Pic(k) of the Week: Catch a beat

Click on the image for a larger, hi-res version (on Flickr).

Catch a beat! Drummer in action during a performance by Atlanta-area musician Mandi Strachota and the Major 7s.

Oakhurst Porchfest: Decatur, Georgia, USA, 11 October 2025.

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Porchfest

Porchfests are annual music events held across the United States and in Canada on front porches. Started in Ithaca, New York, in 2007, porchfest events bring local musicians and neighborhoods together to celebrate and create a sense of community.

Since 2015, Oakhurst Porchfest [in the eponymous neighborhood of the city of Decatur] has been a grassroots community music festival where front porches become stages, yards become venues, and radical generosity and goodwill rule the day.

— Wikipedia.
— Oakhurst Porchfest.

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Mandi Strachota

Born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in the wilds of Wisconsin, Mandi Strachota is the product of southern roots and Midwest know-how, a potent mix of practicality and soulful dreaming. Mandi has become a fixture on the Atlanta scene, taking her music nationwide in 2019. She is known for her soulful vocals, but is a multi-instrumentalist who is quickly becoming known for her songwriting [...] embracing R&B, gospel, and soul, [...and] dabbling in jazz and blues, with a touch of grit and country sway.

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Mandi Strachota: Daredevil.
Album: Pictures
Label: CD Baby, 2020.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Pre-concert preparations

Click on the image for a larger, hi-res version (on Flickr).

Bassist Teja Veal prepares for Rhonda Thomas' Red Dragonfly concert.

Inman Park Festival: City of Atlanta (Inman Park), Georgia, USA. 26 April 2025.

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Rhonda Thomas at Inman Park Festival.

Soul/jazz vocalist Rhonda Thomas incorporates jazz, soul, gospel, house, and funk in her music. From 1997-2008, Ms. Thomas was a background singer and soloist for soul music legend, the late Isaac Hayes. She has also performed with Roy Ayers, Roberta Flack, Eric Roberson, Avery Sunshine, Frank McComb, Stephanie Mills, The String Cheese Incident, and others. She performs internationally, in her own right.

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Rhonda Thomas with Isaac Hayes: Do Your Thing.
Montreau Jazz Festival, 2005

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Pic(k) of the Week: Zat you, Santa Claus?

It was an early Christmas gift from Santa Claus.

With eleven hand-pulls (!) of a beer engine, publican Adrian poured a delicious pint of cask-conditioned Celebration Ale (brewed by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, in Chico, California).

The Brick Store Pub (in Decatur, Georgia) was one of only a few pubs nationwide given a cask of this classic American winter-season ale. 3 December 2024.

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About Celebration Ale

Hop harvest happens once a year, sending brewers to the Pacific Northwest to choose the hops they’ll use for months to come. We certainly do that—'hop selection' for all our beers—but Celebration Fresh Hop IPA gets its own 800-mile road trip through Washington and Oregon to hand-pick the ultimate fresh hops for citrus, pine, and floral flavors at their most intense.Once the hops come down, we race the harvest home [to Chico, California] to brew Celebration IPA within a few weeks. That’s the core of fresh hop beers: brew right away for maximum hop aroma and flavor. For more than four decades, it has been the holiday beer to start the celebration.

Specifications

• Alcohol by volume: 6.8%
• Bitterness Units: 65
• Malts: Caramelized, Two-row Pale
• Hops: Cascade, Centennial, Chinook
• Yeast: American Ale

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Pic(k) of the Week: Trees can look spectacular without leaves

Winter trees can sing even without their leaves...and joyfully in black-and-white.

Rockdale River Trail: Rockdale County (Stockbridge), Georgia, USA. 2 February 2024.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Live Oaks at night

Even (especially?) at night, southern live oaks can be dramatically magnificent.

St. Augustine Beach, Florida, USA. 9 September 2022.

Quercus virginiana —also known as the southern live oak— is an evergreen oak tree native to the southeastern United States and the lower coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico. Though many other species are loosely called live oak, the southern live oak is particularly iconic of the Old South.

Depending on the growing conditions, live oaks vary from a shrub-size to large and spreading tree-size: typical open-grown trees reach 66 feet in height (20 m), with a limb spread of nearly 89 feet (27 m). Their lower limbs often sweep down towards the ground before curving up again. The southern live oak has a deep taproot that anchors it when young and eventually develops into an extensive and widespread root system. This, along with its low center of gravity and other factors, makes the southern live oak extremely resistant to strong sustained winds, such as those seen in hurricanes.

The bark is dark, thick, and furrowed longitudinally. The leaves are stiff and leathery, with the tops shiny dark green and the bottoms pale gray. Although live oaks retain their leaves nearly year-round, they are not true evergreens. Live oaks drop their leaves immediately before new leaves emerge in the spring.

— Wikipedia.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Zen'd by jazz

Jazz was her zen. 

Or was it frozen lemonade? 

Something cool for a hot afternoon.

Listening to the Joe Gransden Big Band during the Inman Park Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, on 28 April 2019.

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Something Cool

Something Cool is a 'minor' jazz standard written mid 20th-century by composer/lyricist Billy Barnes and performed —and made famous— by the 'cool-jazz' vocalist, June Christy (1925-1990). It's an elaborate and sad fantasy concocted over the offer of a cool drink on a warm day.

Unlike the song's protagonist, the woman in the photo appears blissfully content.

Play on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xwftoLQxnVk

Well, it's true.

It's just a memory I have.

One I almost forgot

'Cause the weather's so hot,

And I'm feeling so bad,

About a date.

Oh, wait!

I'm such a fool!

He's just a guy,

Who stopped to buy me

Something cool!

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Pic(k) of the Week: Promenade on high from low at the High

Like a latter-day ziggurat, the Promenade skyscraper rises 40-stories —691 feet— above the High Museum, in midtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The building is clad in reflective glass, with a stepped, tapering spire and stainless steel fins that are lit at night. It is the 7th-tallest building in the city and, hence, Georgia.

Construction was completed in 1990. Twenty-nine years later, I took the photo, on 26 May 2019.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Sidebenchers

Juxtaposition. Side-benchers — sculpted and human.

Valentine
bronze
— George Lundeen (American, b. 1948)

Photographed in front of the DeKalb History Center in Decatur Square in the City of Decatur, Georgia, USA, on 07 May 2022.

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Pic(k) of the Week: West on Eastside BeltLine

A corrugated metal wall separates Wylie Avenue from the Hulsey Rail Yard, alongside the BeltLine trail, in the Reynoldstown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

The BeltLine is a former railway corridor around the core of Atlanta, now under development as a multi-use trail to circumnavigate the city.

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Pic(k) of the Week: To fell a tree

To fell a tree.
Hooded,
An arborist in silhouette.

Decatur, Georgia, USA. 30 December 2020.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Off-Ford-able cooperage

Off-Ford-able cooperage.

Night kegs at the diner.

At night, outside the Universal Joint Bar & Grill, in Decatur (Oakhurst), Georgia, USA, on 1 October 2021.

I had pre-envisioned this shot as a black-and-white night street scene. But its teal-and-orange cinematic look —supplied in situ— made me reconsider. Then, again, the (maybe) American-southwest vibe of the monochrome version intrigued me as well. Here's that version:



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Pic(k) of the Week: Rigging in a brewery vessel

Riggers off-load a 150-barrel ^* fermentation tank and rig it, carefully, into Heavy Seas Beer.

I took this photo on 22 May 2013, at the brewery in Halethorpe, Maryland, USA. Nearly eight years later, it's today's Pic(k) of the Week.

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Note

By the way, this is what happens when you notice an image you took eight years earlier but now have the temerity to think you can improve upon it. So: straightened, cropped, 'structured,' and rendered in monochrome. See the original: here.

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Pic(k) of the Week: To fell a tree

A tree-cutter in silhouette.

Decatur, Georgia, USA. 30 December 2020.

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Pic(k) of the Week: The 964

Coming or going?

Moving east, Locomotive 964 decouples from a long queue of freight railcars, as seen from the Pullman Trail, in the Kirkwood neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, late in the afternoon on 29 December 2020.

Information, please!

The skyscraper seen silhouetted to the west (in downtown Atlanta) is SunTrust Plaza. At 869 feet (265 meters) and 60 stories, it's the second-tallest building in the state of Georgia.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Ferns in monochrome

In the winter woodland, two things, in particular, catch my eye: American beech trees and ferns (tracheophytes), the latter evolutionarily unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.

Here:

Native ferns are in mortal combat with invasive English ivy. Dearborn Park, in the city if Decatur, Georgia, USA. 12 January 2020.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Hut and fence in forest

Like a chaotic frame, branches and vines appear to curve around a hut and fence. 1 January 2019.

This 77-acre property —of which 22 acres is woodland and pond— lies on the grounds of the former United Methodist Children's Home. The city of Decatur, Georgia, purchased the property in 2017. As a condition of the sale, the woodlands —which some refer to as Seminary Wood— must remain undeveloped in perpetuity.

The fenced-in plot (to the left) is leased by Decatur’s Kitchen Garden, a community garden space for refugee and immigrant growers in the area.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Industrial relic

And, so, to the conclusion of 2019: for image #52, industrial relic is the theme.

Appearing almost like rusted distillation stills, it's some sort of former industrial superstructure on a roof in the Oakland/Cabbagetown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, as seen on 24 December 2019.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Bend in the boardwalk

Slow down, speeding pedestrians! There's a bend a-coming.

Looking northwest along a meandering, leaf-covered, wooden boardwalk on the South Peachtree Creek Trail, northwest of Medlock Park, in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 5 December 2017.

I don't often add selective color to black-and-white photos. Too gimmicky. But I succumbed here.

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Pic(k) of the Week: PBR at Northside Tavern

A mural depicting a bald eagle and the logo for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is painted on the outside wall of Northside Tavern blues club —and 'dive' bar— in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Despite its name, Northside sits in Atlanta's Westside, an area that has experienced rampant redevelopment since February 2016, when I took this photo. One hopes for the club's continued long life.

And for that of the blues.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Half-hitch secure.

With a half-hitch, the winch was secured. Onboard a boat in Sarasota, Florida...for a three-hour cruise. 5 October 2019.

As a friend says, "Everything is better in black and white."

Sometimes.

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