Tag: Norcross

One of metro atlanta’s loveliest suburban downtowns is tucked away from the sprawl between Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Buford Highway in Gwinnett County, just out of view of motorists. Founded in 1870, historic Norcross is less a vestige of yesteryear than a thriving city center that happens to have a barber pole and a train depot.

Most schools in metro Atlanta are dominated by one demographic. They’re poor, affluent, white, black, or Hispanic. Their classrooms are filled with fourth-generation Georgians—or refugees who arrived in Atlanta last month.

I sat in the foyer of Nam Phuong in Norcross, hunched over my iPhone and madly Googling the names of Vietnamese dishes I'd never heard of before. On the restaurant's back wall, a glowing white screen broadcast the restaurant's daily specials. The program running the projection rhythmically underlined the words over and over again—the PowerPoint equivalent of a broken record. The dishes were listed only in Vietnamese.