RH - Visit to Atlanta's New Restoration Hardware Gallery

You know you're getting old when you can remember when IHOP was the International House of Pancakes, KFC was Kentucky Fried Chicken, and RH was Restoration Hardware. Of the three, the rebranding of Restoration Hardware probably makes the most sense. IHOP still sells pancakes and KFC is still all about chicken, but RH's hardware selection is dwarfed by the store's inventory of beige linen-covered furniture. As a part of RH's rebranding, the company is leaving the malls and opening stand-alone stores around the country. The stores are understated, quaint, and restrained in the tradition of Candy Spelling, Marie-Antoinette or Mariah Carey. That is to say, not understated, quaint, or restrained in the least.

Right before Christmas, I received an email from RH announcing the opening of its Atlanta store. I give you understated:

via

 It's called "The Gallery at the Estate in Buckhead," which makes it sound like an English country home and not like a retail store located next to Cheesecake Factory (a closed Cheesecake Factory, no less).  Here is the description from my email:

RH had me at the "decomposed granite" (which I am not fancy enough to recognize as fancy landscaping materials, but instead makes me think of decomposed bodies). Naturally, when my friend Elizabeth suggested that we make a day of gawking at the grandeur of The Gallery at the Estate in Buckhead and then eating at The Shack of Shakes at Across the Street from The Gallery at the Estate in Buckhead, I was all in. 

Southern Drivers Just Suck and Other Fallacies - Thoughts on Snow Jam 2014

Fleeing the ATL. 

I have now lived in Atlanta as long as I lived in New Jersey, which is one of the reasons why I take umbrage at all the northerners who see the headline, "Atlanta Receives Two Inches of Snow; City Paralyzed With Gridlock," and laugh at the stupid southerners who can't drive. "Oh, silly rednecks," they say, "it's two inches of snow. I've driven in two feet of snow with no problems." Well, I really beg to differ. Unless you drive a Zamboni, you really have no basis for comparison.

I'm no traffic engineer, or logistics expert, or psychologist, or meteorologist but I think it would take experts in all these fields to adequately explain the mess that occurred in Atlanta on Tuesday. There is just no easy answer, nor are just one or two people to blame for what happened. If you had to write an equation to capture the problem it could be: Ice + Drivers + Traffic Volume + No Central Control + Psychology = Total Cluster. There are probably some other factors, as well, but let's be clear one of the factors is not incompetent southern drivers. Here's a look at some of the major elements that contributed to the mess.

Ice, Ice, Baby - I drove in the snow all the time in New Jersey and never had a second thought. There were a handful of times that we got ice rather than snow, and you know what? Cars were sliding all over the roads just like in Atlanta. There was an ice storm when I was about eight and we had to catch the train in a neighboring town. The only way to get there was to go down a very steep hill and across a bridge. Instead of taking the family car, a Ford station wagon (wood-paneled, of course), my parents opted to take Dad's car, which was a 1962 Buick Special. It was basically a tank and easily weighed twice as much as the wagon. Even though it lacked seat belts (!!), it ended up being the right choice as cars were literally sliding past us as we crept down the hill. No one thought that those people were sliding because they were southern transplants. We all thought they were sliding because the roads were covered with ice.