See, the problem with Atlanta’s nightlife isn’t that there isn’t any, but that the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau and other hospitality agencies can’t talk about what is there – the pleasures that anonymous short-term businesspeople might like to enjoy under the cloak of darkness. For example, Flex, the gay bath house right behind the Georgia Tech conference center. How many out-of-town family men do you think pay a steamy visit to that pink shack behind their hotel room on an average weekend?
So Robb Pitts is on to something when he says Atlanta needs to amp up the vice. Why, we’ve metaphorically chased every last one of those wide-eyed strippers with big dreams who showed up in 1996 hoping to bank on Olympics fever with tar, feathers, and rusty pitchforks via all sorts of state and local laws and such, or at least the threat of passing such ordinances. And what about the ridiculously named Operation Hammer Time in free-for-all unincorporated DeKalb?
So Atlanta should keep doing what it’s good at, and do it out in the open, and just go ahead and legalize gambling, and maybe instead of having an inferiority complex to places like Manhattan and Los Angeles we can start looking down on Reno. This isn’t just about tourism money or getting more bodies into Kenny’s Alley on a Saturday night, it’s about self esteem!
By the way, Atlanta’s nightlife is cool, but I guess I don’t hang out where any douchey members of the American Society of Home Inspectors would want to party anyway.