No Tourists, No Artists. Tourists at
Atlanta's Underground didn't realize they were working with an real live artist, but they were.
Tom Richmond,
Caricaturist Of The Year for 1998 and 1999,
recipient of a Reuben Award in
2003 ,
one-time comic book creator, and frequent artistic contributor to
Mad Magazine (
movie parodies, mostly), supported his freelance work for almost 18 years by doing cartoons-for-hire in
historic Underground Atlanta.
Despite many efforts to "save" it,
Underground continues to
fade in popularity and the tourist traffic just dwindles on down, leaving folks like Tom no choice but to pack up their paints and leave. Tom's story makes for interesting insight into a job that most of us might take for tourist-trapping huckstery.
(via Radical Georgia Moderate)
posted by grabbingsand
on Jan 7, 2008 -
14 comments
Sleep. "With pop culture so willingly providing countless numbers of prepackaged lifestyles, people no longer feel a need to truly think for themselves and do not bother to take the time to question the true origin of their own ideals and desires. Nothing can be taken for face value. Everything that portrays itself as one thing, turns out to be something else. Enter Slumber Inc."
An Atlanta-based culture-meme, more akin to
Obey than
Toynbee. But really, aside from drawing the occasional amused or confused glance from passersby, can pasting a poster actually accomplish anything revolutionary?
posted by grabbingsand
on Mar 27, 2002 -
17 comments