A “Living Laboratory”
A couple of months ago, the mashup of old-school and hipster entrepreneurs in the squat brick building at the corner of Howell and Irwin streets might have seemed a sign that a troubled neighborhood was turning around. The lower-level storefronts included Banna Grocery, Suhrid Das’s convenience store; Retro Razor, Mister Saffold’s barbershop (yes, Mister is his first name); and Sugar-Coated Radical, where pastry chef Taria Camerino sells confections crafted with fair-trade ingredients. Then, on the evening of February 22, a man entered Banna Grocery, one arm covering his face, the other holding a gun. He shot Das in the stomach and left him bleeding. Hours later another man broke into Camerino’s upstairs apartment, threatened her two kids, and forced the candymaker to go downstairs and empty her register. That night, Das died.
Kickoff Q&A with Kwanza Hall
In early February, a few weeks after the “Year of Boulevard” initiative was announced, I sat down with city councilman Kwanza Hall to talk about the project's launch. Hall, whose parents were civil rights leaders and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, spent much of his childhood in the area. A former member of the Atlanta Public Schools board, Hall has served on Atlanta City Council since 2006. He lives in the Old Fourth Ward and represents District 2, which includes Downtown, Sweet Auburn, Inman Park, the Old Fourth Ward, and Castleberry Hill. We met in the Starbucks at the Atlanta Medical, a few yards from the future site of the Zone 6 mini precinct.
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