Adventures in the "A"

Those episodes of Atlanta are closer to real life than you think

This trip was my first time in Atlanta and the experiences here weren’t as extreme as an episode of FX’s Atlanta, but damn close. What originated from the idea for traveling to One Music Fest to set off Scorpio season also became another cultural anthropological moment and the lesson that life has a way of becoming more than what you planned in a short span of time.

For all the internet videos that circulate, I was relieved and grateful that I didn’t experience a witnessing any fights at the one Waffle House we visited. However, there was one at the Morehouse homecoming.

Attending the Morehouse/ Spelman homecoming for my first time during my first time in Atlanta felt intense. There were so many people that I felt like the entire area was vibrating. The music and the crowd pulsated and gave frenetic movement to everything.

Also, there was a charged sexual energy that was partially pervy because of the number of older, possibly married or recently divorced men hitting on younger women.

You know that moment when people say they can “feel your energy”? This was that place.

I didn’t attend an Historically Black College University (HBCU) so I can’t contextualize the meaning of homecoming for people.

Leaving the homecoming and walking to a location where the group of us could pick up a Lyft or Uber, we saw a car parked on the grass with one of the rear wheels in the air. This was closer to being at home in the Bay Area for some reason.

At one of the first places we visited that I got to see was a sports bar called Monticello, a rooftop bar in what appeared to be strip mall on a steep hill. We had to pay for valet parking because options were few and there was no street parking.

Asking a waitress for the plate of fries that she had possibly served to someone else was the mission for the evening. Or maybe is was because she refused to acknowledge that she had no intention of placing the order of French fries.

Attending the One Music Festival, was also the first festival that I didn’t attend from start to finish on both days. How I got into the festival was a bit shaky and shady but we won’t talk about that.

In a world where women have been throwing their bras on stage at rappers, Lil Kim took off her panties and threw them into the audience. This was before she brought out Lil Cease, of course. Janet brought out J. Cole. I watched Meg Thee Stallion through a fence and by a security gate.

I really talked to a lizard outside of the One Music Festival under a full moon after seeing Lil Kim, Megan Thee Stallion and Janet Jackson. I don’t know when I became comfortable with lizards and snakes but I moon over them the way that some people do with dogs and cats.

Driving around Atlanta was interesting because almost every turn it felt like there was a strong possibility that getting lost in the woods is very likely.

I don't know if it was the fact that it was HBCU homecoming, One Music Festival, the full moon or just Atlanta but this was the oddest and most eye opening trip I’ve taken so far.