by Jordan Bailey, photo editor.
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Life in the beautiful, historic neighborhood of Inman Park is worth juggling a part-time job as a full time SCAD student and a fifteen minute drive to campus. The one exception to my otherwise lovely neighborhood-of-choice is the Inman Park Festival. During this annual celebration, myself and other residents must tolerate attention, litter, noise, traffic and bodily fluids. Yes, bodily fluids.The week leading up to the festival and the week afterward solicits event organizers and staffers to park and work on our streets. Neon fliers scream “If your car is not relocated from Waverly Way or Euclid Ave by 10 a.m. the morning of April 26 your vehicle may be towed.” Great. Maybe a non-threatening color like lavender or periwinkle blue would ease the sting of Atlanta’s finest threatening to charge us money to park where we already pay to live.
For Gertrude, my little Suzuki, the escape to school from Inman Park is a breeze. I don my driving gloves, fantasize that I’m Ryan Gosling’s counterpart in “Drive” and weave in and out of the traffic cones. All is well with my soul. Getting back is another story. I’d like nothing more than to return, change into my forever-smells-like-fried-oysters restaurant uniform and enjoy a quiet moment before slaving away at an 11-hour shift while pretending to love people. The Inman Park Festival all but prevents this from happening.
Pedestrian traffic and closed roads increase my travel time by what seems like a thousand percent. Security guards who watch the entrance are polite but always insist that a SCAD student with a Texas drivers’ license couldn’t possibly live in a condo on Waverly Way. Of course I understand the need to search my car and question my living arrangements until well after my shift starts. Of course I understand how unsafe it is for a responsible and independent student to go home to get ready for work. Of course this entire process, which repeats itself after my 4:30 a.m. return from work, inspires a few four-letter words.
Finally in bed, Gertrude safely tucked away in her stranger-violated parking spot, I drift away into a slumber only to be interrupted by the early morning mechanical sounds of vendors setting up shop outside my windows. They LOL, already swigging down beer at 8 a.m. Really? Two hours later, sound checks for the all-day concerts begin. My bare apartment might as well be a subwoofer. Who wants to nap anyway?
The events of the previous day repeat. New security officers question me and search my car each time I return home. I experience a second sleepless morning complete with rambunctious OTP-ers and suburbanites who start early and leave late. They litter the streets and yards with wrappers and cups from food trucks and beer vendors. Residents in their Sunday morning slippers come outside to grab their papers but end up filling trash bags with beverage containers and germy, strange, coagulated, rotten food.
Let’s not forget the dirty diaper and the vomit spewed across Gertrude’s hood. We all know that vomit. It’s the kind that happens after drinking one or four beers too many, plus eating a funnel cake and a lamb gyro from that irresistible-smelling food truck. Buffing out putrid human acid eating away my silver paint job perfects my Sunday morning.
This year’s upcoming festival will only be survived by an expectation of a lack of respect from festival-goers and security guards with superiority complexes. I shall overcome, but maybe only because I made plans to stay with friends this weekend. I will resume my REM sleep now that I understand what I’m up against. I choose to surrender to a nearby Reynoldstown spring couch. I’m happy there are people in the world with disposable income and time to spare at a festival. However, until I join that group I am forced to resort to my Ryan Gosling fantasies for comfort.
