Scene & Herd - To Helen and back
Or mountain do’s and don’ts
Watching the Falcons lose. Watching the Hawks lose. Watching the Braves lose. October in Atlanta doesn’t lack for tradition, and the rest of the state is also decidedly un-slouch-like when it comes to October traditions.
North Georgia’s October specialty is the fall festival. In a wood-fenced fairground called Fort Sorghum, the people of Blairsville celebrate sorghum, the RC Cola of grains, with a festival lasting three weekends. In order to get out from under the 600,000 bushels of apples it produces each year, the people of Ellijay throw a big Apple Festival (just to clarify, the apples are normal-sized. It’s the festival that’s big).
But North Georgia’s biggest fall festival is actually the one that has the least to do with actual Georgia culture. And if, like me, you spent over an hour stuck in a rural traffic jam last Saturday afternoon, you know very well that I’m talking about Helen and Oktoberfest. A little background in case you’ve never seen the place: About 30 years ago, some people in Helen decided to “revitalize” the town by turning it into a faithful reproduction of a Bavarian village. Today, Helen is about as faithful to its Bavarian inspiration as Kobe Bryant is to his wife. But that hasn’t stopped tourists from flocking there. Helen is supposedly Georgia’s most popular tourist destination after Atlanta and Savannah.
The main activities of Oktoberfest in Helen are drinking, eating, drinking some more, and walking around laughing at the often-bizarre attempts by locals to evoke German-ness. For example, the city’s main strasse has a leather goods store called Das Ist Leather. If you like a little mythical kidnapping/attempted murder with your fudge, there’s the Hansel & Gretel Candy Kitchen. (Sadly, because of state building codes, the store lacks both a roof made of cake and sugar windows.) And let’s not forget Das Bagel Haus.
Helen does have some actual semi-authentic German establishments. Hofer’s Bakery has a large selection of German pastries, as well as a patio where patrons can down beers, eat wursts (brat and knock), and listen to the accordion stylings of Joe Bognar. Actually, Bognar doesn’t play a real accordion. He plays an accordion-shaped synthesizer that recreates the sound of a full band. So if you’re wondering how he gets those Bavarian classics like “Hey Jude” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” to sound so festive, now you know. In my opinion, Bognar was vastly superior to the musician across the street at Han’s, whose repertoire for some reason included J.J. Cale’s “Cocaine.”
There’s a lot more to do in Helen than imbibe and shop for leather thongs. There’s a Kandlestix store where you can buy NASCAR-themed candles — Earnhardt is a German name, after all. And during Oktoberfest, there are some street performers. There are dogs in biker leather gear whose sole trick is the ability to sit obediently next to a tip jar. There’s a one-man band of the non-electronic kind. Appropriately enough (or not), he also does Beatles tunes.
But the best show in Helen — at least during the day — is at a little sidewalk theater in the center of town. Using drunken (or semi-drunken) audience volunteers, a small troupe of performers puts on a comedy fairytale show. The troupe consists of employees from the nearby sword shop. (It’s beyond me why someone put a sword shop in a town where the primary activity is getting drunk.)
Doll revolution: It seems impossible, but the strangest attraction in White County is not Helen — it’s down the road at Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland. Babyland is the birthplace (literally and figuratively) of Cabbage Patch Kids. The “hospital” is a CPK theme park that lets children and adults witness the “birth” of dolls in a pleasant, non-Chinese factory setting. Part of the hospital looks like an emergency room. There are even incubators for the preemie dolls.
The drug of choice for CPKs is Imagicillin, which can be found dangling from countless IVs. I’ve never tried Imagicillin, but judging by the dazed, serene looks of the always-motionless “kids,” I’m guessing it’s an opiate. Other than the gift shop (which, by the way, has the coolest Lite Brite display), the hospital’s centerpiece is the delivery room. It’s actually a fake cabbage patch with oversized novelty surgical equipment. Sadly, I didn’t get to witness an actual birth (an event that I’m told is chock full of drama, melodrama and unintentional comedy).
It’s no matter, though. Several dozen severed Cabbage Patch Kid heads glued to fake cabbage leaves under a fake tree, adjacent to a giant syringe marked “TLC,” is plenty of drama, melodrama and unintentional comedy for me.
IG-gy pop: My plan was to devote this entire column to the magic that is White County. But I so loved the show put on by Susan Enan at Echo Lounge on Saturday night that I’d feel guilty if I didn’t mention it. Enan is an Irish singer/songwriter with very good songs and a devastatingly beautiful voice. Her EP, Moonlight/Skin, Bone & Silicone, has been in heavy rotation at the Nouraee home for a year now.
Part of the IG Music Festival, Enan’s performance was short — five songs. According to Joe Kirk from Paste Music, the local label that’s championing her in the U.S., she’s a slow, meticulous artist. Five songs in one year — maybe she is meticulous. Or maybe she’s just distracted by all the turtles whizzing past her.