Cabana pool bar bouncer punch2/12/2024 And some people can have a problem with whatever. When I was a junior, which was three years ago, I got a job here.Ī standard night would be 100, 150 people.Ī lot of people come when they’re intoxicated. I have a degree in biochemical engineering. I went to college at the University of Georgia. … I keep an eye on the club and make sure it’s operating smoothly. If I’m not outside, I’m inside, watching the crowd, making sure there’s no funny business going on. Those duties are checking tickets and checking IDs to make sure they’re valid, and checking vaccination cards. This is a place for believers in progress, of music. What I have learned over the years is that a calm, concise approach is best. If I drink here after work, it’s going to be-always-a Budweiser. Typically, my drink of choice is a nice bourbon. If you choose to hunt or accost or hurt another person, you are not welcome here. I can get lost in an individual or in the music as a whole. What is the hardest part of working the door? This bar has given them an opportunity to show themselves. The most amazing thing about this bar is I have seen the younger crowd come in, young musicians who I have never seen before-I didn’t think they existed in Athens anymore. How do you compete with that? How do you compete with the monetary value of the younger crowd coming in and taking over something almost sacred to this town-the music? In Athens, there is a line, although I believe the collegiate culture is encroaching. It is an interesting conglomeration of a younger crowd and an older crowd that almost tries to hang on to an older Athens. We feel like a stepping stone for new bands. They are open to new music, and they are open to finding something different from their status quo. My mom’s from Boston, and my dad’s from Florida-Cape Canaveral-so I have a weird mix of being a Northern and a Southern person.Ī great band, a new up-and-coming band, with a wary fan base. Elspeth McWaters, who moved to Athens for college, manages the bar, checks IDs and even invented a Martini that bears her name.Īll three gatekeepers told us stories of a changing Athens, and of the music that pulsates as the town’s most sacred gift. In 2020, Southern Living magazine dubbed it one of the “South’s Best Bars,” and it’s known for its signature cocktails and handcrafted bitters. Bouncer Arianna Petersen, a recent biochemical engineering grad, checks IDs and vaccination cards at the door and waxes poetic about how the spirit of rock and roll joins employees and customers in a kind of transcendent haze.įinally, more than a mile west of downtown in the Normaltown neighborhood, we enter Matt McFerron’s The Old Pal, a cocktail bar that the UGA graduate opened in 2013 far from the khaki line. It remains the pulsing heart of Athens’ live music scene. Next, we walk to the renowned 40 Watt Club, the music venue and bar that helped launch punk and alternative rock movements as the main performance space for homegrown Athens bands like R.E.M. Here, Harrison Smith, a lifelong Athenian, checks IDs, nods to the music and frets over the fate of the city’s independent music scene. We begin at Nowhere Bar, a dive with more than 40 years in business, populated by dartboards, six tired pool tables and a nightly lineup of emerging musicians. Locals refer to an invisible boundary along Lumpkin Street in downtown Athens as the “khaki line”-east of that, closer to campus, college bars and their khaki-clad clientele control the vibe.įor this installment of Punch’s “A Night at the Door,” we talked to the gatekeepers at three bars west of the khaki line, who don’t draw their customers primarily from college campuses. A key player in the development of alternative rock and new wave music, this college town’s music scene remains a central attraction, with more than a dozen live music venues scattered across the downtown area.īut in a town where nearly three out of every 10 residents are University of Georgia students, the downtown scene-about 80 bars within a square mile-is dominated by collegians. and The B-52s achieved international acclaim. Athens, Georgia, took its place on the world stage in the 1970s and ’80s when homegrown music acts like R.E.M.
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