Found: People out at night in Atlanta

And on the third night, there were people.

Friday night, my last night in Atlanta, I got a ticket to see Kathy Griffin at the Fox Theatre. After the conference wrapped up that day, a couple of colleagues and I went out to dinner in a place nearby (I forget the name). We drove by the theater and there were actual people heading toward the theater for the early show, and in the lounges at both hotels across the street, which had been deserted the previous two nights were packed with people.

After dinner, while waiting to head across the street myself for the late show, it was standing room only on the terrace bar where I stopped to have a drink. I became engrossed listening to this conversation amongst these women also on their way to the theater. Either some people shouldn't drink at all, or I should drink more.

This one young woman had recently returned from India. She was talking about...well, as she put it, "It used to be called Bombay, but now that they aren't under England, they call it Bomb-eye [an attempt at her pronounciation]." I thought I just misheard her, but this went on for about five minutes, with her friends in disbelief, amazed at how a political change resulted in a pronounciation change. "Yeah, now they have to pronounce it Bomb-eye." "Bombay, Bomb-eye, tomato, tom-a-to." It was all that I could do to keep quiet. Finally, they got off that and she got all profound and serious. "It really makes you realize how lucky we are over here," she said, describing how much it cost her to take a tour somewhere, "I mean, here we get to choose to have a middle class." I wasn't that close, but I thought she had tears in her eyes. I know I did.

But, anyway, back to Kathy Griffin: The theater itself is gorgeous inside. I know who she is, but I've never seen her show on Bravo. She was extremely funny. While waiting for her to go on, this woman next to me, who had bought a T-shirt and picture, showed me the picture and said, "Isn't she beautiful?" I said yes, but that I thought she was cuter before all that plastic surgery. "Yeah, she's had a lot, but it's a different kind of beautiful now." Who could argue? The woman and her friend also had bought a couple of glasses of champagne each. The other woman dropped something in her glass and then in in her friend's. It turned out to be gummy bears.

That pretty much is as good a metaphor for Atlanta as anything: champagne with gummy bears.

Destined to drink alone

I thought the Newark experience was a fluke.

This week I am in Atlanta for the SPJ (Society for Professional Journalists) conference. Of course, the main purpose of the trip is representing NWU and the conference itself, but then there are the nights.

The first night, Wednesday, I was done at 5:00 and had the whole night to kill. As I left the conference hotel, I noticed that downtown seemed to be emptying out. I went to my hotel (about a ten minute walk down Peachtree Street) to consider my options. I checked out the Fox Theatre, across the street from my hotel, but they were dark for the night. So I had a drink at the terrace of my hotel (yes, the bar was empty) and read a local what-to-do magazine. I found a restaurant with a cigar/jazz club downtown. Of course, I was skeptical. So I called. After some conversation, I found out that the city was pretty much deserted because of the holiday. But the woman assured me there was plenty around, so if I came by and didn't like the scene there, there were other places nearby. She rattled off a few places and then said, "There's also a Hooters; there're always busy." (Luckily it didn't come to that.)

The crowd at the club (Dailey's) was pretty sparse, but it was interesting. The trio was one of a few that rotated regularly, and they had a pretty bizarre set list. I never would have imagined a jazz treatment of Bob Marley.

Last night when I got back from dinner with a colleague who joined me for part of the conference. I went to the hotel next door since the lounge at my hotel was again deserted. This one was deserted, too, but I went out on the patio and there was, surprisingly enough, a piano (electric) player. (I felt like I stepped into a Deep Space Nine episode, where they have the lounge on the holodeck that springs to life when they come in.) It was kinda nice, but all-in-all a little discordant.

The hotel was the Georgian Terrace, the hotel where they had the premiere party for Gone With The Wind, and if you squinted, the ghosts were still there. I couldn't help but think about the changes in the city since then. The hotel and the theater across the street are fine, but the stretch between that and downtown, where the hospital is, is full of boarded up buildings, half-empty $3-a-day parking lots, plenty of churches, and gated parks. And there are signs every block or so that state "This area monitored by video 24 hours a day." The billboard for the theater screams with lighted advertisements for Coca-Cola and Lexus (criticism for the commercialism tempered with the knowledge that if it wasn't for them, the marquee would most likely be dark).

Someone told me that southern cities, unlike northern ones, are not places where people who live there go, and I guess that's true. There are office buildings and conference hotels downtown, and I noticed that after 5, the people that worked there had left and the people walking around at night were mostly from out of town.