Two days after I returned from the West last month, I went to Atlanta for a work conference for most of week. Atlanta and I go back a ways; I first went there by bus in ’82, but also later. Still, my most recent visit was in 1999, so it’s been a while.

This time, there was work to do, of course, and events to attend, and I got to spend time with colleagues I hadn’t seen in a number of years, or ever, except for Zoom. That was good.

I also had a few excellent meals not at my expense, especially one at The Consulate, a restaurant in Midtown that rates its own Atlas Obscura page.

I stayed in an upper floor of the conference hotel in Buckhead, which is like a second downtown for Atlanta, something like the Galleria district in Houston. I enjoyed some good views from the room.

Including much of the rooftop of a major regional mall. Not something you see every day.

Sure, the property’s mechanicals need to be up there. But isn’t there also the opportunity to use at least part of the roof for games that might attract hipsters and their always at-hand cameras — to promote the mall on social media — such as ax throwing, bocce and shuffleboard?