USA - Always Coca-Cola

June 26

Hello everyone!

Georgia’s capital and largest city is Atlanta: home to over 6 million people in its metropolitan area and a few quite contrasting elements.

Little wonder Coca-Cola haven't contacted me for their next marketing campaing...

Footsteps of Rosa Parks: the civil rights movement has a deep history here

Atlanta is not a place that Hannah ever wants to visit. However, my keenness to visit the place known as A-T-L to locals (not Hot-lanta as I want to call it in these temperatures) at some point eventually led to us driving an hour south to downtown.

Traffic heading to Atlanta - it backed up when six lanes turned into five...

The pleasant and empty Centennial Olympic Park

Atlanta's metro area is the sixth-largest in the
USA, and by far the biggest I'll visit all summer

The common question is why you would actually visit it. It’s a city built for cars, even with a heavily-used metro system. It’s also not known as a must-see place to visit like New York, for example. 

Many big buildings include 'Peachtree' in their
name, as Georgia is known as the Peach State 

What Atlanta does have is the home base of probably the most iconic and famous drink brand in history.

One of many, many posters

An iconic bottle

Coca-Cola is synonymous with Atlanta, and it’s celebrated in the World of Coca-Cola, which can be found downtown. It’s quite a chaotic place that tries to mix telling the history of the drink whilst hosting interactive sections to showcase different senses.

John Pemberton 'created' the mixture in 1886, selling it soon after for $2300

A 1980s advert in Egypt for the drink

Coca-Cola was created by a man called John S. Pemberton in May 1886. It was originally sold from a pharmacy as a sort of medicine. The recipe was kept secret and the drink has flourished to become ubiquitous around the world.

Limited editions have been commonly used by Coca-Cola -
these showcase local businesses like Delta Airlines

Coca-Cola created the 'ring-pull' can in 1964 - before
that, you needed a can opener to drink them!

We started by walking through ‘The Vault’. Whether the secret recipe is actually in there is questionable, but it charted the first eras of Coca-Cola, including some interesting claims that it had been invented elsewhere before Pemberton’s magic formula in 1886.

Apart from a brief stint in a vault in New York City, the 'recipe' has
been stored here. In the city, probably not this shiny attempt of a museum.

Scotland? India? We will never know...

Candler bought the rights and established
the company we know as Coca-Cola

There are also sections highlighting the company’s impact on American and western culture, as well as evidence that sports science and nutrition was very different at the start of the twentieth century.

The company claim that they made Santa
look this way in 1931: cheerful, plump and red

In 1969, Coca-Cola redesigned and focused on adding key
elements, like a fixed colour scheme and white ribbon

"When I first went into a six-day race I took
a jug of Coca-Cola..." Sportspeople, take note!

The most interesting section of Coca-Cola World was its newest, using AI photography to generate pictures of what you could have looked like if you had a certain profession when entering one of the first soda fountain bars that sold the drink. There was also a place where they would take your photo and create an AI-generated image of what you would like in a classic Coca-Cola advert. My photo looked hilarious.

Me as a journalist from the 1900s - possibly an improvement

Some people looked more authentic...

...than others!

There are also sections explaining the chemistry behind soft drinks and the different smells associated with Coca-Cola products. The latter included a game where you sniff a pad and then guess the spice, fruit or herb. I was terrible at it.

Beverages under the Coca-Cola umbrella include Fanta and Sprite

Apparently it was lime. I had no idea.

The reason a child would get excited about coming here (aside from having your photo taken with a weird, skinny, tall polar bear) is the tasting room, in which you can sample over 100 different drinks made by the Coca-Cola company around the world. Some, such as Bonbon Anglais, were delightful, tasting a bit like Lilt. Others, such as sour plum Fanta from China, were…undrinkable. There are so many free samples you can have before your teeth start feeling like mush.

School trips here would be insane

Don't. Do. It.

The ‘museum’ is situated a block away from Centennial Olympic Park, a pleasant green space that seemed sparsely populated (possibly due to the weather). This park contains memorials for the 1996 Olympic Games hosted by the city. 

The Olympic Stadium was redesigned as a baseball
stadium after 1996, and is now used for college football

The star of the 1996 Games was Michael Johnson

Part of this includes the memorial for the bombing that happened in the park during the Olympics, as well as a tribute to the man who found the suspicious package and alerted authorities: a move that undoubtedly saved many lives. It’s not mentioned that he was pursued by the FBI and the media and presumed guilty for quite a while…

Sources indicate that one person died, but this memorial suggests two

Richard Jewell was intensely investigated before being exonerated

Other famous people are memorialised in the city; specifically, the most famous man associated with civil rights in the country and arguably the world. Martin Luther King Jr was born in Atlanta in 1929. His first house and the church in which he preached can be found a short distance to the east of downtown, in a broader area known as the Martin Luther King Jr National Historical Park.

A copy of the memorial found in Washington DC

King lived here for 12 years

The Church is famous; however, the guard was
adamant I couldn't come in at my visiting time

Dr King is buried here, with an artificial stream running around the tomb. This is a visual representation of a quote from his renowned ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. It’s an important site and one that I’m surprised doesn’t garner more attention, though like most people I would have visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights if it had been open. 

"We will not be satisfied until justic rolls down
like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Auburn Avenue was an important area for
black Americans in Atlanta during segregation

The main museum, next to World of Coca-Cola, was not open

Another rights pioneer of sorts was a lady called Mary McKenzie. In 1945 she opened a tea room called Mary Mac’s. At this time, women weren’t allowed to own restaurants; it was therefore called a ‘tea room’. It has since become one of the most famous establishments in Atlanta, with a star-studded guest list strewn across one of the walls. The food is very ‘southern US’: meatloaf, grits, fried chicken and more, all washed down with sweet tea. No Coca-Cola in sight, here.

It's also one of the city's largest restaurants

Richard Gere and James Brown have dined here

We didn't need dinner

Atlanta may not have iconic sights or many visitors from afar. What it does have are memorials for important events and people, all washed down with a cup of ‘Ice Cold Sunshine’. 

A ha indeed: a sign in the chaotic World of COca-Cola 

Love you all,

Matt