Interacting with a Fountain

I took a walk around Atlanta. It’s a terrible city for walking, but I try a big loop down Peachtree and over to the famous Centennial Olympic Park. 1996 must have been a hell of a year for the guy who makes those cast-iron grids that go around trees. I walked over hundreds of them, all marked with 1996 and Olympics and some encouraging words about the rebirth of the city.

I turned off Peachtree Street just past the Hotel and Biztraveler District (the usual suspects: Hard Rock Cafi, Planet Hollywood, etc.) , and headed towards the park. From a distance I notice towers that look like jewel-encrusted phalluses. The jewels are lights, or perhaps windows. As I walk closer, I notice that they are probably meant to represent Olympic torches. To me, though, they look like sad, snuffed-out torches. There seems to be some apparatus at the top of each torch that lights up at night, though. I’ll drive by later.

There are large, very open flat brick spaces, all pleasantly bordered in tasteful carved granite, and large rectangular patches of grass looking like some obsessive collectors exhibit of giant pool tables.

It’s flat, but not ugly. In the paved section, each little brick rectangle has something in the middle of it — a bench or a small tree or a sculpture. It makes the park feel like a box of Fanny Farmer chocolates, each little delicacy in its own little crinkled paper cup.

In some sections, the paving stones are organized into attractive patterns, and these have little bronze plaques proclaming them quilts. One is entitled “The Quilt of Origins,” and has a sculpture that looks kind of like socialist-realist workers trapped inside a flat eggshell. There is a “Quilt of Olympic Glory” and it has, as it’s Fanny Farmer chocolate, two small obelisks covered with names (no doubt glorious Olympian ones). There is “The Quilt of Dental Hygiene.” with a large semi-abstract toothbrush. Well, not really, but it would fit right in.

As I walk through the plaza, I look a little closer and notice that, every damn brick has a sponsor’s name engraved on it. In addition, each large granite-bordered rectangle of bricks has as its centerpiece a stone with an engraved number. I assume this is to help the sponsors find their personal bricks. Maybe it’s the granite edging, but walking over those pavers gives me a creepy feeling, as if I’m in a necropolis, walking over the bodies of the people whose names I read — The Ovis’s, the Clarks, Martha and James Smith.

There are some bodies buried here, at least figuratively. My Atlanta friends tell me that an old black neighborhood named Techtown was demolished to make way for the park, though they disagree on whether this was a wholly bad thing. I guess it wasn’t a pleasant place, but for some people it was home. Maybe it’s their souls I feel drifting mournfully around, looking for a barbershop or tavern or church.

Or maybe it’s the relentless flatness of the park that makes me uncomfortable. The open, rectangular horizontality is so out of place in a cityscape. It could be the National Flatness Monument, a celebration of the monotony, a little bit of Iowa in the urban South.

The trees and shrubs (in more of those cast-iron grids — whoever makes these must be the Bill Gates of the landscape equipment world) are short, and the landscape designers have somehow managed to come up with flat fountains.

All this planar surface draws my eye to the stunning verticality of the nearby CNN tower. The distant but somehow powerful presence of the Coca Cola Tower looms to the North. The visual center of the park as I stand in its large, flat plaza (sorry, I can’t think of any more synonyms for flat) is the Chamber of Commerce building. It’s a round, pillared structure that looks like a squat pink version of Grants tomb crossed with one of the futuristic buildings from the capital city of Coruscant in the new Star Wars movie (see www.starwars.com).

Overall, I don’t like Centennial park very much. With one exception (I’ll get to it in a moment), it has all the charm and warmth of a bank lobby. A very 1990s civic space — easy to clean and maintain, but empty and uninviting. I’ve read that the fast-food megachains have teams of engineers who design chairs that look inviting but become uncomfortable after a few minutes of sitting. This park reminds me of those chairs.

Despite all my griping, there is one truly wonderful thing about this place. In the center plaza there is a truly grand and lovable piece of public art. It’s called “The Olympic Ring Fountain, ” one of the few vertical touches in the park. Water spurts out of pipes set flush with the ground. There are dozens of these jets, arranged in the pattern of the Olympic Rings, and they fire in patterns.

The wonderful thing about this fountain is that it is designed to get people to act silly. My first thought was “gee, that’s pretty.” My next thought is “wouldn’t it be cool to be inside the rings.” I noticed that the rings are just big enough that a person who got into the middle of one would not get wet. Immediately after I realized this, the water in one ring cuts off completely. If I was brave enough, I could enter, high and dry. Then, randomly, the water started again. The sequencing of the jets was brilliant. The fountain was teasing and flirting with me, alternately begging and daring me to step in.

There are signs nearby saying that users are free to “interact with the fountain at their own risk.” I saw a couple step in, and get photographed by their friend outside the circle of wetness. I saw three businessmen jump in wearing dress pants and button-down shirts (one get a wet leg). I couldn’t hold myself back. I interacted. At my own risk. I returned to my hotel for dry clothes, and to try to find a decent Barbeque joint. But you read about that yesterday.