Cover Story: Live Tonight!

Atlanta’s nightlife battles back

Let’s face it: Atlanta may not have a vibrant downtown, world-class museums, efficient public transportation or stunning ocean views.

But at least we always had one thing going for us: a rockin’ nightlife.

We could banshee-dance until our legs gave out at the Chamber, wait till the wee hours to see who took the stage at Yin Yang Café, and stagger out of Backstreet just as the sun was peeking out.

And no matter where we traveled, when a stranger would learn we were from Atlanta, talk would turn to familiar touchstones: the Braves, OutKast, Gone With the Wind, the Olympics - and the Buckhead party zone, dude.

But for club kids and pub crawlers, the January 2004 debut of the 3 a.m. closing time for Atlanta nightclubs came like a sucker punch to a swollen liver.

Nearly a year-and-a-half since City Council trimmed our nightlife by an hour, the situation isn’t pretty. Some Atlanta nightclubs have closed while others limp along on diminished expectations.

As it turns out, the 3 a.m. curfew is only the most visible of many wounds now bleeding the city’s nightlife scene. Most intown bar and club owners can relate a litany of hardships visited upon them by city officials - hardships that have created a hostile environment for nightlife in Atlanta and sent the late-night crowd scurrying to the ‘burbs, or simply staying home with their PlayStation2s.

“It seems like all the city wants in Buckhead are steak houses and lobster bars; they want to get rid of clubs,” says David Laws, whose Mike ‘N Angelo’s on East Paces Ferry has been a Buckhead mainstay for 17 years. Like many bar owners, he says his revenues plunged due to the earlier closing time.

As a result, a number of bar operators are looking at pulling up stakes and moving OTP. Others have already made the jump, finding a ready market among suburbanites who don’t feel like battling traffic and scrounging for parking to knock back a martini only to come home an hour earlier.

Of course, there are also plenty of urban businesses sticking it out - and even thriving. Think Buckhead’s Tongue & Groove or MJQ in Virginia-Highland. These fortunate ones are adapting to changing times, shifting tastes and recent nightlife migration patterns that have turned Crescent Avenue into the new Pharr Road and anointed East Andrews Drive as one of the city’s hottest clubbing destinations.

But even the survivors are resentful of the city’s burgeoning after-hours scene, a loose network of speakeasies and house parties - mostly on Atlanta’s west side - that start kicking once legit clubs have begrudgingly locked their doors.

Adding to the atmosphere of fear and loathing is the lingering suspicion - a conspiracy theory, really - that city officials have made life difficult for nightclubs in order to drive business to its own longtime fiscal albatross, Underground Atlanta.

But more of that in a moment.

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

“In the last year,” explains Atkins Park owner Warren Bruno, “the city has tripled our water bill; installed parking meters, which has hurt our lunch business; created resident-only parking on the nearby streets, which cuts into our dinner; raised the sales tax; and moved back the closing time. So they’ve killed me on lunch, dinner and late-night.

“If it was just any one thing, we could deal with it,” he adds, “but they keep finding new ways to chip away at our business.”

While no one argues that water rates and sales taxes are specifically aimed at bars, Bruno is convinced certain City Council members have gone after the city’s nightlife to score political points.

“I’ve been in business for 30 years, and in just the last year they’ve dropped three or four major regulations without blinking,” says Bruno, former owner of the prominent Buckhead watering hole Aunt Charley’s and Underground’s Groundhog Tavern. “Some of the stuff they’re throwing up now are just election-year laws.”

The stuff he’s talking about includes an aborted attempt at a citywide smoking ban, steep hikes in liquor license renewal fees, overzealous fire-code inspections and, most significantly, a new parking ordinance that could have a devastating effect on the Buckhead and Midtown bar districts.

Adding to the piling-on is the city’s stand-alone License Review Board, which recently stopped giving warnings to bars that miss the deadline for renewing an alcohol license. The board’s new policy is to slap a club with the maximum fine, $1,000, for a first offense, and impose a crippling 30-day license suspension for a second violation. Says LRB Chairman Barney Simms, “We now operate more by-the-book.”

Bruno, who himself served a two-year term on the board, says the LRB’s stricter stance has further stifled Atlanta nightlife. “They don’t really have a pro-business perspective,” he says.

Certainly, licensing problems were behind the untimely closings last year of Backstreet after a near-30-year run as Atlanta’s premier 24-hour club, as well as the Metro in Midtown, downtown’s Level 3, and Echo Lounge in East Atlanta.

It might be tempting to dismiss Bruno’s City Hall criticisms as political sour grapes from an old-timer who lost a council bid in 2001. But as head of the Atlanta Licensed Beverage Council, formed in 2003 as an industry lobbying group, the veteran bar owner has become a de facto spokesman for the city’s pour houses. And he’s not even the council’s most virulent critic.

“The city is trying to drive us all out of business,” says Tracy Crowley, a partner in eight local neighborhood bars and restaurants, including Va-Hi college hangout Moe’s & Joe’s, Blind Willie’s blues club and 97 Estoria, a popular Cabbagetown restaurant and bar.

Although he concedes that the 3 a.m. closing time didn’t greatly impact his revenues, Crowley agrees that the flood of costly new regs - including a mandate for more frequent cleaning of grease traps - amount to death by a thousand cuts for an entire industry. Most recently, City Council voted to hold nightclubs legally responsible for drug dealing on premises.

In response, Crowley opened his last two restaurant/bar ventures - Universal Joint in Oakhurst and the Brake Pad in College Park - outside city limits. “College Park and Decatur are a breath of fresh air. They actually want our business,” Crowley says. “I’ve had it with the city of Atlanta; it’s not worth it anymore.”

And the worst is yet to come. The new parking ordinance, quietly passed by the council last fall and scheduled to take effect in January 2006, requires nightclubs to have at least one dedicated parking space for every 75 square feet of floor space to renew their liquor license.

“You’re going to be saying goodbye to some of your oldest bars,” Crowley predicts.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED

One such guy looking to get the hell outta Dodge is Buckhead Saloon partner Jeff Bolhous, who has made no secret of his intention to relocate his decade-old bar to the suburbs, in part to escape a code-enforcement policy that many have characterized as downright Stalinesque.

The city fire marshal, Bolhous says, is “harassing us every week, nitpicking us to death, looking for reasons to shut us down.”

Echoing similar complaints by other club owners, he recalls the time fire inspectors demanded that he cordon off an exit route that went straight through the middle of his dancefloor.

Count Bolhous among those who believe city officials are putting the screws to nightclubs in an attempt to build up Underground Atlanta. The not-so-unintended consequence, he says, may be a nightclub diaspora.

“People are weighing their options,” Bolhous says. Certainly, Buckhead Village has many more vacancies now than it did two years ago, when a mounting late-night murder toll caused City Council to consider - for the second time since 2000 - rolling back the citywide 4 a.m. closing time.

Departed from the Village are such frat-boy haunts as Lulu’s Bait Shack and BAR, the dueling-piano shtick at Jellyrolls, hip-hop hangouts Fuel and Fluid, dance clubs World Bar and Paradox, and the blink-or-you’ll-miss-‘em Euphoria and Carnivale.

Also gone are the nighttime cruise-a-thons that stretched for blocks and made sections of Peachtree Road all but impassable on weekends. Bolling Way, the nexus of the Village’s bar scene, is still crammed with cars and pedestrians, but police no longer need to barricade the streets on Saturday nights to control crowds.

All of which suits Howard Shook just fine.

The Buckhead councilman, whose district includes the Village, believes the 3 a.m. closing time has been an unqualified success for his part of town.

“It’s reduced crime in the Buckhead Village by 30 percent, there are 10,000 fewer cars cruising Peachtree on weekends, and city tax revenues haven’t dropped,” says Shook, offering an analysis of recent police statistics that some critics may wish to dispute. “I’m no prohibitionist, but I’m liking what I see in terms of toning down the excesses.”

But perhaps the most dedicated Village hardliner is Sam Massell, longtime president of the Buckhead Coalition, a cabal of local CEOs. As a not-so-behind-the-scenes player, Massell, 78 and a former Atlanta mayor, has been extremely successful in influencing city policy to match his long-view vision for his ‘hood - a vision based on weeding out “marginal clubs” to make room for boutiques, restaurants and professional offices.

“Over the past year or two, there has been more enforcement of laws,” Massell says. “Not just by police, but by the fire marshal, DUI task force, building inspectors and health inspectors.

“The Buckhead Village will probably look very seedy for a couple of years until landlords realize they need to adjust rents to attract shops and retail to fill the spaces,” he adds.

But Massell, who sits on the board of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, says predictions that the crackdown on nightlife will cost the city its all-important convention trade are off base.

“I don’t believe for a minute that it’s hurt our convention business,” he says, explaining that the city still has plenty to offer visitors in the way of dining, shopping and entertainment.

And although Shook says he’s aware that nightlife commerce is slowly drifting outside the city, he isn’t bothered. In fact, as author of the new parking ordinance, he’s determined to further thin the ranks of Buckhead nightclubs.

Not that Shook doesn’t agree that bars and clubs occupy an important cultural niche. In his 20s, he admits, he was himself a fairly major partier.

“I’m a big fan of the neighborhood bar; every community needs one. What they don’t need is 20 nightclubs within a two-block radius.”

FLOATING ON THE MAINSTREAM

Tom Cook is a guy who knows a thing or two about being unwanted.

The whole crackdown on Atlanta nightlife began on Cook’s front porch, more or less, when a scuffle between Ray Lewis’ posse and some passers-by left two corpses outside his Cobalt Lounge on the eve of the 2000 Super Bowl.

Lately, Cook has shifted his focus from the fading Buckhead Village, where he stills owns the popular Park Bench bar/restaurant, to Midtown, where he just opened the Loft, a new nightclub above his own EarthLink Live music venue.

If Midtown weren’t so white-hot right now, Cook says, he probably wouldn’t have risked any new locations inside the city. “I think the city of Atlanta has done no favors for the club industry; it’s been an easy political target,” he says.

Although Cook credits the Midtown Alliance civic group for maintaining order with its private police force, he concedes that the area already has developed some of the same problems that once plagued Buckhead, namely cruising and traffic jams.

By most accounts, Midtown has become the new Buckhead Village. Club-hoppers clog the sidewalks on weekend nights. Even at 1:30 a.m. on a Friday, with only an hour left to drink, crowds still cue up outside such hot spots as Club 112, Dragonfly, Whiskey Peach and, until it recently closed for renovations, Vision mega-club. And last year, Emory’s annual “Buckhead Bounce” pre-graduation celebration was shifted to Midtown.

To intown cognoscenti who miss the underground SoHo vibe of Nomenclature Museum or fondly recall the Ibiza-esque, DJ-centric beginnings of eleven50, the mainstreaming of Midtown is a step backward. The hipster crowd has since scattered to such Peachtree Street newcomers as Bazzaar and Django, the East Atlanta Village, Halo on West Peachtree and that old standby, MJQ.

In fact, most such club snobs firmly believe the earlier closing time has eroded Atlanta’s overall hipness. “I tend to think there’s not so much of a cool vibe in town anymore,” complains Brandon Sutton, a veteran DJ and club promoter. “People aren’t ready to go home early yet; they’re still pissed off that Backstreet closed.”

As Sutton explains it, the loss of 90 minutes of bar revenue killed some intown clubs outright and squeezed the bottom lines of the rest, spurring surviving venues to look for ways to attract larger crowds earlier, such as promo tie-ins with big radio stations. The need to compete for a mainstream audience has led to a rise in generic “theme nights” and a suppression of the individuality and quirkiness that gave the city its variety.

If nothing else, he adds, the 3 a.m. curfew has contributed to Atlanta nightlife’s growing lameness.

“Having to turn the lights on when you’ve got a capacity crowd on the dancefloor - it sucks,” says Sutton, who’s spun at such top clubs as Kaya, Compound, eleven50, the Mark and now Halo.

The result is that many urban trendsetters - especially younger ones - simply go out less often, which means less bar revenue, which brings about more nightclub conformity and ... you get the idea.

Not everyone, however, shares that perspective.

“At the end of the day, everyone is mainstream,” says Wes Lambert, who has managed Compound since the sprawling mega-club opened off Howell Mill Road last spring.

Successful nightclubs have always made necessary tweaks to compete for customers, he says. If that means bringing in independent promoters - “I think of them as consultants,” Lambert says - or partnering with radio stations on certain nights, so be it.

A club can get away with catering to a specific niche market - emo, punk or maybe tiki-tranny - only in places like New York, where there’s a large enough pool of regulars and tourists, Lambert explains. But in Atlanta, counting on the same crowd to turn out night after night is a recipe for insolvency.

That’s why Compound - which lives up to its name by incorporating an Asian garden and patio, a huge dancefloor ringed by flat-screen TVs and several high-tech lounge spaces - now has Latin Thursdays and “upscale urban” Fridays, in addition to trusting an outside promoter to reel in the Jezebel crowd on the all-important Saturdays.

None of that is new. Tongue & Groove proved a few years back how popular a dedicated “Latin night” can be for an otherwise non-Latin nightclub. But Lambert confirms that the trend has intensified in Atlanta over the past couple of years as competition among clubs has become more fierce.

“The more you diversify your format, the less chance you’re going to suffer when tastes change,” he says. He’s got a point: Anyone remember the swing-dancing craze?

LESS FAST, LESS CHEAP AND LESS OUT-OF-CONTROL

Trying to pinpoint the birth or death of any trend is usually a hopeless task.

Did the 3 a.m. closing time spell the demise of the kind of Panama City-style, high-energy dance clubs that used to line the streets of Buckhead, or were people already tired of that anything-goes, drunken-frat-boy vibe?

At any rate, the prevailing cultural winds in Atlanta are blowing in the direction of upscale cocktail lounges and away from sweaty discos and cheesy pick-up bars. In other words, sipping a Cosmo while chilling to live jazz at Django is definitely in, but climbing into the pit at Mako’s in Buckhead so you can get a better view of the chick in the swing is decidedly out.

“There seems to be a backlash against the whole loud nightclub experience,” observes Richard Leslie, CEO of Trend Influence, a marketing firm that specializes in keeping tabs on Atlanta hipsters.

So it’s not surprising that Babylon, the most recent club to open in Buckhead, is described as “a high-tech ultra-lounge” by manager Richard Ayoub. “It’s not a dance club,” he says. “With the police crackdown in Buckhead, the hip-hop crowd has moved to Midtown, so it’s a good time to open this place.”

As a result of the trend toward laid-back-ness, today’s nightlife crowd in Atlanta tends to be a little older - or maybe it’s the other way around. (See what we mean about trends?)

Anyway, ask around and you’ll find that some of the hottest night spots in Atlanta right now aren’t nightclubs at all, but upscale restaurants with a nightclub vibe. Prominent examples include Iris in East Atlanta, Apres Diem in Midtown and Buckhead’s BluePointe, which arguably launched the trend locally.

Instead of going to dinner and then hitting the clubs, the city’s scene-makers increasingly are opting to spend the evening at such of-the-moment eateries as Shout in Midtown and Two Urban Licks in Poncey-Highland.

Leslie offers this explanation: As people in their 30s and 40s travel, they find the trendiest watering holes are in swank hotels, such as Skybar at the Mondrian in L.A. and Bemelmans Bar in Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel. Since Atlanta lacks a strong hotel-bar scene - the tres chic XO cognac bar at the new Intercontinental is a noteworthy exception - sophisticated drinkers have made restaurant bars the see-and-be-seen hangouts.

“Going to get drinks at a restaurant, where you can eat or have a conversation, just gives you more options,” Leslie says.

That may help explain the immense popularity of East Andrews Cafe & Bar. In the three years since it opened in a sleepy two-story shopping center in west Buckhead, a quarter-mile from the Village, the expansive bar/restaurant/dance club has seen steady growth - thanks in no small part to its live-music venue, Andrews Upstairs.

Partner Chris Hadermann says he has little interest in competing with Vision and Compound for early-twentysomething club-hoppers; his target audience is composed of professionals in their mid-20s to late-30s. “We didn’t want to worry about metal detectors, unruly crowds and having to reinvent ourselves every two years,” he says.

Instead, Hadermann’s goal is to create a comfortable, laid-back space that combines elements of a local tavern, open-air courtyard, full-service restaurant and nightclub - in short, he wants East Andrews to be a place his customers would want to spend their entire evening.

Judging from the fact that, on a recent chilly Saturday night, no fewer than three boisterous bachelorette parties trooped into the busy club, Hadermann seems to getting his wish.

Granted, Andrews Upstairs is unlikely to lure the Friday-night crowd from Cabbagetown dive Lenny’s with such bookings as Journey and Bon Jovi tribute bands (both played in April). And the courtyard can be a serious meat-market scene, packed with guys who favor the standard Maxim clubbing uniform - untucked, striped Hilfiger shirts open at the cuffs and lightly scented with Axe body spray.

But there’s no reason to doubt Hadermann’s prediction that his club can weather trends, city inspectors and earlier bar hours to become a neighborhood fixture, much as Tongue & Groove has done a few blocks away. To boost its odds, East Andrews is planning in late summer to open an upstairs wine loft and piano bar designed to provide a more female-friendly lounging space.

It’s too early to tell, of course, whether the food/bar/music format typified by places like East Andrews will become the prevailing wave in Atlanta nightclub culture or if entrepreneurs will continue to spend millions to open slick, gleaming mega-clubs like Vision and Compound.

But one thing’s for sure, says the latter’s manager, Wes Lambert: Any further rollback of last call, as is often rumored, would be the final nail in the coffin for Atlanta nightlife.

Warns Lambert: “If they take away another hour, everything would move outside the city.”

scott.henry@creativeloafing.com