Report on a Southern Secession (Buckhead City)

by philg

On our return from Denver, we stopped overnight in Buckhead, the rich area of Atlanta that was annexed by the city in 1952 and that soon hopes to vote on seceding into “Buckhead City.” Our local host explained that the secession wouldn’t starve Atlanta of significant tax revenue, e.g., for schools. The big difference would be that Buckhead could fund and run its own police force (see “In Atlanta’s Buckhead Neighborhood, Rising Crime Fuels Move to Secede” (WSJ): “Potential loss of the city’s wealthiest and whitest area spurs debate as officials move to address homicides and property crime”).

From what I observed, Buckhead already essentially does fund and run its own police force. The restaurant where we dined and the hotel where I stayed both had hired off-duty police officers, clad in bulletproof vests and wearing guns, to make sure that roving thugs didn’t rob all of the customers. Immigrants from Caracas, Venezuela will feel right at home.

Here’s one from the only part of Umi, our inland sushi destination, that wasn’t too dark to photograph:

Faith in cloth masks is alive and well in Atlanta. Here are a couple of signs encountered on 1/29/2022:

Atlanta adheres to the proven-by-Science principle that if restaurant customers are wearing masks when walking in the door, it doesn’t matter how close together unrelated parties sit once unmasked and talking, drinking, or eating (we saw some counter-serve places with long communal tables that were completely jammed). The FBO where we parked had the obligatory signs reminding pilots and passengers that Uncle Joe’s 1/21/2021 order regarding masks at airports applied even to the world of private planes. Nobody inside was wearing a mask, however.

Our local host was in favor of secession. In his opinion, the city government was incompetent and plagued by nepotism.

(I am not sure how Georgia can compete with neighbors Florida and Tennessee in the long run. The state income tax rate is 5.75 percent (compare to 0% in FL and TN).)

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14 thoughts on “Report on a Southern Secession (Buckhead City)”

  1. Re completing with FL – I will note that at ~1,000 MSL, Atl is likely to remain viable longer than Naples, FL.

    No opinion about TN, but at least it’s not going to be over run by the Atlantic, either.

    But each to their own. The weather in Naples is far nicer this time of year.

    • Paul: Orlando’s main airport is 96’ above sea level. How long before that is under water?

    • Agreed: Central FL should be fine.

      I’m a little sad Miami and the Keys may not last. I’d reflexively written off Miami as just like the rest of FL, but a honeymoon in Miami Beach in early December showed me it’s a lovely area to visit in winter. (Pretty sure we were there when you were at the art show. )

    • ‘I’m a little sad Miami and the Keys may not last. ”

      How do you figure ?

      Any back of the envelope calculations you may want to share with SJWs from BlackRock in their Miami office (which they opened three years ago) ? Perhaps they need to start evacuating forthwith ? I am surprised they missed that imminent calamity with their expertise in “invest[ing] in global climate infrastructure”.

    • Both Obama and Kerry own ocean front properties on Martha’s Vineyard. Obama’s property elevation is about 10 feet above the see level, half of that of the PBI and 3.5′ higher than Miami. Not sure about Kerry’s property elevation, “the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate”.

      In any case, according to their coreligionist Al Gore, all five locations should be under water by now, at least partially (20-foot rise in sea level “in the near future.” The Inconvenient Truth, 2006). Perhaps , they are underwater, and Obama and Kerry just grew gills, like Kevin Costner in Waterworld, and swim around enjoying themselves ?

    • Has not he sold it yet ?

      I remember that there was a mini scandal when the Massachusetts neo-nazi rag, the Boston Herald, had a story about the newly acquired yacht being ported in RI instead of MA to avoid about $500,000 in MA taxes.

  2. I support their secession effort in this case, which isn’t as strange as it sounds now. Paying for private security is the sign of a failed state, or in this case, a failed larger city. They began by being annexed, apparently built their community into something pretty good, and now they have to suffer because the jokers running the place have lost the tune of how to build something prosperous and keep it? There’s no slavery there; Buckhead City isn’t waving a Confederate flag: it wants to attend to its own affairs after apparently paying through the nose and getting punched in it, also, while watching what they’ve built be siphoned away by noncontributory parasites.

    Well, screw that. I hope they make it stick.

    • Sam: The menu is kind of funny. There is a COVID-19 liability disclaimer on top of a quote about how “love is all that exists” (so SARS-CoV-2 loves us? or COVID-19 doesn’t exist?). See http://digital.umiatlanta.com/Umi_Menu_Digi.pdf

      If you ignore the price, it is quite good, but probably no better than what you can get in an LA strip mall for 1/3rd the price. There are a lot of things that are sushi-adjacent and calculated to appeal to stupid white (lowercase) people. Definitely not in the same league as a high-end place that a Japanese friend got us into in Tokyo 20+ years ago (chef would put the sushi into your hand since it was the chef’s job to decide in what order you would eat the items and also you wouldn’t want to eat something that wasn’t perfectly fresh (i.e., made within the last minute or two)). If we are measuring against stratospherically priced American places, I think https://www.o-ya.restaurant/location/o-ya-boston/ is better.

      Look at their “house specialty rolls” for example. There are a bunch of tempura rolls. I don’t remember seeing those in Japan. https://www.quora.com/Do-sushi-restaurants-in-Japan-have-tempura-based-rolls says they’re only for foreigners.

      Dark and a little noisy. I do give them credit for the menu note that carry-out boxes will not be provided (there is a limit to what should be tolerated from stupid white people!).

  5. Back in the ’90s, I used to frequently patron a great all-you-can-eat sushi place in a strip plaza on A1A in Sunny Isles. With all the development in Sunny Isles over the past twenty years, I doubt it’s still there.

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