Man Down

A Piece of Downtown Athens History Lives On

originally published February 14, 2007

In November of 2004, Patrick Franklin wrote a two-part story in Flagpole about Brigitta Hangartner’s exciting and ambitious plans to turn the old Snow Tire recap plant on Hancock Avenue downtown into an art house movie theater. In part two, Franklin noted this: “Hangartner doesn’t want to change much structurally about the old Snow Tire recap plant. It is something of a landmark. Many are charmed by the mysterious graffiti on the side of the building which reads simply ’Man Down.’ Hangartner intends to keep it.”

More than two years later, Hangartner - along with local design-build firm D.O.C. Unlimited - has worked wonders with the old building; despite a long rehabilitation-and-construction journey, she now plans to open the theater in late March. She’s also got the “mysterious graffiti” intact, but that route has been a circuitous one, too. Despite Hangartner’s intent to keep “Man Down,” humidity from a workman’s pressure-washing on the opposite side of the brick wall on which it’s painted damaged the graffiti last November. The paint flaked off, and Hangartner thought it no longer looked very good. So, with some misgivings, she instructed her painters - who were re-painting the building’s whole exterior - to go ahead and paint over the now-damaged graffiti.

Then, in the first days of the new year, a new “Man Down” appeared one night. With oversized lettering and drippy yellow paint, this one was, well, messier than the original. Although she’d liked the original version and intended to keep it, Hangartner wasn’t as happy as she’d liked to have been with this one, either. So, she and her general manager, Paul Strawser, put out feelers into the local skater community to find out if the original graffiti artist would like to come back and paint a new, endorsed version of “Man Down.”

Within a week, she got a call from John Davis, a BMX rider who was part of the crowd of local skaters and BMXers who made a thriving homemade skate park on the empty lot that used to sit next to the Snow Tire recap plant. In 1994, after another Snow Tire building on the site burned down, skaters began taking advantage of the empty lot by building their own ramps. Over time, and since there was nowhere else downtown to legally skate, the impromptu park grew organically: quarter-pipes and other structures were added. The park was even torn down periodically by the lot’s owners - once, at least, for the 1996 Olympics and once, ironically enough, before the huge outdoor concert put on by Widespread Panic downtown in 1998 - but each time it was re-built again.

The end of the skate park came in January of 2001, when the lot - spanning the better part of a block along Pulaski Street from Hancock Avenue toward Dougherty Street - was cleared to make way for the Chastain Insurance office building and the new offices of the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce. (It was largely out of that loss of the unofficial “Skate Park of Athens” that the push for the new, professionally-built SPOA at Southeast Clarke Park was born.)

One of the best skaters on that scene, to hear Davis and others tell it, was a guy named Elvo. Elvo (whose real name, which he never used, was William Clark), had been a sponsored skater in California in the late '80s and early '90s, and was admired by all the other skaters in town. Moving to Athens, he became friends with Davis and other skaters and bikers who mostly hung out in a rental house at 186 Cleveland Ave. Davis has fond memories of those days, when the skating happened downtown and a tight-knit community formed. One night when a bunch of the guys were sitting around on the porch of that house drinking beer, Elvo reached up to the address numbers nailed to the front of the house and turned the 8 sideways. Nobody ever righted it, and a logo was born. Davis even has the 1?6 symbol tattooed on his right arm.

Eventually, Elvo moved to Savannah and started a welding apprenticeship with a company run by his wife’s family. In November of 1997, he died in a construction accident there. Davis, living in Texas at the time, drove directly to Gray, GA for Elvo’s funeral when he heard the news. Scores of stunned skaters and bikers - many of whom would soon get tattoos depicting a lowercase e within a circle, as tributes to Elvo - were at the funeral. From there, after the service, Davis and two friends drove straight to the skate park downtown. With his friends posted as lookouts, Davis painted “Man Down” and 1?6 on the brick wall of the former recap plant, and the three of them left. “It was really weird,” he recalls. “The three of us didn’t talk about it.” They never heard anything about it, either, and so the stark memorial remained.

Hangartner describes being “touched” by Davis’ story, and says she was thrilled when he called her about repainting “Man Down” (the new version actually appears as one word: “MANDOWN”). She notes it’s “a piece of work that has historic meaning to the building, and that was there when I got the building.” Hangartner says the story and the attendant piece speak to “to the history of the building and of our block - but also to community and friendship.” Both aspects are important. With Ciné, Hangartner has accomplished a striking re-use of an old downtown building, and all the characteristics of its history are important to her. On the concrete floor inside, for example - just across the wall from the ”Man Down“ piece - the following was written in black spraypaint at some point in the past: ”No Mere Mortal Can Resist… Thriller.“ This graffiti, like ”Man Down,“ will remain, because it’s a part of the building’s story. There is even an added element to the new incarnation of “Man Down:” the e-in-circle symbol, like Elvo’s tattoo. Hangartner was happy to know that would be included: “We had brought this mural from the past into the present - made a new work out of it.”

Oddly enough, the story doesn’t quite end there. As most folks were headed home from work on the evening of Jan. 10, when Davis returned to paint the endorsed, permanent version of ”Man Down,“ a policeman acting on a tip came to put a stop to what he thought was vandalism. Davis and Ciné staff were able to convince him otherwise. Still, however, a policeman returned a few days later to borrow the right color of paint and paint over the piece. Fortunately, Hangartner had instructed the painters to keep the graffiti, so they didn’t hand over any paint, and the piece was preserved. Now, with a small plaque tacked to the wall to describe it, she’s made it clear that the piece is to stay. (Still, she notes, “I don’t want to discourage the police from coming out when somebody calls them, and I don’t want to send a message that this is an open wall.”) In the end, Hangartner’s building has all the elements she’d hoped it would have, and Davis’ memorial to his friend has a home. Both of them, of course, are appreciative. “She didn’t even know what it meant, but she wanted to keep it,” says Davis. “That says something to me.”

Ben Emanuel

ben@flagpole.com