» Ponce de Leon Avenue

Vintage Atlanta tv commercials #1: Plaza Drugs

stevebransford — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:48:02 +0000

There are a ton of old tv commercials on YouTube, but they’re generally not locally specific. I’d like to start assembling vintage Atlanta tv commercials in a series for this blog. Vintage is an arbitrary term, but let’s just say anything produced before 1990. I certainly need help locating these commercials. If there’s an old Atlanta tv spot on YouTube (or some other video sharing site), please post the URL in the comments section and I’ll embed it on the site. If you have a copy of a commercial on disc, tape, or film and need some help digitizing and uploading it to the web, I’d be willing to assist.

The first video in this series is a commercial for the old Plaza Drugs on Ponce de Leon Avenue (in the first post of this blog, George Mitchell discussed Plaza Drugs). From the clothing and the look of the film stock, I’m guessing this commercial was produced in the late 60s or early 70s.

Ponce de Leon Avenue and ballpark

stevebransford — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:02:17 +0000

In 1983 George Mitchell published an amazing book of documentary photographs of the people and places of Ponce de Leon Avenue. His book is unfortunately now out-of-print, but used copies can be located online. In this video, George talks about working on this book project and compares Ponce of the early 80s to today.

This video blog will typically feature material I’ve shot, but occasionally I’ll showcase an archival footage gem. The following short excerpt is from a local television program that aired in the early 80s called “A Day in the Life of the Colonel,” in which Col. Bruce Hampton takes the viewer on a highly unusual tour of Atlanta. I found this footage while working on a (never completed) documentary on Bruce. In this excerpt, Bruce delivers a poignant monologue about the old Ponce de Leon ballpark. He is standing in an overgrown field where the park used to be and where the Whole Foods shopping center is now located.