Clayton Street Crawl

by Sarah Bellamy | photography by Katie Wolitarsky

I had a grand and ambitious vision. On a single evening, I would lead a group of my friends to every single bar on Clayton Street between Thomas and Lumpkin streets, the heart of the ever-writhing and sometimes-spinning world of nocturnal downtown Athens. This ultimate bar crawl would be the perfect way to represent fairly all cross-sections of downtown Athens, to capture its vibrancy and its haze and to show my friends a hell of a time.

In retrospect, I really shouldn’t have been surprised that instead of a dizzy and debaucherous adventure, it felt more like herding disoriented cats.

Anyone who has ever been downtown with friends after 9 p.m. can tell you what happened. Most of my friends invariably wandered, snuck or ran away with various levels of cognizance.

But for the two of us who could look proudly down the length of Clayton Street from the gated area in front of the Classic City Saloon and know that we hadn’t skipped a bar on either side, we took great—if intoxicated—pride in knowing that we, at least, had experienced the vision as it was meant to be.

Our first stop was Molly O’Shea’s, a bar where many revelers take their last calls. The aesthetic appeal of the red walls and large mirrors can’t be fully appreciated when the bar turns down the lights and turns up the music, but know that if you ever do make it to Molly’s early, the décor is casually classy. The restrained setting complements the regular patrons, who remain just a little calmer than most downtown regulars, at least until the very end of the night. If Molly were a real person, you can tell she’d gush Irish pride and good conversation—at least that’s what she stocks in her bar.

We waved goodbye to Molly and walked into Last Call early enough to avoid paying the band cover. Last Call is not trying to impress anyone with its ambiance. At 8:20 p.m. on a Thursday, your shoes stick to the floor, and the bar is already humid. It’s all dirty barrels, rickety barstools and neon signs, and the house wine is Jager. “Most of our patrons are in fraternities and sororities,” says bartender Ralee Terrell, a fifth-year UGA student from Fayetteville. “But we still see the punk-rockers and the hippies.” That diversity also shows up in the soundtrack, which took us from Def Leppard to Garth Brooks to the Ying Yang Twins in a span of 10 minutes. My friends sat at the deserted bar and reminisced about earlier days in Last Call. Molly Pittman, a UGA student from New Orleans, sized up the dingy surroundings and said, “It’s a lot of fun if you’re drunk!” However, at this point, we weren’t.

Last Call is a rite of passage for any freshman at UGA, but having moved past our freshman year, my group moved on to the older and wiser Village Idiot. The Idiot just had a makeover. The red walls and large mirrors reminded me of the Irish bar just three doors down, but the Idiot retains a more intimate feel. Bar owner Michael Truelove says he makes a point of “treating everyone like a regular.” My friends people-watched from the gated area in front of the bar, twirled around under the red Christmas lights and set out for Allgood.

Allgood kept the laid-back vibe going but added in just a pinch of hipster. It has a distinctive, if dark, look, with funky metallic frames all over the red brick walls, but the upstairs patio really opens up the bar. Make sure to hold onto the rail on that open spiral staircase—there’s a sign that designates it for purely upstairs traffic, but it is unsurprisingly ignored by almost everyone in the bar. Becca Lunceford, a UGA student from Hiram, calls it “one of the higher-end bars in Athens,” in terms of both style and drink prices.

We made it down the staircase without any major injuries and strolled over to Genco. Although the bar’s shadowy design was inspired by its namesake character in “The Godfather,” the music in the bar helps lighten the mood substantially. Most of the regulars are comfortable dancing to the pumping old- and new-school hip-hop at any time, day or night. The marble bar and faux chandeliers add class, but don’t be fooled—you need only look at the loveseats wedged into tiny hallways to know that you really couldn’t take your parents to Genco. DJ Johnson, a UGA student from Memphis, Tenn., calls it “classy chill with upbeat music,” while Charles May, a UGA student from Birmingham, Ala., says he feels it is “comfortably sketchy.” Genco is too dark and cavernous for anyone to hold you accountable for the things you do there, and that’s probably a good thing.

In that spirit, we moved on to bigger and brighter Barcode. The interior is fairly clean-cut, if a bit bland. The bathrooms have the most character of any part of the bar: The boys’ and girls’ rooms are labeled with a Sharpie pen. In the 25 minutes we were there, we heard Elton John, Franz Ferdinand, the Gorillaz and Gwen Stefani. If the music is any indication, Barcode doesn’t want to draw any particular crowd so much as it wants to be liked a little by everyone. At Barcode my expedition suffered its first major mutiny: Pittman and some others became so irritated by my insistent cries of “Finish your drink! We’ve gotta go!” that they split off to go to Washington Street. Don’t blame the revolt on Barcode, though. It had much less to do with Barcode’s drink specials as it did with the cumulative effect of all the specials behind us.

The lights dimmed even further next door at Annex. Annex is all fog machines and make-out couches. When we arrived around 10:30 p.m., the dance floor was still empty and the infamous pole was unoccupied. If you’ve never been, this is a pole as in “pole dance.” Annex’s drink specials are so cheap that no girl should be impressed by any drink offers, although they probably will come pretty frequently. May debated for us the nuanced differences between Annex and Toppers, but his observations unfortunately are not fit to print. The best way to save yourself from embarrassment in Annex is to grab one of the submerged booths and people-watch. Far too many 25-cent drinks later, I herded the stragglers in my group over to General Beauregard’s.

There probably is no greater contrast than that between Annex and the neighboring General’s. The short walk between them is a journey from earsplitting Atlanta hip-hop to tinny modern country, from Long Islands to straight Southern Comfort, from intentionally non-descript club décor to Old South grandeur. General’s keeps the lights on so you’ll appreciate the red curtains, gilt-framed mirrors, wall floral arrangements and, of course, the grand chandelier. Or maybe it was just that even the darkest alley could seem bright compared to Annex. Whichever it was, the light seemed to knock some sobriety back into my friends, who struggled to finish the pitcher that I kindly purchased. Marlee Waxelbaum, a UGA student from Roswell, moaned, “I...can’t drink that.” Like a true Southern gentleman, the bouncer at General’s held the door open for all of the ladies in our party and thanked us for coming when we left.

Our next stop, down the stairs to DT’s Down Under, looked just plain grungy compared to its predecessor. It’s a good idea to come support a band you know if they ever happen to play here, but otherwise you need a high tolerance for seediness to hang around DT’s. This bar is about as cramped as any you’ll find in Athens, so the regulars come for the “Duff” Beer (which is really just Southpaw Light) and the bands they enjoy. Most people won’t head down that staircase unless they have a reason. After we put in our 15 minutes, we climbed back up the stairs to the moonlight and marched on.

Cutter’s Pub ended our trek down the south side of Clayton. For a bar totally open to the street, Cutter’s has an incredible air conditioning unit. The high, unfinished industrial ceilings and a curvier-than-average bar set this Irish pub apart in terms of design, but most patrons show up just to drink. Cutter’s has a reputation for playing great music, and the highlight of the night came when Stevie Wonder serenaded the bar from the stereo. Even if Wonder isn’t your style, hang around Cutter’s long enough, and you’ll eventually hear something that is. We danced to the stream of mid-90’s rock under the rotating Bacardi sign and crossed the street at last.

It could just be that several hours had passed since we set off, but I know from experience that wasn’t the only reason that the north side of Clayton seemed so much crazier than the south. At this halfway point, my herd was half of its original size. This decrease in number increased my desire to get everything over with, so not every bar on the north side of Clayton received as much time or attention as those on the south side. We hadn’t picked up our second wind when we reached Transmetropolitan, and since the upstairs bar is affiliated with the downstairs restaurant, I decided we didn’t need to go in. However, Ben Peacock, a UGA student from Athens, had another interpretation of the group’s decision: “You were drunk, and you got intimidated.”

The first bar on our return route, the G Spot, is far from intimidating. The G Spot sustains an impressive level of sketchy behavior despite its enforced “collar only” dress code. The walls are covered in large mirrors—all the better for watching the booty-shaking and potential “Girls Gone Wild” behavior. Waxelbaum called it “one of the more spirited bars of the night.” Who knows whether she was referring to the heavy red-and-black décor or the intense grinding. Peacock repeated the same bad joke about finding the G Spot three times before he finally understood that the reason I wasn’t laughing wasn’t because I couldn’t hear him.

We went on to Flanagan’s, where the grinding continued under a slightly greener hue and to slightly less mainstream rap. Compared to the other Irish bars on the route, Flanagan’s seemed to be the most Irish-kitsch. Maybe the green haze created by all the shamrock signs makes people here especially unruly. As I learned the hard way, Flanagan’s can get so crazy that your friends might not find you even if you simply stay out on the porch. A good strategy for staying out of the fray at Flanagan’s is to stand on the upper level and look down through the crowd from above. By this point in the night, my friends completely ignored my efforts to take them down to Half Moon Pub, and, since it is technically inside Flanagan’s, I gave up on it and dragged whoever I could find over to Firehouse.

As soon as Lunceford walked into Firehouse, she leaned over to me and said, “Where are my earplugs?” Of course, she didn’t so much say this as she did scream it, but the competing noise reduced her question to a whisper by comparison. She promptly found a barstool against which to steady herself for the rest of our tenure in the bar. When Firehouse is crowded, the disco ball and multiple ceiling fans are on full speed to make the bar more danceable. By 12:15 a.m., there were more dancing girls on the bar than empty glasses. I briefly took Ben Cobb, a UGA student from Huntsville, Ala., down the unimaginably sticky staircase to Backdraft, Firehouse’s downstairs bar, but there wasn’t much to do there besides talk on the empty dance floor. After a few minutes, Cobb was telling me his life story, despite the fact that I’m quite familiar with it already. I left Cobb to finish his drinks, found Lunceford still leaning on the same stool upstairs, and took her with me to Classic City Saloon.

Classic City looked pacified compared to its neighbors, which is disappointing given the enormous potential for mayhem created by its giant red birdcage. However, the spaciousness created by its multiple levels probably appeals to its regulars. Some elements of Classic City do feel like an Old West saloon, like the sign downstairs that advises patrons to “leave guns at the bar.” Then again, I’m not sure that a saddle-shaped disco “ball” is a fixture typical of a traditional saloon. After wandering through every floor, I shared one final drink with Lunceford, the only other person to visit all 15 bars with me, and sat down on the porch.

I now have an intense love-hate relationship with Clayton Street as a whole. In the end, the vision didn’t turn out to be the craziest night of my life in downtown Athens (or the best), but it definitely was the most accomplished. There was writhing and spinning, vibrancy and haze, and, in the end, one hell of a hangover. I had never earned it more.