Profile - Pablo Henderson:

When the karma wheel spins, it always seems to turn in favor of Pablo Henderson, a downtown club owner fortunate enough to have had three successful ventures. Since the late ’90s, Henderson has reflected the city’s interests and habits in Goldfinger, Karma and his latest venue, The Mark.

His beguiling British accent is the product of a boyhood in London and international travels that included stint working for the Carter Center in Guyana and Ethiopia.

When Pablo wasn’t studying for his psychology degree at Emory, he was drinking rather extensively at a small Buckhead bar called Goldfinger. Upon graduating, Pablo became one of Goldfinger’s managing partners.

The dotcoms were good to all: “People would walk into Goldfinger and just drop three, four, five grand, just like that. A lot of people were making money and not even having to go to work the next day. I felt like a saloon owner.”

All good things come to an end and the same was true for Karma, which operated for five years until 2003 when The Mark replaced it. Where dark decadence once reigned, light and simplicity now rule.

On the kids of now-defunct Karma: “There was so much craziness that went on at that club. People were doing so many drugs and having creepy sex. It was really, really the craziest shit the city had ever seen.”

On the current scene: “The energy isn’t in Buckhead anymore. I don’t think it’s in Midtown, either. I think it’s dissolved. I think people have changed their behavior.”

Recent developments in city politics intrigue Pablo. “I learned about the prohibition in America in a history book in a classroom in England. I never thought I’d ever come close to seeing what that vibe was like. But thanks to Shirley Franklin, I’m getting the ’20s in America all over again.”

The coinciding resurgence hoped for in Underground Atlanta piques his interest a bit, too. “First of all, I think the whole thing is a little sketchy. Secondly, I think Atlanta’s journalists deserve a slap on the wrist for not picking up on that shit. Isn’t that Journalism 101?”