Pop culture: Atlanta's World of Coca-Cola museum

John Pemberton, inventor of The Real Thing

They didn't side-step the New Coke debacle.

The Coke Store has lots of cool stuff like these salt and pepper shakers.

You can sample Coke products from around the world. These are from South America.

As far as beverages that taste like regurgitation go, Beverly is one of the best...

...and yet it still tastes better than Tab.

I don't care if it rots your teeth, has more sugar in one can than all of Cuba and gets you hopped up like a gerbil on a wheel, I love Coca-Cola. When I was a kid, those old Coke vending machines where you yanked out a frosty cold glass bottle and popped the top off with the built-in bottle opener were great. The first gulp always made you cry a little and would be followed by a satisfying "ahhhhhhhh" from your slightly burned throat. Atlanta is the hometown of Coke and they've got a really cool museum there called the World of Coca-Cola, right in the heart of downtown. There are historic exhibits, 3D movies, original Coke-inspired artwork, and a TV commercial viewing room. But the coolest room they have is called "Taste It." Coke makes many different flavored beverages that are sold in other parts of the world and here you get a chance to sample sixty of them, arranged geographically in five tasting stations. Some are fruity, some are earthy, some are God-awful. After sampling way, way too many flavors, my favorite was Inca Kola from Peru which offers a nice, fruity splash. Only the bravest pop aficionados should sample Beverly, however, an aperitif from Italy, which has a taste reminiscent of puke. There's also a great store with many fun, retro-designed Coke items. Yes, you do pay good money for the privilege of promoting a product that already permeates every corner of the earth, but why not? Coke adds life, it's the real thing, you can't beat the feeling, it's red, white and you, things go better, it's always Coca-Cola, and it's the pause that refreshes. Enjoy.

We all shrine on: Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina's Prospector Shriner with oil drum fez

It's always great when an eccentric roadside attraction is not far off the interstate if you're trying to make time, and such was the case on our last trip. Just minutes of I-95 in North Carolina sits the Roanoke Valley Shrine Club building and their gloriously peculiar Daniel Boone-esque mascot. For years, a prospector statue stood atop Elmo Garner Jewelers and Home Improvement in Roanoke Rapids. Worried the statue might blow over into the gas station next door in a storm (and hounded by an anti-prospector sign ordinance), Mr. Garner donated it to the Roanoke Valley Shrine Club, of which he was a member and where it has stood watch on a quiet street since 1989. His best feature by far is the oil drum on his head painted red to look like like a Shriner's fez. Clothes make the man.

Art-O-Mat vends art good like a decommissioned cigarette machine should

There are 82 Art-O-Mat machines around the country and each have their own distinctive retro graphics. The machines feature art from 400 artists from around the world.

My selection was a distinctive pin from Weener Ware. Cool!

I took Mom to see the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at New York City's stupendous Whitney Museum of American Art last weekend. Very impressive. But what really caught my eye was an unusual contraption on the bottom floor next to the book store called the "Art-O-Mat". At first glance it looks like a cigarette vending machine from the '60s. Wow, I thought, a cigarette machine. When was the last time you saw one of those? Upon closer inspection it turned out to be an ingenious device for vending original art in cigarette pack-sized boxes. You buy a token from the cashier at the book store for $6.98 plus tax. You then put it in the Art-O-Mat's coin slot and make a selection of the "brand" of art you want. Little descriptive labels occupy the spaces above the levers that used to say "Marlboro," "Newport" and "Chesterfield." There's a thrill to pulling that nob all the way out and having your purchase fall in the trough below. My choice was from an outfit called "Weener Ware". Inside my fancifully festooned box was a decorative pin made from a bottle cap with a picture of a dog in it. Cool! The Art-O-Mat at the Whitney is one of 82 retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art in various locations throughout the country and there are around 400 contributing artists from 10 different countries currently involved in the Art-O-Mat project. Here's what the Art-O-Mat website says about how it all began:

The year was 1997, the town was Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Artist Clark Whittington was set to have a solo art show at a local cafe, Penny Universitie (now Mary's Of Course Cafe). This is when Whittington used a recently-banned cigarette machine to create the first Art-O-Mat. In June 1997, it was installed, along with 12 of his paintings. The machine sold Whittington's black & white photographs for $1.00 each.

This art show was scheduled to be dismantled in July 1997. However, Cynthia Giles (owner of the Penny Universitie) loved the machine and asked that it stay permanently and machine remains unaltered in its original location to this day. At that point, it was clear that involvement of other artists was needed if the project was going to continue. Giles introduced Whittington to a handful of other local artists and Artists in Cellophane was formed.

Personally, I thought the Art-O-Mat was really Kool. On a Lark, I'd walk a mile for one because you've got a lot to like and they've come a long way, baby. And I'd rather fight than switch.

Abandon on the run: Scenes from Route 301 in southern Virginia

As much as I try to be positive, I have to admit it's no fun driving on I-95 anywhere north of Washington D.C. Mile after mile of ripped-up congested pavement through every northeastern metropolis takes its toll on the eccentric roadside traveller. South of DC, 95 becomes much more placid and leisurely. Trouble is, it's also pretty boring. We kept seeing cool, old abandoned road sites on Route 301, which parallels a good stretch of 95 in southern Virginia. 301 is a road not unlike Route 66 and other pre-Interstate main drags. We were able to get off 95 and keep pretty much keep to our schedule by taking 301, enjoying some spectacular forsaken gas stations, motor courts, billboards and signs along the way. One thing about the busy northeast: if a gas station goes out of business, it might go vacant for a year or so, but soon enough, someone is renovating it into a Starbucks or a U-Stor-It. In other regions of the U.S., abandoned places stay abandoned seemingly for all eternity, where 6-foot weeds overtake them and old rusted signs creak back and forth in the breeze. I love places like this...old ghosts rotting away under sunny blue skies. Long live decay.

Baby, you're a wrench man: Norcross, Georgia's rat-faced wrench guy and other greater metropolitan Atlanta delights

Allen, the creepy U-Wrench It greeter

SCENES FROM THE SOUTHEASTERN RAILWAY MUSEUM:

I love when a train smiles at you

This is called the Flashing Rear End Device (F.R.E.D.), and I'm not making that up.

Beautiful Southern decay.

GREETINGS FROM THE DULUTH REXALL:

They make a mean tuna salad sandwich, and don't you forget it.

We had a lovely time visiting Sherry's cousin Bobby and his family in the suburbs of Atlanta. They took us out to a great lunch at place they knew we'd love: the Duluth Rexall Grill. At a time when old-fashioned Rexall drug stores are few and far between, this one in Duluth is thriving. Half the place is a drug store and the other half is a friendly eatery with great breakfast and lunch fare. A bit of fanciful lattice work divides the two. I'm told it's hard to get a seating here for breakfast, as the place is mobbed with regulars. Duluth also has the Southeastern Railway Museum, a fun place with lots of train-related artifacts and some real train cars you can poke around in. My favorites were the beautifully decaying models way, way in the back. But the piece de resistance was the half-man, half-rat-looking statue in front of the U-Wrench It in Norcross. This is an auto parts place that pays cash for junky old cars and its mascot is a hideous creation that appears to be made partially out of car parts. It looks like something out of a Stephen King story: Allen Badwrench, Mr. Goodwrench's hideous mutant southern relative.