The Beltline: Walking with Beltline Organizers

During our first walking tour for the Beltline, we were accompanied by a man named Angel. Angel is a volunteer who works very closely with the Beltline’s planning and construction. At our first stop at Krog Street Market, Angel pulled out maps and diagrams outlining future plans for the Beltline, showing us the current issues presented with the plans. From what I remember, there was an issue with the plans to extend Marta along the Beltline. If the public transit crossed the train yard through the Krog Street Tunnel, it would cause a drastic increase in traffic. Building a new way would be more expensive, which the board for the Beltline does not have the funds for. It was very interesting to see the plans because those would potentially become reality some point in the next few years. This was also my first time at the Krog Street Market. It was a cute little place, and there was one store in particular that Noah, Jen, and I really liked. There was a lot of cute home decor centered around Atlanta, like plates and wall decor. There were a bunch of small shops and restaurants that seemed very interesting, and I particularly liked the flower shop. We stopped here for a while to rest and get some snacks. From here, we left the market and headed to the Beltline.

Once on the Beltline, I was absolutely amazed by the amount and quality of the artwork. I had been on other sections of the walkways and saw some things, but in a lot of instances on this portion, there were artists actually constructing their pieces. As someone who loves sculpture, this was particularly interesting to witness these artists using so many different mediums on such a large scale. Also along the Beltline was this photography movement I had read about while searching for some artists in my UAP. There are hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of photographs printed on mesh and hung up in public for anyone to see. This art movement has installations in most of the major cities in the US. I was almost overwhelmed (in a good way) with all of the art present on this walk. Well that, and the fact that there were so many dogs. I love dogs. I digress. The art was absolutely amazing to see and experience. One of my favorites was under a bridge, where there were grey-colored strings hanging from the bridge with umbrellas dispersed throughout. If you stood under it and looked up, it had the same feeling as if you tilted your head back during a rainstorm and saw all the raindrops rushing down to meet you. Under that same bridge, we met up with Ryan Gravel. He is the author of the book Where We Want to Live that we read in our mapping class. He provided us with a lot of insight in to the conception of this project. Gravel admitted that he never thought this idea of his would come to fruition; it was simply an idea he had some 20-odd years ago. It was very interesting to hear his story of the Beltline and his intentions in building such infrastructure. The Beltline serves a practical purpose in that it provides people with a means for exercise as well as safe, pedestrian walkways for transportation. It also serves the purpose of giving local artists a place to display their work. Atlanta is filled with so many artists, using vastly different media and styles, and this project is a way to display Atlanta’s art scene for all to see. After this section, we walked a little farther and saw the Ponce City Market marquee, meaning we were close to our destination!