in the water. Not enough time to gauge the temperature of the city or of my friends. Maybe I just miss my friends. I miss when times felt simpler. I miss being closer to my family. I miss when I enjoyed cooking on the line. I miss the energy of a bunch of early 20-something-year-olds who were eager to leave a lasting impact on the city. I was swimming in my nostalgia bank only to come up out of it feeling like everything is a bit too different now.
Gentrification will keep happening since it doesn’t seem like the government or corporations care to hide that they don’t give a shit about us. Restaurant closures will keep happening. Old cultural establishments will keep being bulldozed or replaced with some other corporate blank box.
But when Van said: “Nostalgia is a license to surrender to the meaningful experiences of our future”, the sadness of missed experiences transitions over to a more… hopeful perspective. A good reminder to fully soak in the present moment of all that is going on around us because they are all inevitably being added to our nostalgia banks. I want to enjoy my moments with the people in my life a little more. I want to enjoy restaurants a little more.
Nothing like a trip back home.
Thank you for taking the time to read the Substack today.
All love,
Edmond