Pic(k) of the Week: You Got Benched

On a bench,

Watching the parade.

Family time.

East Atlanta Strut
Atlanta (East Atlanta), Georgia, USA.
26 September 2026.

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East Atlanta Strut

The East Atlanta Strut, which — since 1988 — is always on the fourth Saturday in September, combines a parade and street festival with live music, artists' markets, and a 'porchfest.' The Strut celebrates the East Atlanta community's diverse talents, with artists, musicians, fun-loving neighbors, and a business district filled with restaurants, bars, and shops.

Unlike many Atlanta festivals that pay corporations to run the show, the East Atlanta Strut has always been run entirely by volunteers. That allows the Strut to put 100% of its profits back into the community. More than $100,000 has been donated in just the last few years — to programs that do outreach to the unhoused, groups that feed people, organizations that help keep our longtime neighbors in their homes, our local fire station and library, pet rescue groups, child mentoring groups, local schools, arts organizations, and neighborhood beautification projects.

— East Atlanta Strut. (More photos: here.)

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Sonny Rollins: St. Thomas.

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• Album: Saxophone Colossus
  Label: Prestige (recorded: 1956 | released: 1957)
  
• Musicians:
  • Sonny Rollins – tenor saxophone
  • Tommy Flanagan – piano
  • Doug Watkins – bass
  • Max Roach – drums

  Sonny Rollins (September 7, 1930 – May 25, 2026), whose forceful and imaginative approach to the tenor saxophone made him one of the dominant jazz musicians of the post-World War II era, died at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., on Monday. He was 95.

  Even by the standards of a music that prizes individuality, Mr. Rollins stood out, as both a musician and a personality. In the late 1940s, when most young jazz saxophonists favored a light tone with minimal vibrato, he developed a fat, full-bodied sound that was a throwback to the older style of Coleman Hawkins, the first great tenor saxophonist in jazz.

  Mr. Rollins came of age when a new kind of jazz known as bebop was in ascendance, and from the start his playing was suffused with bebop’s harmonic sophistication and rhythmic daring. To classify him as a bebopper, however, would be an oversimplification. Over the years he flirted with the avant-garde, jazz-rock fusion and other styles. But with his ferocious energy, his penchant for playing the unexpected note at the unexpected moment, and his unusual sound — sometimes harsh and mocking, sometimes lush and romantic — he was ultimately unclassifiable.

  The jazz critic Francis Davis wrote in 2000 that Mr. Rollins “is the greatest living jazz improviser, and if we redefine virtuosity to include improvisational cunning as well as instrumental finesse (as we probably should when discussing this music), he may be the greatest virtuoso ever produced by jazz.”
  

  — New York Times

  
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• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of images posted on Saturdays.
• Photo 46 of 52, for year 2026. See a larger, hi-res version on Flickr: here.
  


• Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10 II.
• Lens: Meike MK 25mm f/1.8 (manual focus).
• Settings: 25 mm | 1/2500 sec | ƒ/5.6 | ISO 400.
• Edit: Photoshop Elements 15, Nik Collection (2016).


• Image licensed via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Reproduction permitted, but with these provisos:
  • only in unadapted form
  • attribution required (e.g., Cizauskas on Flickr)
  • commercial use prohibited (except with explicit permission).
  
  
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