In my adolescent eyes, my mother had moved us (myself, my four brothers, my sister, and my Momma) from my extended family to live in a 1-room motel in Marietta for no reason at all. If you asked me if it were to get away from my father, whom my Momma had recently divorced, I would have replied that it was. If you had asked if it were so my Momma could go to school and follow her dream of being a fashion designer, I would have said yes. If you had told me I didn’t know what was going on, I would have agreed. I wasn't home and that left me lost and confused. It wasn't real. We were destined to spend a few months away then retreat back to the safety that I had already known, unlike the quick and unshuffling culture that seemed to permeate every inch of the Atlanta streets. Fast forward 16 years, we never left. After a few months in Marietta, we moved to College Park and I grew there. We stayed right off Old National Highway. It was better. We lived in a house. I had friends. But it still didn’t feel like home. In 6th grade, I started attending a small Muslim private school affiliated with the Masjid we attended, the Mohammed Schools of Atlanta. The school is k-12 and insanely tiny. Located off Glenwood in East Lake, it was my introduction to the Eastside of Atlanta. The community forged at that school was more familiar with my speed, smaller. It fit, it made sense and I could hold it closer to my heart. During my 7th grade year, my Momma moved us to Decatur so we could be closer to the community. East Atlanta wrapped itself around me and pressed me into a crystal. I began to respect the place Atlanta had in my story and how beautiful the sunset was. I began to appreciate the music that boomed from backseat speakers, the trap drums falling in and out of my ears. I began to adore the fashion that bled onto the streets, the style breaking and redefining every rule I thought I knew. The potholes told a raspy melody of a city with dreams deferred, each crackhead had a story, every rainy day was followed by the promise of the warm Atlanta sun the next. Like any teenager, I became more independent in high school and began to see more on my own. Most days after school were spent at the restaurant connected to my Masjid, grabbing food before basketball practice and cracking jokes on each other.

Eventually we strayed away and started getting wings from ATL Wings, located right off the point where Glenwood Rd and Candler Rd intersect. ATL Wings was the location of my indoctrination. It was where I fell in love with Zone 6. It’s where I was covered in the spirit of East Atlanta and baptized in a sea of Lemonade-Peach ‘drank.’ It’s where I was first caught in the allure of a 10 pc lemon pepper wing special (all flats) with fries and a bleu cheese accompanied by the aforementioned ‘drank.’ Lemon pepper wings are my north star food, when I eat them I think of home and I know the way back. ATL Wings has become a sort of church that I gravitate to. I affectionately call Atlanta, “Nigga Paris” because of the way black creatives seem to thrive as modernist creatives did in Paris 100 years. ATL Wings is Eiffel Tower. If East Atlanta is the Black Mecca, and ATL Wings is the Kaaba. You must make pilgrimage there and it is where the nature of East Atlanta is most concentrated.