Atlanta = Food & Bars

Has Buckhead really gone that far downhill? And there were $5+ beers there 20 years ago. It was amazing to me when I moved to Wisconsin and there were $1.50 taps and $2 bottles.
 
If you want cheap beer and poon, I'd suggest 5 paces. Crawling with a lot of douches, but always plenty of slurts, too
 
Legal Jacket said:
One, trying to distinguish our "relatively modest population" is asinine. Point being, there are 6 million people relatively close to midtown/buckhead, etc. Even if you just want to count Atlanta proper, you are still talking about many times more people than live in Athens. It's a pretty simple point even you should understand. Atlanta is a major city. Athens is a college town. They aren't comparable.

Two, you must have been hitting the biggest dive bars in the upper west side to avoid paying $7-8 bucks a beer. If you are at a cheap place you can usually get a PBR or something similar for $5 or less. I don't know anywhere in the city that will give you a microbrew for less than $7-8. If you know of a place, let me know so I can go there tonight.
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What is asinine is counting the populations of suburban counties and then saying that makes a place a big city. This place is more large town than big city. I don't see what is so great about Buckhead, what used to be the village looks like ööööing Pyongyang right now.

Ask the average visitor to Athens and Atlanta what is the better drinking town.
 
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Legal Jacket said:
?Really?

Let's see now -

Highlands
Buckhead (not what it used to be, but North of the old strip there are still tons of bars. There are also tons of bars by Churchhills, Pool Hall, etc.)
Decatur
East Atl
Howell Mill / Marietta (more upscale restaurants)
Etc.

Is your point that there isn't a single "college" bar scene? One, I think you'd have to say Highlands has some of that re Emory. Two, we are a city. Not a college town. Atlanta has a pretty thriving upscale/trendy restaurant scene geared toward successful 30 and 40 somethings. The number of good, new restaurants in midtown, south buckhead, decatur, etc. is mindblowing - to the point where its öööö near impossible to go to every one. If you don't think Atlanta has good food, you simply aren't trying hard enough to get out and eat at good places.

Some of you are complaining about $6-7 beers. My take is you are probably the same people who eat at LaFonda or Jaliscos and take that to mean that ATL doesn't have any upscale dining options. You can't have it both ways. Good stuff costs money. Just naming a few places off the top of my head, you've got Restaurant Eugene, Verasano's, Antico, Optimist, West Egg, Bone Lick, Bonegarden, Star Provisions/Bachanalia, JCT Kitchen, Yum Bunz (opening soon), 5 Seasons, Toscano & Sons, Miller Union, Lure, Nan, Tamarind, 6 Feet Under, Watershed, etc. all within a mile or two of Georgia Tech - and that's just to the North of campus.
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How obtuse can you possibly be? You are arguing that Atlanta is awesome when I already said it was superior to college towns.

However, since you missed the point on my one sentence about why Atlanta isn't THE best...I'll attempt to break it down for you. When you go out drinking, it is optimal to not have to use a car. Atlanta as a whole is great, but each of the individual places taken in and of itself is just kind of average. When you're going out for the night, you're only going to be able to hit one of those spots unless you want a dui. So...let's rank top places to go out from my experiences.
1. Bourbon street
2. DuPont circle (dc)
3. Las olas Blvd (fort Lauderdale)
4. Beale st. (Memphis)
5. Clematis st. (West palm)
6. Duval st. (Key west)
7. South beach
8-10. Different spots in atl
11. Brickell (Miami)

If Atlanta merged all the goodness into one area, easily top 3, but until then the other spots I've listed are better because they have it all right there and together.
 
BainbridgeJacket said:
If you really believe that, you're doing it wrong. Though Atlanta does need to step up and get one centralized bars/clubs street.
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No it doesn't. It has plenty of areas that are walkable with 6-10 decent bars that are all somewhat similar. Virginia Highlands, Crescent St, L5P, Marietta St, area around the Fox, etc. You can go to any one of those and drink the night away at 5 different bars, which is typically as many as I could get to in Athens on a big nigh.

I prefer Crescent Street, personally, with VaHi after that.
 
BainbridgeJacket said:
How obtuse can you possibly be? You are arguing that Atlanta is awesome when I already said it was superior to college towns.

However, since you missed the point on my one sentence about why Atlanta isn't THE best...I'll attempt to break it down for you. When you go out drinking, it is optimal to not have to use a car. Atlanta as a whole is great, but each of the individual places taken in and of itself is just kind of average. When you're going out for the night, you're only going to be able to hit one of those spots unless you want a dui. So...let's rank top places to go out from my experiences.
1. Bourbon street
2. DuPont circle (dc)
3. Las olas Blvd (fort Lauderdale)
4. Beale st. (Memphis)
5. Clematis st. (West palm)
6. Duval st. (Key west)
7. South beach
8-10. Different spots in atl
11. Brickell (Miami)

If Atlanta merged all the goodness into one area, easily top 3, but until then the other spots I've listed are better because they have it all right there and together.
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I got what you were trying to say, it was just stupid. There are these amazing things called wives and taxi cabs. They can take you from one place to the next and when you use them to drive you somewhere you won't get a dui. Cutting edge concept, so it's not surprising you haven't heard of it. I don't go out as much as I used to, but when I do its relatively common for me to do two or more spots in Atlanta, usually because I've got friends at a number of places. Leaving where I live (south buckhead/north midtown), it's easy to go to Highlands then come back and hit somewhere else late night. You may end up spending 20-30 on cabs, but worth it over a dui. If your point is that is too expensive, point taken, but that doesn't mean you have to drive anywhere, it just means you'd prefer an option that, like Atlanta, has moderately priced bars but where everything is more convenient to go.

The main problem with your analysis is that you visit these fun places to go out as a tourist, not a resident. Most people living in Memphis don't live within walking distance to Beale Street, ditto NO and Bourbon Street, etc. etc. Unless there is a decent public transportation setup, which none of the places you mention have besides DC, you are still going to have to cab to/from those destinations. Moreover, comparing Atlanta to destination spots, like Key West for example, doesn't make much sense.

Atlanta is far from the most amazing place to go out on the town, but that's not what it's trying to be. It's very livable, but yet also offers some pretty good spots - not to mention its ADDING places at a frantic pace.
 
And I'm just saying a centralized place would take it to the next level. Aka, it's more fun to not have to take a cab until the end of the night.

Valid point about tourist. You can take bourbon and key west off my list, then. The others I've lived there.
 
KillerGroove said:
What is asinine is counting the populations of suburban counties and then saying that makes a place a big city. This place is more large town than big city. I don't see what is so great about Buckhead, what used to be the village looks like ööööing Pyongyang right now.

Ask the average visitor to Athens and Atlanta what is the better drinking town.
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This is about the dumbest thing I've read in a long time. One, you are missing the big picture. This isn't a debate about how big Atlanta is. It's a discussion about Atlanta's bar and restaurant scene. Being contrarian and quibbling about how big Atlanta is misses the point and doesn't advance that discussion at all. It's just you being an idiot.

Two, the point was that Atlanta has a helluva lot more people than Athens, and so comparing the two doesn't make sense. Even under your idiotic assessment, Atlanta proper has well over 400k people. That's more than Miami, which I'm sure you would agree with me is a city, not a town. That's also more than Cleveland, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Tampa, Oakland, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. Again, all cities, not towns. Yet somehow, in your fantasy world, Atlanta (and its 400k+ people) are comparable to Athens. In fact, if you took every ass backward person in Clarke county and counted them, you wouldn't get much over 1/4 of that number and that's including the whole öööö county, not just "Athens proper." Tying it into the discussion, that Atlanta has so many people and is so much larger than Athens makes it significantly more difficult (especially in light of how Atlanta developed) to have one centralized set of bars and restaurants. There are not many places bigger than Atlanta that have "one" spot like what people are saying. Maybe San Antonio, but I haven't been there. Other than that, if you are just talking about the population of city proper, it's Memphis or Las Vegas, and maybe Nashville.

The second problem with your logic is that, according to you, the millions of people that live in surrounding areas - like Sandy Springs, Marietta, Dunwoody, Decatur, etc. - simple don't count. They don't come to Atlanta ever under your analysis. You could be like my mom, who lives a mile inside the perimeter in Sandy Springs, and yet not count when assessing the size of the city. That makes no sense in this context.

If anything, it supports what I've been saying the whole time that, because Atlanta is so big, you are going to find a lot of good eating and drinking options but they just aren't centralized. Because the actual "city" isn't as populated as the immediate surrounding areas, it makes sense that there are good options going from Midtown and sprawling to the North and the East. If you had thought more about what you were saying in the context of this discussion, rather than trying to quibble for the sake of being cute, you might have realized that.

EDIT: And you may as well be asking a visitor what is the better college town - Athens or Atlanta. If your question is, what is the best place to drink really cheap beer and oogle sorority girls, it's clearly athens. If your question is which place has better food and drinking options, its clearly Atlanta (unless, again, you are mostly interested in lower priced options). I'm not saying Athens doesn't have good upper scale options, but that's not the focus of the Athens market and the number of places and selection isn't near what you would find in Atlanta, which makes sense for most people.
 
BainbridgeJacket said:
And I'm just saying a centralized place would take it to the next level. Aka, it's more fun to not have to take a cab until the end of the night.

Valid point about tourist. You can take bourbon and key west off my list, then. The others I've lived there.
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It's a valid point. My main response to that is that having a place like that may not always be the best thing. Buckhead was fun, but now that I have a wife and kid the downside to it (traffic/crime) comes close to outweighing the benefits. It would be nice to have this awesome place to take visitors when they come to town, but its just as nice not having to deal with crazy packed bars everywhere you go. Mostly personal preference, imo.
 
Legal Jacket said:
It's a valid point. My main response to that is that having a place like that may not always be the best thing. Buckhead was fun, but now that I have a wife and kid the downside to it (traffic/crime) comes close to outweighing the benefits. It would be nice to have this awesome place to take visitors when they come to town, but its just as nice not having to deal with crazy packed bars everywhere you go. Mostly personal preference, imo.
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The other places wouldn't cease to exist, though. In west palm we still have city place, palm beach gardens, worth ave, etc. Way I see it is have your pie and eat it too. That's why I'm down here, though.
 
Architorture23 said:
No it doesn't. It has plenty of areas that are walkable with 6-10 decent bars that are all somewhat similar. Virginia Highlands, Crescent St, L5P, Marietta St, area around the Fox, etc. You can go to any one of those and drink the night away at 5 different bars, which is typically as many as I could get to in Athens on a big nigh.

I prefer Crescent Street, personally, with VaHi after that.
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No mention of East Atlanta? What a minute...now I'm getting caught up in the missed joke thread-jack
 
how many bars does this centralized place need to have before its cool enough?
 
Legal Jacket said:
It's a valid point. My main response to that is that having a place like that may not always be the best thing. Buckhead was fun, but now that I have a wife and kid the downside to it (traffic/crime) comes close to outweighing the benefits. It would be nice to have this awesome place to take visitors when they come to town, but its just as nice not having to deal with crazy packed bars everywhere you go. Mostly personal preference, imo.
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Wait, didn't you state in another post that you live in Buckhead?
 
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