It's a humid 95-degree afternoon in August, one of those days when the air is as thick as sausage gravy and no sensible being in Georgia performs any function or ventures anywhere beyond necessity. Yet, though it's a Monday as well as miserable, a new museum in downtown Atlanta is crowded, nearly overflowing.
Children are screaming with delight and scurrying from one exhibit to another, and their parents look only mildly harried. Adult faces frequently have that look of piqued interest, as if they were undergoing a major educational experience.No historical museum, no art gallery in the state of Georgia pulls in the kind of crowds this new place has attracted since it opened Aug. 3 - 50,000 visitors in the first three weeks.
Of course, there's really no other large-scale mdseum quite like this - a $15 million celebration of a particular soft drink. People are flocking in, paying $2.50 each (for adults), to be swallowed up in a glittering three-story advertisement for Coca-Cola.
"The World of Coca-Cola Pavilion" is so slick, so entertaining that visitors hardly even notice that they're approaching Coca-Cola sensory overload by the time they've spilled out the exit and into the Coca-Cola Trade-Mart Store, with all the Coke clothing, dishes, furniture, appliances and knickknacks awaiting purchase.
After drowning in several hundred Coke radio or TV jingles, at least one is bound to remain bouncing about the head: "I'd like to teach the world to sing ..."
An hour in the museum and the very color red evokes Coca-Cola. One is subconsciously driven to terrorize a Pepsi vending machine, to effect a multiple put-down of 7-Up, to accuse Dr. Pepper of malpractice.
"Why not have a museum for Coke?" Josie Belton, 22, a college student from Chicago, said with a shrug and a smile. "This probably means more to most Americans than some art museum full of Dutch masterpieces. We all grew up with Coke and all these advertisements. This is part of our lives."
The museum rises out of a parking lot just outside the very successful reincarnation of Underground Atlanta, one of those downtown festival shopping malls. Underground, which reopened last year and has since attracted far more visitors than expected, seems to be a fine complement for the Coke Pavilion, a strange, boxy, whimsical post-modern building topped with pyramids, with one quadrant open and devoted to a giant global neon revolving 23-foot-diameter Coca-Cola sign dangling over the entrance.
The museum is based in Atlanta, of course, because Coca-Cola was invented, marketed and has always been headquartered here. And perhaps because Atlanta is so barren of competing tourist attractions. For the $2.50 admission ($2 for senior citizens, $1.50 for children, under six free) you enter a rather dazzling combination of high-tech gadgetry and turn-of-the-century memorabilia.
The tour begins on the third floor, where Coke has displayed historical artifacts in glass cases around a massive kinetic sculpture representing a bottling plant - a 980-foot conveyor belt hustling along 1,168 old-fashioned six-and-a-half-ounce bottles.
Among the Coke historical treasures, there's old Doc Pemberton's original formula book and his laboratory percolator, the stuff from which the still-secret formula evolved.
But the heart of the museum is really about how Coke has been marketed, to the point where the cola is consumed 448 million times a day in some 160 countries, even Iraq.
Most of the museum is a history of Coke's advertising. Coke's brief flirtation with then-legal cocaine at the turn of the century isn't mentioned, but some of the early ads bill the drink as "The Ideal Brain Tonic" and suggest that the cola "relieves mental and physical exhaustion."
There, for all the world to marvel at, is the first six-pack carton (1923); the first Coca-Cola cooler (1929); the first bottle of Coca-Cola filled in the Philippines after the return of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
But the crowning film is a 13-minute musical tribute to Coke's internationalism, with stereo and high-definition television on a theater-size screen.
On the second floor, there's another kiosk, this with some of the great Coke radio jingles by singers such as Roy Orbison, The Supremes, Loretta Lynn and Linda Ronstadt - cola oldie goldies. In another theater are 40 years of TV commercials.
By then, even the most jaded tourist is dying for a Coke. Which can finally be had at a wild space-age soda fountain that spits a liquid stream some 20 feet into space before it fills up a cup. Not only Coke, but most of Coke's American soft drink selections. Shooting across space into one's cup. For free.
Or, for those with more exotic tastes, there's a bank of vending machines offering 18 flavors of soft drinks found only outside the U.S. Like Mone from Japan (honey and lemon), Fanta Manzana from Colombia (apple) or Cappy from Czechoslovakia (sour cherry). Also for free.
Folks can drink away at tables under TV sets blaring a series of international commercials for, yes, Coca-Cola.
Then it's down to the 4,500-square-foot retail store featuring, according to the Coca-Cola Company, "the largest selection of Coca-Cola merchandise available anywhere."
Ten-year-old Tommy Braxton of Marietta, Ga., offered a qualified endorsement: "I liked it real good, even though it didn't have any rides or anything.
"I never knew that Coke had so many commercials," he added. "There must have been a thousand of them.
"Pepsi must hate this place."
IF YOU GO:
How to get there: The World of Coca-Cola Pavilion is located at Central Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in downtown Atlanta, adjacent to Underground Atlanta.
Admission, hours: Admission is $2.50 for adults ($2 for senior citizens, $1.50 for children, under six free). Hours are 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Monday-Saturday, noon-6 p.m. Sundays.
Information: (404) 676-5151.