Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Danke for the good times, Helen
Posted by: Amelia // Category: Inappropriate Beer Drinking, Marketing Tricks // 1:49 pm
As you may have noticed, the look of the blog has changed a bit, and will probably continue to do so for the next few days.
While there was nothing wrong with the former look, we wanted to incorporate the blog into the website. By joining them together we will make them doubly powerful, and power is really all we care about here at the Nest.
In my experience, however, the goal of a makeover is usually appeal, not power. So what do you do when you’re kinda unappealing, but are looking to gain the favorable attention of, you know, everyone?
If you’re Helen, GA, you turn yourself in to a faux-Bavarian Alpine Village. Of course.
Lain and I very purposefully stumbled upon Helen during our travels through North Georgia this weekend. As far as we can tell, the folks of Helen looked at each other one day and said, “Hey, you know what would really help tourism? If we pretended we were a Bavarian Alpine town and had three months of Oktoberfest.”
I imagine that everyone then hoisted their beer steins amidst cheers of “Ja!”.
It’s unclear whether the Bavarian theme is a nod to Helen’s residents or a nod to the profits of beer sales, but I’m sold.
(This used to be the corner of Main and Pine.)
Currently, Helen falls somewhere between Bavarian tribute and giant, ongoing theme party.
(When we first saw these Lederhosen-clad men, they were seated near our table, also enjoying a pitcher of beer. It was a little disappointing when I realized they we performers and not just really, really into lederhosen.)
If authenticity is your thing, Helen may not be the place for you. But if you’re into places like Hansel and Gretel’s Candy Shoppe (you would think that those two would have a bigger aversion to candy than anyone, but that’s just me), Helen is a must-see.
Not even a big-time chain like Huddle House (dear people from where I’m from: apparently this is a big-time chain) can resist the pull of the Bavarians! Hooray, Helen!
License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
2 Comments
Leave a Reply
Supposedly the reason Helen went Alpine was that a local resident served in the Army during WWII and while in Germany noticed the similarities in the terrain to his home of Helen, Ga. So when he returned, he suggested the town adopt the alpine theme to help with tourism. Go figure.
Amelia, I think that while we are indeed mostly concerned with power, we were definitely looking for a more unified approach that actually uses the flexibility of the Wordpress software. Big ups to Nate and Lauren, our CSS expert and web designer, respectively (more or less).
The previous blog skin was never meant to be permanent (nor is this site!), but instead something that we used until we could get something better.
Incorporating the blog into the official site should make it easier to use and less confusing to newcomers about what the Wren’s Nest is and how it relates to our other site.
And finally, finally you can click somewhere that will take you back to the start of the blog. For some reason that didn’t work before, which was a pet peeve of mine. And of Joe, an occasional commenter.