Bob Cramer's Blog

Like communities nationwide, Atlanta faces a renewal of civic activism related to race, inequality, and justice. Triggered by police brutality and negligence, an anger and frustration that  has been simmering just under the surface has rightfully spilled out on our streets, leading to much needed discussions on how to create a more inclusive and just society.

Atlanta’s experience with race and fairness is far more complicated than the convenient and inaccurate 1960 marketing slogan of “the city too busy to hate”. Nothing says that this statement is not true more than a key piece of our city’s infrastructure known to all Atlantans: Interstate highway 75/85 running straight through the middle of downtown, built that way for the express purpose of keeping black and white Atlantans apart.  

In order to make progress going forward, we must understand Atlanta’s complicated and checkered history with race.  Fortunately, there are great resources available to provide context and perspective.  One of the best and most honest histories of race relations in Atlanta is Clarence Stone’s Regime Politics, which covers governing Atlanta from 1946 to 1988. It is a fascinating read.

More perspective is also available in the new Ken Burns PBS documentary, East Lake Meadows, a public housing story raising critical questions about race and poverty.  When you watch it, you will understand the mindset that has driven Atlanta public policy decisions for decades.

Personally, as a 30-year volunteer, starting in 1986 with 14 years as the Board Chairman of the Metro-Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, the struggle to help vulnerable Atlantans is one with which I have some experience.  Unfortunately, it is another chapter that reflects poorly on our political and business community leadership. This truth needs to be acknowledged.

Some disturbing examples that stand out are policies such as “Vagrant Free Zones”, a 1986  initiative led by the downtown business organization that would later be called Central Atlanta Progress.  Besides the revolting ordinance name, A NY Times article says that the legislation asserts the need “to reduce the “”aimless wandering”” of Atlanta’s estimated 5,000 homeless, who business leaders think make visitors feel unsafe and uncomfortable.”  One protestor of the ordinance said,  “We’re talking about arresting people for simply being on Peachtree Street if they don’t look like the white upper class.”

10 years later, Vagrant Free Zones were replaced by a new string of policy initiatives called “Quality of Life” ordinances.  Passed by the City Council in 1996, a public policy analysis of the first ordinance describe it this way:

“The ordinance prohibits lying down, sleeping, regular meal preparation, and storing belongings on public property. The ordinance is controversial because it criminalizes behaviors of homeless individuals who have no private property and therefore no choice but to perform tasks necessary to life on public lands. The ordinance’s passage in Atlanta is at least partly the result of a post Olympic private sector growth in power that capitalized on growing concerns about public safety and urban economic vitality. During its first year, the ordinance disproportionately impacted homeless persons.”

That same year, as reported in a feature by the American Bar Association:

“The task force sued the city over police sweeps clearing the streets of black men in preparation for Atlanta’s international debut hosting the Olympics. They complained that newly enacted ordinances against panhandling and loitering were used improperly to round up 9,000 people as police carried blank arrest papers preprinted with “African-American male” and “homeless” on them. (Around the same time, the city also infamously offered free, one-way bus tickets anyplace in the U.S. for homeless people willing to leave.)

The Boston office of Ropes & Gray represented the plaintiffs. A federal judge issued a restraining order two days before the Olympics opening ceremonies, and the city later settled by paying $3,000 each to five homeless men and $60,000 to fund a homelessness advocate.”

In 1997, The Task Force For The Homeless, purchased the Peachtree-Pine building, a large 95,000 square foot building on Peachtree Street, with the goal of creating a place for vulnerable people to leave the streets, access a wide variety of services, and embark on a more positive journey.  As Anita Beaty, our executive director, would say, it was a place where people could go to find  “what makes their heart sing.”

Instead of being embraced as a long-needed, humane solution to downtown homelessness, Mayor Bill Campbell’s political leadership immediately took a hostile approach to the project. The Chairman of the Woodruff Foundation followed suit, publicly announcing that the building “must have a higher and better use” than a shelter.  Furthermore, Central Atlanta Progress also worked to undermine all the potential of Peachtree-Pine, and the future administrations of Mayors Shirley Franklin and Kasim Reed were equally combative.

The history of the Peachtree-Pine building became a decades-long saga of poverty versus power, as I wrote in the AJC in 2011.   Over that time span, tens of thousands of vulnerable people were helped, fed, housed, and loved, while comprehensive renovation plans for the complex structure were scoped.  But despite valiant attempts to build an open, caring and innovative social service center in the heart of our city, next to a hospital, addressing huge unmet human need, the Task Force, its building, and our community were subject to relentless attacks from Atlanta’s leadership elite.  These tactics led to threats, lawsuits, and a complete loss of perspective in working together to serve our most vulnerable residents.  Sadly, this dark period and the eventual sale and closing of Peachtree-Pine represents a huge missed opportunity to proactively address many of the issues that we wrestle with today. (AJC columnist Bill Torpy’s article at the time summed it up well).

Fortunately, all is certainly not lost.  With a new group of young Atlantans mobilized to make changes, and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms distinguishing herself as a leader in a time of crisis, we move forward with cautious optimism.  Over the years, a healthy number of new non-profit organizations have stepped up to address poverty and homelessness.  The Westside Project looks promising as does the renewed commitment from our community leaders to finally get things right.  Inspiration also comes from groups like YearUp, who help young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods cross the “opportunity divide” towards economic justice and prosperity.

Hopefully, the intense nature of the current national conversation will continue to bend the curve towards inclusion, greater humanity, and an Atlanta that lives up to its best ideals.

Based on what is happening in New York, Boston, and other major cities, it is just a matter of time before Atlanta-area hospitals become swamped with COVID-19 patients.  This unfortunate reality seems about as certain as the sun will come up tomorrow.

One opportunity to partially address this issue is to immediately utilize the large and empty building known as the Peachtree-Pine building to create emergency hospital bedspace.  Located downtown directly across Peachtree Street from Emory North Hospital, this 95,000 square foot building which used to serve as the largest homeless shelter in the southeast is well suited to be transformed into a thriving, life-saving facility if we choose to act now.

I know this from my work as the Chairman of the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless where we housed approximately 500 vulnerable people daily at Peachtree-Pine for more than two decades.  We basically used only one of the four floors to do this so I am convinced with proper planning, this building could conservatively house around 2,000 patients (a huge number).

Most likely, these patients would be non-COVID-19 patients, freeing bedspace at Emory North and other local hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients within a traditional hospital environment.

This undertaking will take a massive effort to make it a reality, and the work should start immediately.  I’d love to see the Governor and Mayor call in the National Guard or others to begin the needed transformation. If we start now, we just might be able to get a little bit ahead of the curve on taking care of our fellow Atlantans.

I played in the senior handicapped golf club championship at my fancy-schmancy club this weekend.   I put down my bad right hip on the tournament application and after a short doctor’s consultation was of course immediately accepted.  

While none of this is true, except for the fact that I did finish in the money, my right hip is truly a bit of my Achilles heal.  While thankfully it doesn’t hurt (I gleefully walked 36-holes in oppressive heat over two days), it does cut down my mobility, costing me precious seconds in doing routine things like putting on my sock, tying my Nikes, and doing the good ol’ fashioned exercise, squat thrusts, requiring bending like a baseball catcher.

It has become a little conversation piece around the locker room at the aforementioned fancy-schmancy club.  People seem to buy tickets to watch me coax my Thorlo’s around the big right toe, rock back and forth in a criss-cross, applesauce motion, trying to close the space between where my fingers will reach and where my toes start.  At times it seems like a wide crevasse, the Grand Canyon of space separating cotton and skin.

They even make side bets on exactly how long it will take.  I don’t take that personally (you should hear how I debate politics over there with my dear friends from the other party), but you would think they would cut me in on some of the betting action as I am the main attraction.

Yoga, stretch classes and daily doses of Dona glucosamine pills helps, but sometimes that makes me feel like my dog who also takes the supplement.  One time I ran out of mine and decided to take his. That wasn’t smart.

But let’s face it, we have come to the age where everybody has something and I have this; a hip that doesn’t rock.  Based on what I saw at the golf course this weekend, some of my fellow competitors have much more serious handicaps.  So I thank my lucky stars, sleep with a pillow between my legs, sport the no-sock look and seek out slip on shoes whenever possible.  And don’t talk to me about a hip replacement; I plan on keeping the original.

Summer is here and the joy of going out for ice cream takes center stage once again.  I have developed a sweet tooth for Zesto which serves a beautifully tasting–light and airy–soft vanilla similar to the more well-known Carvel (founded in Hartsdale, NY, for those curious), and dispensed as you would expect in cones, waffle cones, sundaes, malts, milkshakes, ice cream floats, arctic swirls and, of course, cups.

The big excitement for for me when entering the Zesto, Carvel and Dairy Queens of the world is whether to add chocolate shell to any vanilla order.  There’s no doubt that chocolate shell adds a sophisticated layer of palate intrigue to plain jane vanilla but can create havoc with your life.

Based on my recent investigative reporting at the Zesto on Piedmont Road, right next to the laundromat, the addition of chocolate shell to any soft serve offering creates great opportunity to make a mess.  You never quite know when the vanilla will pierce the protective shell holding it back and start leaking all over your khaki shorts or golf shirt. Don’t even ask me about last weekend at the Dairy Queen in Toccoa, GA, on my way to a wedding.

Trying to outsmart the threat created by a Brown Crown cone, I went for a small vanilla cup with shell included, and then added driving to the mix.  You’ll be glad to hear that I didn’t wreck, but my clothes suffered an injustice and I’m sure I ingested decent amounts of chemicals wedging my spoon deep in there to get all the hardened chocolate which attached to the plastic-lined paper cup.  My wife wasn’t happy.

Overall, I question the nutritious value of the shell in the first place.  What do they put in it to make it harden? Would it work on potholes? Is there an organic, lactose-free version? Does it contain Viagra?  I know you can buy this type of topping in the supermarket but I’m beginning to think it might come with a warning label or require a prescription.

Moving on, I have noticed significant market segmentation in the ice cream-yogurt-gelato cold treat industry.  I’m a simple guy–I go for quantity over quality. The yogurt shops with all their toppings and flavors make me crazy and the gelato places are overpriced and their servings small.

One hazard of the soft serve market is often the machines are down.  I’ve notice this trend at my neighborhood Baskins-Robbins. Their 32 flavors were always frozen in place, but 9 times out of 10 the self service machine was out of order.  Curious about this important topic, my research has uncovered that McDonald’s ice cream machines often suffer the same fate. Too hard to clean or something like that. So soft serve when you can find it is becoming a delicacy.

But enough with all of the negative stuff.  Plain and simple, ice cream in the summer is pure joy and chocolate shell on top is pandemonium. Please bring plenty of napkins.

The always informative and fun networking bonanza known as Venture Atlanta had its annual conference last week at the still relatively new College Football Hall of Fame, where you can watch pitches from our region’s most promising startups while sitting, not kneeling, under the lights on the hash marks of a makeshift football field in the middle of downtown.

It was another great event for Atlanta’s up-and-coming tech community, as we heard about record number of out-of-town investors, record number of applications and record number of attendees. Simply put, so many records were broken that something must qualify for enshrinement in a small corner of our host building.

The conference format includes multiple six-minute presentations from capital-seeking companies who have shown true market fit and hockey-stick-like revenue projections interspersed with interviews with successful investors and company CEO’s. As far as I could tell, two themes stood out: be nice to each other and a background in sports is a winning factor to being a successful entrepreneur.

There was also a consolation prize for some companies that weren’t quite up to the judges’ snuff on market fit and growth traction but promising enough to not be left out. These companies were banished to a small room on the second floor amidst the Heisman Trophy and a bird’s eye view of the football field ballroom below. Personally, I felt bad for them; they seemed all alone, eager to show off their wares but with few takers. Next year perhaps they can be more visible.

As my company sponsored the coffee cups, I must say the espresso machines were a big hit, except that the lines were a bit long because we only had one barista at a time. My attempt to cut the line claiming my company was the sponsor was unfortunately met with scorn and derision.

There is a bit of a caste system at Venture Atlanta. Certain events are deemed “VIP” like the early morning breakfast on the second day and a big shindig after day one, complete with transportation to and a rooftop buffet at Ponce City Market. As the coffee cup sponsor, you would have thought I’d qualify for this opportunity to have some real food but I guess not, and I sheepishly had to walk in the oppressive October heat to MARTA while my peers sat on their air-conditioned buses ready for a big night out.

Besides that slight slight, I leave Venture Atlanta proud to be a small but consistent member of the Atlanta tech community. So many fine people, really impressive companies and an emerging track record of highly successful exits. Atlanta is cooking up all the needed ingredients to continue its ascent as a top-tier tech city and we have come a long way since I started A.D.A.M. Software back in the late 80’s. Here’s to continued success.