Paris on Ponce

Ponce de Leon Avenue is one of the swankiest streets in Atlanta. It is home to trendy coffee shops, traditional southern tea rooms, sad snowman murals, majestic diners, funky neon signs, art deco movie houses, stunning trees, ATL scooters, seedy motels, Krispy Kreme doughnut shops, Our lady of the Kudzu, over the top store signs, the fabulous Fox Theatre, dogs on motorcycles, the Zesto lunchroom, the coolest Grolsch billboard, and the Paris on Ponce store.

Paris on Ponce is a three building orange colored warehouse filled with 18th century antique to new designer furniture. We passed it yesterday, on our way to another furniture store: Gado Gado where we bought an Indonesian wall mirror framed in carved teak wood.

Today, there was another kind of Paris on Ponce de Leon when the Tour de Georgia finished in midtown Atlanta. The previous tours finished in Alpharetta, at less than two miles from our home. This year, the tour finished with six laps through Atlanta. Greg had a soccer match, so we could not go to cheer on the cyclists. Maybe one day, we'll cheer them on in the real Paris.

Fast growing cities

One of my favorite website is the one published by the US Census Bureau. They release interesting statistics on a continuous basis. This week, they released growth figures for metro areas.

The Atlanta metro area gained 890,000 residents from April 1, 2000, to July 1, 2006, the largest numerical gain of the nation’s 361 metro areas. Atlanta passed Boston and Detroit and is now the 9th largest city with 5.1 million residents.

Dallas-Fort Worth had the second largest numeric increase at 842,000, and totaled about 6 million people. Houston (with an increase of 825,000), Phoenix (787,000) and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif. (771,000) rounded out the top five metro area gainers over the time period.

The ten largest cities in the US are now (population in millions):

1. New York -- 18.8

2. Los Angeles -- 12.9

3. Chicago -- 9.5

4. Dallas - Fort Worth -- 6.0

5. Philadelphia -- 5.8

6. Houston -- 5.5

7. Miami - Fort Lauderdale -- 5.5

8. Washington -- 5.3

9. Atlanta -- 5.1

10. Detroit -- 4.5

van Kaas

What do cheese and painters have in common? Just like for windmills, tulips and liberal drug laws, Holland is known for both cheese and painters. So it should come as no surprise that Dutch cheese exporter K.H. de Jong is succesfully selling a line of cheeses named after famous painters: Rembrandt, Vincent, Mondrian. Even da Vinci has a cheese named after him, even though he's not Dutch. I guess the success of the da Vinci code proved too much for K.H. de Jong to ignore.

While the cheeses are quite tasty, I find the association with famous painters rather cheesy. Atlanta Foods International came up with a more creative blend of Dutch cheese and painting. They are marketing a line of Gouda cheeses under a brandname called "van Kaas". That's classic. Bordewijk or Elsschot could have come up with such a name. The label shows a windmill painted in a van Goghian style against a starry night sky.

Each museum should keep this cheese in their fridge.

Pollen

When I returned to Atlanta airport from Orlando, I found my car covered with yellow powder. While driving back home, the air was hazy with pollen. The South is suffering from one of the worst allergy seasons in years.

People start showing allergic reactions when the pollen count is over 50 particles per cubic meter of air. A reading of 120 is considered extremely high. Last week, Atlanta's pollen count hit 5900!!

Greg and Sammy have been suffering from itchy and watery eyes, stuffed noses, swollen faces, and had trouble breathing. The spring weather is keeping them indoors.

A presidential visit

I spent most of this week at the CTIA Wireless convention in Orlando. It was the usual pressure cooker of loud music, flashing lights, cheap give-aways and thousands of new products and ideas screaming for attention. As always, some companies try to attract attention with booth babes or even anti-booth babes. Not our company. We drew large crowds and big headlines by having two ex-presidents in our booth for five minutes.

De Flandriens

One of the things I miss most after leaving Holland is professional cycling. Not so much the tv coverage of the actual races. I can probably see more hours of cycling here than in Holland 10 years ago. But the cycling that is in heart and soul of Europeans. Folks talk about cycling. Some people even write about cycling.

My birthday roughly coincides with the start of the cycling season in Northern Europe. Races are held in cold and windy conditions and under grey skies. Henk and Myriam reminded me of the season start in recent years by sending me a copy of cycling magazine "De Muur". I would always read the story of our friend Herman Chevrolet first. This year, Henk and Myriam sent me Herman's first novel: De Flandriens.

Herman is a Swiss born Belgian, who lives and works in Amsterdam. He's a great chef and knows every short cut around Oudenaarde allowing you to see the Tour of Flanders pass 20 times on a single day. While I have not read the book yet, I listened to the interview with Herman on the Spijkers met Koppen radio show. The interview starts roughly 44 minutes into the show.

I will never forget my European heritage.

De kleine van Dorp.

Falun

This weekend, I took a train up to Falun from Stockholm to visit my friend Mats. Two and a half years ago, he and his family moved back to Sweden after having spent a couple of years in Atlanta.

Falun is in Dalarna, the heartland of Sweden. The people love the outdoors, and Dalarna is great for cross country skiiing or long distance skating. While most of the lakes have too much snow to skate comfortably, volunteers are maintaining a 30 km track on the Runn lake. It is a 5 minute walk from Mats' home to the track. So we rented Swedish long distance skates and went for a ride. After the skating, we relaxed in Mats' outdoor spa while enjoying some cold Carlsbergs.