A.M. ATL: Match date

Morning, y’all! SANTA IS WATCHING YOU. Or, at least, he’s watching several utility poles around Atlanta, where signs with the ominous four-word message have become part of the local public art milieu. Unsurprisingly, residents are unbothered. Santa’s a known player in the surveillance state, after all. One onlooker did catch a suspect in the act of posting, and he looked pretty familiar ...

Let’s get to it.

ATLANTA PROMISES WORLD CUP FUN EVEN WITHOUT A TICKET

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Get ready for more than two weeks of World Cup festivities in downtown Atlanta — much of it free.

The Atlanta World Cup Host Committee shared new info in a logistics update Thursday. Along with more assurances that the city is absolutely positively definitely ready to handle the hundreds of thousands of international visitors, leaders laid out some party plans.

Centennial Olympic Park will be transformed into the city’s official FIFA Fan Festival, the heart of World Cup events (outside of the matches, of course).
The Fan Festival will run for 16 days, from June 12 to July 15, and showcase Georgia’s culture with music, entertainers, artisans and food.
The theme of the fête is “welcome home,” an homage to Georgia and Atlanta’s Southern hospitality.
Attractions will include a big screen to watch the matches, a mini soccer pitch for games, kid-friendly activities and more.

“Every day is going to be something different. You're not going to want to come to this just once. You're going to want to make it a part of your summer."

- Joe Bocherer, CCO of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority

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GA BILL RESTRICTS RELEASE OF POLICE BODYCAM FOOTAGE

Credit: Fulton County Police Department

SB 482 was unanimously approved in the Georgia Senate last week and would greatly change how police bodycam footage is shared with the public.

Under the bill, police would only release footage if the requester shows up in person with a notarized statement.
The requester would also have to identify by name the people in the photos and video they’re requesting. That could even include bystanders.
Opponents say this would make it virtually impossible for journalists and others to get a hold of footage, which has become a key way of keeping people accountable in instances of police violence.
These restrictions also include police mug shots. This allows supporters to frame the bill as a crackdown on websites that profit from publishing mug shots and police footage.

🔎 READ MORE: One bill, multiple issues

MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS

🏢 Ponce City Market’s fancy new office building is all full. Sage, a U.K.-based accounting and HR software company, announced it’s renting all 89,000 square feet of office space.

✈️ Delta Air Lines will delay its revived Atlanta-Tel Aviv service until August due to the ongoing war in Iran. The airline has been trying to restart the Israel route for more than two years and was supposed to open it in April.

🗳️ Former football coach Derek Dooley rolled out a “Georgia First Contract” as part of his bid for U.S. Senate nominee in a stacked Republican field. It’s substantial: Dooley says he’ll serve no more than two terms, won’t trade stocks while in office and would refuse paychecks during government shutdowns.

ARBORETUM, I HARDLY KNOW ‘EM

Atlanta is now home to the world’s longest linear arboretum. A round of applause for the trees!

The arboretum (a collection of woody plants and trees) spans more than 12 miles along the Atlanta Beltline’s completed trail segments. The public garden is expected to grow to more than 16 miles by this summer.
The trail features 647 unique tree and woody shrub species and cultivars. Special collections include a pitcher plant bog, native azaleas and more than 15 cultivars of pawpaw.

SPRING PLANS

Credit: Courtesy of George Gomez/Historic Oakland Foundation

I am genuinely scared of my calendar this time of year because the plans are piling UP. (Also, I have a horrendous sense of time. It’s either now, later or never in my books.)

Anyway, the last thing you want is for some cool spring event to pass you by. Give these a scan:

A list of spring arts festivals and new museum exhibits, including all of the weekend “it’s a beautiful day, let’s stroll about” events that are easy to forget about until the last minute.
Spring music events, including the Atlanta Jazz Festival and fun at the Atlanta Symphony.

Oh, and don’t forget the Atlanta St. Patrick’s Parade this Saturday. That and more family-friendly weekend plans here.

Oh! And! The Oscars are this weekend. We’re rooting for everyone from Georgia.

NEWS BITES

The AJC reintroduces 5-star rating system for restaurant reviews

For decades, the AJC has rated on a 0- to 4-star system. Not anymore! Restaurant critic and food reporter Henri Hollis explains the change.

‘United We Dream’: Atlanta’s WNBA, MLS team up for retail collab

Sue me, but the peach-as-sports-ball theme never gets old. So good.

Falcons analysis: Signing Cousins wasn’t the problem. It was everything else

It wasn’t you, Kirk, it was us.

The Met made a custom-built wooden holztrompete for their ‘Tristan und Isolde’ production

I’m sorry if this isn’t interesting to you, but it is to me, and this is my newsletter. So “Tristan und Isolde” is an opera written by German composer and noted unhinged megalomaniac Richard Wagner. In it, there’s a part for a type of horn so specific to Wagner’s imagination he literally invents a new instrument and advises performers to construct their own. It’s not the only time he did this, either! There’s a horn called the Wagner tuba that sprung from a very specific (to Wagner) acoustic need in his Ring Cycle.

He might have been a real Class-A weirdo, but it’s also quite an experience for a musician to play a one-of-a-kind, made-just-for-this-moment instrument. Imagine finally getting to use the weirdest drill bit in your toolkit. Euphoria.

ON THIS DATE

March 14, 1914

Credit: AJC

Equal suffrage party asks incorporation. Fifty prominent men and women of Atlanta Saturday filed a petition in the superior court for incorporation under the name of the Equal Suffrage Party of Georgia. The purpose of the party, according to the petition, is educational and its object is to influence eventually and legitimately the enactment of legislation which will completely enfranchise women and give to them all the rights of citizenship, among others the right to vote, to hold office, and to pursue any business or profession unrestricted.

We’re a day ahead, but it’s Women’s History Month — and Producer Nicole figured this might help balance out yesterday’s “working wife” entry.

ONE MORE THING

Happy Birthday to my husband, the reason anything green grows in my heart.

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for reading to the very bottom of A.M. ATL. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact us at AMATL@ajc.com.

Until next time.

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With World Cup knocking, homeless camp cleanup proceeds at downtown’s doorstep

Atlanta cleared a large homeless encampment near Grady ahead of the World Cup, part of its “Downtown Rising” push to place people in housing and improve safety.