Stories from an Athens, Ga bouncer & bartender

Joseph Mills... Again.

2012-07-25T19:31:00.002-07:00

I'm coming out of "retirement" briefly to post on the latest development of Joseph Mills. This was in the Athens Banner-Herald today. Our good friend has had another run in with the law, and this time for lurking in a gated neighborhood.

If you remember, I posted about this weirdo and now convicted sexual predator multiple times over the years of my employment downtown. Not surprisingly, he's violated his probation multiple times at this point, has spent almost a year in jail, and he's still out there being a fucking shithead creepster. There's no telling what girls house he was sitting outside of. I hope the cops canvassed the neighborhood, because I guarantee you she knows who he is.

At this point, years and years later, I can admit to everyone that I had a hand in getting this fucktard arrested. In fact, I was out one evening drinking my sorrows and troubles away back in 2007 and came home fairly late (as in, late enough that the ABH website had been updated with the next days edition) to find a composite drawing of our good friend on the front page. I immediately recognized him, and the rest is history. I have no regrets for rolling over on this now convicted sexual offender, and if you've ever read any of the things I've stated in this blog over the years, I don't take kindly to anyone mistreating the ladies.

Athens-Clarke County: PUT THIS FUCKING SEXUAL PREDATOR AWAY. Probation isn't going to do it. He's not going to change. He's got all the hallmarks of a dangerous predator quickly heading down a slippery slope, and the scary part is that he's just getting started. It won't be long until the lurking and stalking and groping and spying and molesting drunk UGA girls downtown turns into rape, and possibly worse.

Do the right thing. The judge needs to sign the arrest warrant. The prosecutor needs do his job & lock this kid up for the remainder of his probation, and if possible, much, much longer.

Be safe out there.

-AthensDoorGuy

The Latest

2011-10-20T13:23:00.001-07:00

It's been almost a year, and while I've said I wouldn't post any more, there still appears to be traffic hitting this blog on a daily basis.

I still check my email pretty regularly. While I'm not as up to speed on the latest in downtown Athens anymore, much of my advice still applies. So shoot me an email if you'd like:

Athensdoorguy@hotmail.com

Happy drinking, blacking out, puking, and underaged trips to jail. Downtown Athens, Ga lives on.

The End

2010-11-29T07:32:00.000-08:00

There comes a point in a persons life when they realize that they simply have to move on. I had that realization a few months ago, walking around downtown Athens on a break from working during an early Saturday evening after a home game while the sun slowly sank below the horizon.

The remains of the game were everywhere...empty solo cups on the sidewalks, bars cleaning up from the early afternoon drinking and bringing trash out to the curb, police directing the remaining traffic leaving town, several drunk stragglers making their way home or trying to hail a taxi, and a few brave souls who had decided to stay downtown until the evening picked back up again in the later hours of the night when the students would flock back to the bars and make the most of their Saturday night.

I had to stop and look around. I took it all in. Something wasn't right, and it hadn't been for a long time. I began to realize that I simply was not a part of this town anymore, nor could I ever be again. It was an obvious realization, but one that I should have had years and years ago.

It was all over for me.

I have worked, on and off, in downtown Athens in the bar scene for a long time - going on 8 years at this point. I've quit and then come back more times than I can count. My most recent foray back into Athens bar employment was several months long and involved me "training" the newer staff. For me, my nightly training regimen usually involved me and another old timer on his way out - much like myself - standing at the bar taking shots and reminiscing about the fun we had years ago when we were in our prime working with our original crew.

Occasionally, I found the motivation to grab a mop or broom to clean, or give a new guy a walk-thru of the bar, or jump into a bar scuffle to help the staff toss an unruly drunk out into the street.

It was fun while it lasted, but also bittersweet. This was a far cry from the past. Our good friends who were with us in the beginning had left. We both longed for the days many years ago when it was all fresh and new while we were still in college and working in a bar was the cool thing to do. We tried to replicate those days by staying at the bar drinking ourselves into oblivion until 5 or 6am, talking about the wild late-night parties we had years ago. But the future was on the horizon and obvious, and I think a bigger part of us was ready to shed the past, and move into the future with a hope for something bigger and better.

Usually, we found ourselves as the only two people in the bar that late most weekend nights. This would make sense, because years and years after everyone else had left, we were still there. I guess our late nights were a reflection of our life choices up to that point.

That particular friend was the sole remaining throwback to my original days working downtown. He's gone now. He moved away to start a new chapter in his life a few weeks ago, and I applaud him for that. Shortly before he left, I decided to do the same and marked my last weekend working at the bar to coincide with his.Truth be told , neither of us spent it doing anything close to working. We just drank, traded old war stories, and then drank some more. A fitting end to nearly a decade of binge drinking, fighting drunks, cleaning bars, and pouring drinks for underaged college students.

I have to move forward now. I've spent too much time looking back at the fun I had and wishing I could replicate it, and not enough time pushing forward and diving headfirst into my new life, a new chapter that is sure to be just as fun and rewarding as my time in Athens was, although in very different ways. Through my years of drunkenness, I managed to finish college. I have a real job at a real company where solutions to problems don't always involve a headlock and lots of shouting. I've worked here for almost a year. It's time to put the drive and dedication into that job - an actual career - as I have in the past with my bar jobs.

I've thought a lot about it all, and also how it will affect this blog. I still have tons of stories to tell, but in the end they're all pretty much the same. I've said everything that I could have.

So, I've decided that this will be my final post as the Athens Door Guy. My drunken stories, my beliefs about the Athens-Clarke County government, and my opinions about stupid, naive, drunk college kids are just as true today as they were the day I posted them on this blog. Hopefully this site will still remain relevant to whatever brand new UGA freshman stumbles across it in the future, skimming for information on downtown Athens and how to get a fake ID or get past the bouncer at the door. The risks of downtown will remain and my warnings are still valid, but the fun things you can do while hammered and wandering the streets of downtown Athens are all still there for anyone.

I will undoubtedly visit Athens again. That is a certainty. I'll show up for a football game and take advantage of some random bars Power Hour, and take too many jager bombs, and stagger down the same puke and skunked-beer smelling downtown streets as I have hundreds & hundreds of times in the past. But I will do so - finally - as a permanently retired bouncer, doorguy, greeter, blogger, bartender, or whatever the hell you want to call me.

And I'm incredibly happy with that.

It Continues...

2010-10-07T07:33:00.001-07:00

A previous comment shot down a few of my solutions as unworkable and too expensive for cab companies to follow.

Lo and behold, this story awaited me.

What's it going to take to make some real changes? The original story that I quoted yesterday touted "stricter background checks" for taxi drivers, yet further down in the story the police claim that legitimate cab drivers haven't been attacking and robbing passengers.

So what the fuck is anyone actually doing? Nothing, as usual.

My previous post suggested tangible solutions for real problems that are facing Athens, the cab companies, and their passengers. A girl was raped Wednesday night. There's a number of other rapes that have happened in previous year...at least that we know about.

What would have happened if cabs were more easily recognizable? If they could only pick people up at designated stops downtown, patrolled by police officers or legitimate security? If each cab was required to have a backward facing camera in operation to show the driver and their passengers?

I think you would find that police would have actual leads to follow for violence that happens in cabs. They would have a picture of the suspect to start their investigation from for things like what happened Wednesday night to that girl.

A few years back, I found an underaged girl on the sidewalk after 2am, drunk and completely unable to take care of herself. As she sat half conscious on the curb on the sidewalk, I rooted through her purse, found her phone and called everyone on her recent call list. She hardly even noticed what I was doing. Her "friends" either didn't pick up the phone, or said they were too drunk to come get her.

I won't even start on everything that was wrong with that situation, but suffice to say, I shooed away several police officers trying to "investigate" - they surely would have taken her to jail for being underaged - and finally hailed a cab down sometime before 3am. Putting her in the cab and making the driver wait while I took a cell phone picture of his license, and then another close up photo his face, I gave him $20 and a promise (or threat, depending on how you look at it) to find him if anything happened to this girl while he drove her home. I left a note in her purse telling her what happened, and got her phone number from her phone as well.

I gave the girl a call the next day to make sure she was ok, and she was. She was terribly embarrassed and didn't remember a thing, but that was alright with me. Our conversation was over quickly, and I never heard from her again.

I'm glad things turned out alright, but the point is this girl left herself vulnerable to anyone. She's lucky that the perfect stranger that happened to come across her was me. When you're completely helpless and downtown and leave yourself to the mercy of a stranger, anything can happen.

I also wish I didn't have to take the steps I did in order to feel halfway comfortable that the cab driver bringing her home wouldn't pull off in a dark parking lot and have his way with her. Even though I had what I needed to find him if something happened, there was no way for me to know the minute-by-minute happenings in that cab. I could only hope for the best.

Which is why I challenge someone...anyone...to do something about this obvious problem and to bring some actual solutions to the table instead of half-assed newspaper puff-pieces that get printed up to make everyone think that something is being done, when actual people are being hurt every single day that no legitimate change is made.

Athens Taxi Dilemma

2010-10-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

This is bullshit. All of it should have been in place years ago. Of course a fucking convicted felon shouldn't be driving around strangers, much less drunk teenagers and college kids. A "first in first out" policy shouldn't have to be enacted by the government. The cab drivers should be doing that ridiculousness out of policy and good business practices.

It's the typical dog and pony show that Athens-Clarke County engages in when there's a problem and the government wants to look like it's doing something without actually doing anything.

The real problems are numerous. Cab drivers over-charging and taking advantage of their fares is one. The solution? Require every cab to have a dash-mounted fare system that digitally shows its passengers the running tab to bring them from one location to another. It's harder to screw over your passengers when there's an electronically run fare system in place.

Unruly passengers are a common problem. Consider this story. Did they do it? Did they not? A lengthy and very public investigation that tarnished UGA's football program temporarily (although other players, the former Athletic Director, and mediocre coaching has essentially screwed our program as of now) ended up being unfounded, but could have been avoided had taxi companies had cameras installed in their taxis.

And the most public problem? Girls getting picked up downtown, driven out into the middle of nowhere, and raped under the initial assumption that they were getting into what they thought was a cab. The solution? There are several, in my opinion. The first is more markings on the taxi. A simple magnetic sign on the side and a barely-lit "Taxi" slapped on the top are easy enough for your local white-van rapist to get his hands on. We should require more. More permanent markings. More lit signs. Perhaps even a standard multi color-scheme for all cabs that isn't in line with any Joe-Schmo who owns a big white cargo van and a tendancy to pick up drunk college girls downtown and rape them.

Another solution? Fucking taxi stands. Marked taxi stands around downtown. Throw a police officer or two in the mix and not only will your typical, retarded intoxicated college kid know where to go to get a legitimate taxi, but there will be supervision, accountability, and keep those goddamn giant white taxis out of the middle of Clayton street blocking traffic, keep drunk pedestrians from running in front of moving vehicles, & generally make things safer.

Until the government actually suggests and implements actual solutions for the problems that have been plaguing the taxi system for years, then you're going to have the same problems that we've been having for such a long time. Kids will continue to get ripped off from dishonest cab drivers. Bad shit will happen in cabs to passengers and cabbies alike without some in-cab accountability. I've been in a cab alone before, and had the driver show me his pistol. What the fuck? Who does that?

And worst of all, girls will continue to get raped. How long until one is murdered? Mothers and fathers of college kids will have to get the phone call from the police that their daughter has been taken advantage of. Lives will be forever changed.

So Athens-Clarke County...get up off of your ass and fucking do something about it!

Things You Learned Last Weekend, But Should Have Already Known...

2010-09-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

1) Don't get out of the cab downtown with your drink. The cops are there. I've seen it a dozen times. Cab drivers don't care that you're finishing off your little girlie concoction in the red solo cup while they drive your drunk asses downtown and charge you astronomically high fares. The cops do, however. That $15 taxi ride just turned into an $85 ride with the brand new open container citation that the cop just wrote you.

2) Don't scream in the doormans face. Please, please, please. If I've said this once, I've said this a hundred fucking times. I'm sure power hour was fun and you're thrilled to see your friends, but my hearing is just as sensitive as it was earlier this afternoon. Oh, whoops. Not anymore.

3) Don't grope random girls in a bar and then act like you're the victim when asked to leave by the staff. Making a scene on the way out like pounding on the walls or calling me "bro" doesn't help you save face. It only makes you look even more pathetic than you are. I win.

4) Don't steal the tip jar. What are you thinking when you try to grab the money out of this? You're just like a tiny baby...you see something you want and you simply can't resist the urge to try to take it for yourself. Unfortunately, we're there to stop you...and bring you to a closed off location out back where no one can hear you scream.

5) Don't....stiff the bartender, throw up in the bathroom or on the bartop, break anything in the bar, write on the walls, try to steal booze or anything that isn't nailed down, have sex anywhere in the bar, try to pass back ID's, try to get into fights with anyone, or generally try to do anything that isn't socially acceptable in any other public place. Seriously. Are you guys fucking 12?

6) Don't fight the Bouncer. We're not the police. We don't (usually) have guns or weapons. This is good for you. But we also never took an oath to uphold the law and the constitution. So conversely, we have no trouble knocking your front teeth out, choking you unconscious, and throwing you face down on the sidewalk with your pants down right in front of that hot girl you were trying to impress only moments before. This is embarrassing for you. Also, things aren't over for you quite yet. Officer Friendly is standing right outside to take it from there, and usually his attention is on your drunk ass, and not my violent tendencies. Thus your encounter with them begins...

7) Don't fight the police. This seems like a no-brainer, but I'm continually surprised at how many kids get a few drinks in them and then consider this an option. A handful of kids went to jail last night simply because they couldn't think logically enough to not fight on the sidewalk with each other and then the cops when they wandered over to investigate. There's a lot of them and they have radios to call more of their friends over and multiple tools they can use to inflict pain on you. And then when they're done kicking your ass, they get to throw you in a room and lock you up there until they feel like letting you out. Have fun explaining this to your parents the next day when you need to get bailed out.

8) Don't drive home drunk. Fine. You've made it home safely the other 50 times. Why not give it another shot? Taxis are overrated anyway, with all the rapin' and all going on these days. Well all it takes is once to get pulled over and now you're looking at roughly $10,000 in bonds, attorneys fees, court costs, fines, DUI school tuition payments, monthly probation fees, taxi money (since you'll have no license) multiple court appearances, and a permanent black mark on your record for life. Congratulations. This little money-making scheme has been raking in the county extra cash for years now, so if you want to fund your local road project or help to supplement a few government salaries to insure the downtown bike police are fully staffed every weekend, then take a few extra shots before you leave the bar and then go for a joyride down East Campus Road. Make sure to ignore the speed limit and those annoying white and yellow lines on the road trying to tell you how to drive.

9) Don't ring the victory bell. Also known as the Chapel Bell. Besides of the obvious implications this presents - i.e. UGA isn't exactly winning much of anything right now - it's beyond annoying and it goes on fucking forever. And at 2:30am, I can't think of a better way to scream PLEASE ARREST ME than this. And trust me, I can hear that shit all the fucking way across downtown. Not to mention usually the only people cutting through campus are the kids heading to the dorms, which equals underaged drinkers which equals a night in jail. You might as well send up a fucking signal flare to all bored police officers in the area.

10) Don't stay downtown past 2am or so. Fine, maybe grab a bite to eat before you head home, but there's nothing worse than getting off of work at 4 or 5am and then heading to (I hate to admit) The Grill and finding a table full of fucked up kids yelling and screaming there as well. My parents taught me nothing good happens when you stay out past midnight, so one can only imagine what ridiculousness happens past 2am in downtown Athens. Personally, I can tell you absolutely nothing good happens.

So please shut the fuck up so I can eat my grill muffin in peace.

The Dick

2010-09-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

I wrote this one about 2 1/2 years ago. I can't remember exactly what or who this was about, but I saved the draft at about 4am, and I rarely wrote immediately after work so I must have been pissed.

Sometimes when we work and we're dealing with a shithead, we want to hurt him. We want to rear back and hit him in the face as hard as we can and then throw him on the ground and jump up and down on their stupid little fucking sarcastic head. After we finish with that, we want to point and laugh and ask him how funny it is that we just punched him and stomped on his head. We want to ask him why he isn't laughing anymore and why he won't answer us.

But we'll know why. It's because he's face down, bleeding and unconscious.

But we can't do that. Most of the time, we can brush off the bullshit comments that we get. We get those comments hour after hour, night after night; & as I outline on here, post after post.

But occasionally some of them really get my blood boiling. I mean, really boiling. Sometimes we have to noticeably hold ourselves back from hurting someone because of their attitude. I've sent many a doorman inside because he was so pissed off.

We're an angry bunch, admittedly.

And so I ran into one of those guys recently. Tonight, actually.

After our encounter, I looked at our videotapes from earlier in the evening before our encounter, and saw him antagonizing nearly every random guy that he came across, simply pushing the barrier to see how far he could go. Hitting on girls that were obviously with guys, mocking the guys after they got annoyed with him hitting on their girlfriends, and just generally being a dick to every stranger within arms reach of him.

When we kicked him out, he mocked us from the start. He mocked us from the back of the bar all the way out to the front door. He mocked us from the sidewalk. He mocked us every time we walked out. But his mocking wasn't the usual mocking. He got under all of our skin, and we found ourselves trying to plan a way to tempt him into physically challenging us so we could justify beating him to a pulp. Sadly, we never went through with our evil plan.

He was one of those guys that you would see and think, wow...somebody really needs to kick his ass. I wish I could have obliged, but being the level-headed, neutral party that I'm paid to be nightly, I couldn't. I wanted to. I could have. But I didn't.

Son of a bitch.

A Look Back

2010-09-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

I've been having more than my fair share of trouble coming up with something to write lately, so I've gone through some old entries I never posted for public consumption and decided to post a few. More to come. This one is from August of 2007...

There's a fairly common belief that the best bouncers use their mouths and brains more than they use their muscles. I've heard it a million times. It's even in this documentary that I recently watched called "Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope" which documents big city bouncers in mega clubs from around the country, primarily from New York City.

The odd thing is that most of the bouncers in this documentary were big dudes and loved to fight. There were plenty of fights shown throughout the DVD. On a similar note, most door guys and bouncers in bars and clubs are bigger than average. Much bigger, actually.

So armed with this little tidbit of information, a reasonable person might ask...if the best bouncers can talk their way out of a fight, then whats the purpose for hiring a big guy to work the door? Might as well hire a bunch of 140 pound guys to work the door and floor who can run their mouths like a motherfucker, right?

The simple answer is that most people who attract the attention of the bar staff and are on the receiving end of this so-called talent of "talking someone out the door" in order to avoid a fight are normally the ones who end up deserving to get the dog shit kicked out of them on the way out. They're intoxicated and they're not rational in the least, and people who are intoxicated and aren't rational don't tend to listen to any logical explanation as to why they're being ejected. So an alternative method of ejecting a drunk customer is employed. Namely, dragging them out kicking and screaming.

Granted, talking works...sometimes. I've talked many a customer out without having ever laid a hand on him. The drawback to this, however, is that it's very time consuming and I have to bite my tongue and grit my teeth throughout our encounter. Giving them more time gives them the opportunity to rile themselves up and, on occasion, find the guts to take a swing. Drunk people can't stay on subject, they want to argue and throw around insults, and occasionally want to challenge me to a fight, but often lack the testicular fortitude to make the first move.

So I say that it's bullshit. The best bouncers know how to talk, be nice and use words and kindness to their advantage, but also have the ability to force an unwilling customer out the door should the need arise.

But they're not all like that. Most bouncers can only do one or the other well. Unfortunately, it's usually the one that involves choking the shit out of some poor drunk kid. And I can't blame them in the least. A lot of drunk kids around here deserve to have the wrath of a bar employee let loose on them while being forced out the door, screaming for their mommy and daddy.

Oh, and of course screaming for their lawyer, too because they're all going to sue this place, get it shut down, and get me fired.

I always love that one.

R.I.P. Top Dawg

2010-09-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

Top Dawg is no more. I hope no one can honestly say they're surprised. That spot has been a disaster since it was renovated a few years back and turned into a nightclub.

Too many liquor license violations had the authorities coming by last weekend to post a nice little notice on their door that they had been shut down. Word on the street is that they've had 4 violations. It could be less, or it could be more. Who really cares?

This place is a great example of awful management. If you let every damn person in the world inside, and don't train your staff to spot fake ID's, then your life as a bar will be very short.

Word has it that the place has been available for purchase for quite some time, but surprisingly after Clarke County shut it down, the price dropped dramatically. That tells me they probably knew it was coming. But going along with what I already suspect about that place, they promptly sent out an email last week which was forwarded to me blaming the government and everyone else for Top Dawg's demise.

Here it is, in all its un-edited glory:

Angila Ocker Harvey September 11 at 11:21pm Reply
Keep an eye out for our next move, we're done with Clarke County though, so it'll be somewhere close enough to come to our big events. We are going to miss you all so much, you truley made TOP DAWG the Top Dawg in the ATH, madd love and respect to all those who supported us. Athens isn't ready for us yet so we'll have to take another rout but we'll see ya'll at the TOP for sure!!!! You see any of us TOP DAWGS on the street holla at us we're real and what you saw and got was real so as the saying goes REAL recognize REAL and fuck the madd hatters I mean HATERSSSSSSS!!!!!

Message for the County Government and all the closeminded fools in Athens:
((((((((EQUALITY for all, it's already happened so get with it or get out of our way)))))))

---------------------------You aint seen the last of us-----------------------------

Truly, an example of a successful business where the owners and management take responsibility for the ups and downs of the downtown Athens bar business they have chosen to be in. I was under the impression they were shut down against their will, however, the email seems to indicate that Top Dawg was done with them.

Based on their email, I guess that they didn't like their downstairs neighbor very much. I happen to like the guy who owns that place. He's been around for a long time, and has worked at nearly every bar downtown, it seems.

So to Top Dawg, I say this: Look who's open and look who isn't. Take your shitty inbred thug party out to Oconee County and drink your moonshine in an empty, shit-filled cow field somewhere, far away from the likes of the rest of us. Nobody wants that shit in Athens, as you can see.

Obviously, I can't say I give two shits about them being gone. The only negative thing that means is that there are 300 plus more thugs roaming around downtown without a place to go that will eventually find themselves face to face with me at some point, wanting to go inside.

Fucking awesome.

Cops Downtown

2010-09-14T06:06:00.001-07:00

Robbery Downtown

This is nothing new. People get robbed downtown all the time. I've been robbed at gunpoint downtown. Nobody wants it to happen, but it does.

The discussion, at least according to the comments at the end of these stories, seems to always focus on the fact that there are plenty of police officers downtown, but all they focus on are underaged arrests and open containers.

This, in my experience, is fairly accurate. We often judge how busy we are compared to other bars partially by where the cops are hanging out on a given night. 3 to 5 officers will congregate outside the busiest bars throughout the night, and we'll know that if we're the bar the police are spending most of their night watching, then we're on the right track. That means we're the busiest. And while they're standing there watching the crowds on the sidewalk and the traffic going into and out of the bars, they'll snatch a few kids here and there out of the crowd and write them up for open containers and/or slap some handcuffs on the one's who are underaged.

This, as far as I can tell, shows to their superior officers that they're being productive at work and generating revenue for the city by writing citations.

The problem is, the shit that they're doing is hardly public safety. It's easy to find a drunk college kid stumble out of a bar with a half finished beer and write him a ticket that nets the city a quick $70. What about patrolling the mostly empty streets surrounding downtown, and dispersing the groups of thugs that hang around those areas just waiting for the lone intoxicated college kid to stagger by at 2:30am? It's a little more difficult to prove you prevented X number of robberies on a given night to your Sergeant or Lieutenant by patrolling dark side streets while simultaneously writing few to no citations versus the officer that camped out in front of Flannagan's and Firehouse from 12am to 2am and wrote a dozen open container citations and hauled 4 underaged drunk kids to jail.

But who's really being more productive and protecting the public?

So do we need officers downtown? Absolutely.

In my opinion, we should require the bars that are bunched together to hire a few off-duty officers on weekend nights to stand on the sidewalk and keep the peace among the college kids. That's more than enough to insure that young, underaged and drunk masses stay in line. For the rest of the uniformed patrol that are on bikes and are being paid by taxpayer money, get the drunk drivers off the roads, keep the drugs out of the bars and off the street corners, and make sure that students, visitors and the like aren't robbed at gunpoint when they try to head home at the end of the night.

But that's just my opinion.

Hilarious

2010-09-02T08:31:00.001-07:00

27b/6

Check These Out...

2010-09-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

I've updated my links to the right. I removed a few websites that haven't been updated or that have removed my link from their site, and added a few new ones.

These guys below have been nice enough to link my blog, which is basically a collection of meaningless, bullshit stories, so the very least I can do for them is plug their internet offering on here.

Anarchy in Athens

This is a new blog. If he keeps it up, it could be good. He's got a focus on nightlife in Athens, GA from the perspective of a 5th year college student with nothing to lose in his last year of school. Barely a hint of a conscience shows through in his writing, as he seems to only be interested in figuring out how to get laid regardless of where he is or what he's doing (usually it involves getting shitfaced downtown or at a party somewhere). It will be nice to hear the perspective of the experienced downtown college student on his way out. While there's a few things in there that make me raise an eyebrow, for the most part I like his dry sarcasm and pessimistic humor.

I'll be reading.

Dawgs Nightlife

This guy is someone who's been around downtown for awhile, and he's started up a photography business & website that focuses on Athens nightlife; primarily places to go when you're out, specials, hours of operation, etc. And pictures. Lots of them.

I've seen him walking around with his camera, so if you're in one of the bars he frequents to take photographs in, you might find a yourself on the opposite end of his lens. Nothing helps a hangover the morning after a wild night downtown than to log on to Facebook & find a professional photo of yourself in a bar you don't remember going into, raising your arms in the air with a lazy eye and a Jager stained shirt for the entire world to see.

Join his Facebook group, too: Dawgs Nightlife on Facebook

Searching For A Buzz...

2010-08-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a few terms people have typed into search engines before ending up on my blog....

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do you go up to the bar or wait for the waitress
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Athens sluts
how can bouncer deal with poeple in front of the door of the bar
POLIce raid bar athens, ga
am i big enough to be a bouncer
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stop fight as a bouncer

The Latest

2010-08-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm a little stuck. Back a few years ago when this blog got a lot more traffic and I was a lot more pissed off to be stuck working at the bar full time, I had at least a few subjects queued up to write about at any given time.

I even started a new post earlier today while I slacked off in my cubicle at work, pretending to be busy, about a fight I got into a few weeks ago in the bar. I ended up erasing the entire thing because its just the same damn thing I've written on here time and time again. I choke someone out and then I go take a few shots to celebrate. Big fucking deal. The "twist" in my story was that his girlfriend scratched me as I drug her boyfriend towards the door, as you can see in the very first attached picture of myself that has ever been posted on this blog before.

Wow.

How so very interesting. This blog has, over the years, simply gone over a majority of the shit that happens in downtown Athens during the hours of 10pm and 4am. Just read back over the past several years of entries. I'm just not sure what the hell else I can say that I haven't already said.

I literally sat here and tried to think of something - anything - that has happened since my glorious return to the bar business that I hadn't already experienced or seen before, and I realized I had absolutely nothing new to share.

I suppose I can go over how we get incredibly hammered after work. Or during work. How the guys look for a new bar slut to go home with on an almost nightly basis. How not everyone who works in the bar business breaks up fights with minimal force. Sometimes a few punches get thrown in there. How your bartender might be under the influence of a number of different substances at any given time.

But all of that should be common sense. This is the nightlife industry, after all.

I've painted a nice little picture of what happens downtown, but the truth is that even though I consider downtown Athens to be the nightlife training bra for kids away from their parents for the first time, bad shit can happen. And it does. Bar employees can get caught up in it too.

I promised pictures a few weeks ago and even wandered around downtown to try to find something funny and worth putting up, but came up with nothing.

Well...that's not entirely true. I found this leaning against a wall having trouble standing up at 2:15am last weekend; and believe me, I'm just as confused as you are as to why this handsome young man went home alone to cry himself to sleep that night:

It's Here

2010-08-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's here. The big weekend. The next several weekends downtown, at least in the past, have rivaled home game weekends for the amount of people that I see stumbling down the sidewalks.

It won't be all fun and games, however. Cops have planned
checkpoints around town this weekend to ensure everyone's "safety". In other words, they're going to make 10 to 30 DUI arrests this weekend to capitalize on the potential revenue of drunk drivers, make some examples of a few kids and do the politically-correct,obligatory beginning-of-the-school-year-arrests that will make for good press coverage in the ABH come Monday morning. So unless you have an extra 6 to 8 thousand dollars laying around, a bunch of free weekends to do community service, and a really good friend willing to drive your ass everywhere for the next 12 to 18 months, I would get a cab or a sober friend to drive the car.

And if that wasn't enough, I guarantee you'll see an increased police presence downtown. While UGA Police Chief Jimmy Williamson says that they are staffing no more officers this year than in past years, he doesn't speak to Athens-Clarke County Police or the Georgia State Patrol.

Mark my words: You will see more cops downtown riding around on bikes, more patrol cars cruising around town, and for the bar owners and managers out there, you will see the Fire Marshall's walking around downtown taking inventory of bars that are overcrowded.

I commented before that I would take pictures and post them, and this weekend I really will.

Until then, keep the contents of your stomach off the sidewalk, your wrists free of handcuffs, your bad attitude at home, and your tips at or above 20% when you're downtown drinking.

Another One

2010-08-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

Women Reports Rape by Two Men

Stop Scratching Me

2010-08-15T13:31:00.001-07:00

If your boyfriend is being drug out of the bar, the worst thing you could do is try to step in and attack the employees.

I was on the receiving end of that this weekend, and I'll just say that I'm very unhappy about it.

Some More Info...

2010-08-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of the rapes and attempting rapes that have happened just in the past few months.

Look out for your friends. Stay together. Be aware of your surroundings. Don't drink yourself into a blackout in a place where you're unfamiliar, or at all for that matter!

And It Begins...

2010-08-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

Woman Allegedly Raped in Bourbon Street Bathroom

Teen Claims Assault During Party

The two common denominators between both of these stories? Alcohol. Both girls had drank to the point where they didn't remember exactly what had happened.

Where were their friends? Why were they left alone so early in the morning? Who let them drink that much?

Did anything actually happen?

I don't want to discredit what may have happened to these girls, but this is the shit I preach about every single year. I say bad things will happen, especially early in the school year when people are the least aware of how to handle themselves than any other time. Here it is, in plain black and white. People drink too much and can't say no. Or they can't say it forcefully enough. And then, they can't remember exactly what happened. Or who did what to them. Their friends are nowhere to be found. And now you have two girls who are possibly scarred for life, and there may be a few guys who's lives may be ruined by something that may or may not have happened.

Please, everyone, for the love of God, be responsible out there!

Mail Call Part 2

2010-08-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across your blog somehow and found it pretty funny. I recently started working the door at a bar downtown, but so far i haven't come across any of the insanity that you mention. Maybe it's because school hasn't started back yet, or that it's frequented more by townies. The best i can figure from your stories the bar you work at is somewhere between Lans Downe and Walker's. I was wondering what's the craziest thing you've seen so far?

-Derek

Thanks. It seems most people who read this blog or find it funny either work or have worked in bar business in Athens. And you're right. I'm in one of the busier areas of downtown. I deal with a lot of college kids, as well as a lot more, it seems, of the "undesirables". Maybe that's why I come across some of the more ridiculous things...simply because I cross paths with such a high volume and variety of drunk people every weekend.

This past weekend marks the last "slow" weekend we'll have for quite awhile. The upcoming weekend promises to be twice as busy as last weekend with all the students back in town and quite a few people who are totally new to Athens. The ones who have never been downtown will discover the bar scene in short order and won't know how to handle it. They'll fight. They'll puke. They'll be helped - read: carried - out of the bar by their friends because they can't walk. Their friends aren't usually much better off than they are - I saw this scene repeat itself at least a half dozen times last weekend. It was like watching the blind lead the blind.

It happens at the beginning of every single school year. I've watched it over and over. So hopefully you're ready for it! Have your camera phone ready, because if you can move fast enough, you’ll get some funny pictures. Not a bad idea, actually...perhaps I'll see what I can find and post them here next week.

But it's a little difficult to point out one single thing that would to be the "craziest thing I've seen". While downtown, I've been robbed at gunpoint, have had knives pulled on me, gotten punched & kicked, have caught people having sex in the bathrooms and other parts of the bar, caught people doing a laundry list of different kinds of drugs throughout the bar, have seen car accidents in the street, drunk driving arrests, puking, seen a level of violence that is sometimes shocking both in and outside of the bar, gotten black-out drunk myself, and have gone to the ER for injuries to myself and coworkers.

I could go on and on. Any time that I say that I've seen everything, inevitably I'll see something brand new that either makes me laugh or scares the shit out of me.

Downtown comes across to those who are new to college and the town as a fun place to go get hammered and meet new people. And it is. But there's so much more that can happen while you're out getting fucked up.

People can get hurt. Girls are raped every year where alcohol contributes a major part to a situation where its more difficult for everyone to make a responsible decision. People do things that they end up regretting, sometimes forever. People go to jail and are stuck with a criminal history for life because they did something stupid while they were drunk.

Maybe that’s a little heavy for a place that, at first glance, appears as fun and exciting as downtown Athens. But it's proven to be true time and time again.

On the other hand, drunk people can really crack me up. I can't help but laugh at the kid who drinks himself retarded and take a wrong step on the curb and falls on his face. We point and laugh at the kid puking in the gutter. A few weekends ago I saw one of the most awkward fights I'd ever witnessed - it was essentially one kid bear-hugging another into the fence of one of the outdoor patios of a bar, with a few wild, untrained punches thrown that didn't connect. Me and another guy my age happened to be standing outside watching and could only shake our heads in embarrassment at their lack of ability to fight. There was lots of talking and yelling with nothing to show for it in the end.

Last weekend, I laughed at the little kid who couldn't control his emotions when he almost got into a fight inside the bar, threw a temper tantrum when I tried to stop it, threatened to kill me, and found himself completely out of his league when my coworkers dog-piled him in my defense. He was carried out of the bar with his pants down and started laughing at us when we deposited him in the street, and then almost immediately transitioned to crying as if on cue when a few bored police officers wandered over and put him in handcuffs.

College kids just simply don't know the appropriate way to act or how to drink or when it's time to say "no" to the next round of jager bombs or $1 liquor drinks.

It's like a scene out of a movie. Downtown Athens isn't real life. It's like a training bra for the bar scene; it gets you ready for real life, grown-up bars back in Atlanta. When everyone graduates and moves back to Atlanta and gets their new place in Buckhead and starts going out there on the weekends, they'll know that arguing with the bouncer and trying to start a fight over a fake ID is a bad idea. They'll have learned that trying to steal money out of a tip jar on the bartop is a recipe for a back-alley beating by bar employees. They will have seen what a bad idea it is to puke in the middle of a dance floor, or try to run out on a tab, or fight on the sidewalk. Sometimes the stupid shit you choose to do lands you in jail.

But then again, some people never learn.

Same Old Shit

2010-08-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

Idiots. You're all idiots, as far as I'm concerned. If this "slow" weekend is any indication of the intelligence level I'll be dealing with in the foreseeable future, I'm frightened for all of us.

UFC 117 is on tonight. We'll see how many wannabe MMA stars are downtown this evening. Should be a blast.

Mail Call

2010-08-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

Hey so I saw your blog and I must say I enjoy reading it. Also, I had a question for you that maybe you can answer: I am a senior at UGA, and I've been here long enough to know that Athens, GA is a party town, but one thing I don't understand is how come cops allow all these underage students drink night after night. It's no secret that people under 21 are downtown partying, but besides some raids, nothing is done about it. I don't know many people that have gotten caught, and I know plenty that shouldn't be there downtown. I don't even understand how raids work. I know that they happen, but how come more students aren't caught? Do the cops not care that most of the people there have fakes and just look for those who pass back?

If you could just answer these few questions, that'd be great! I look forward to reading more of your entertaining blogs!

Good question.

This is something that enters the mind of anyone over the age of 25 to 30 who comes to town and ventures downtown and takes a look around at what's going on every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.

I think the bottom line is numbers. The Athens-Clarke Police Department has an authorized strength of 231 sworn positions. As far as I can tell on their website, UGA seems to have roughly 40 to 50 officers. That's a total of about 281 police officers.

UGA has an estimated enrollment of about 35,000 students. That means there's about 1 officer for every 125 students. And let's not forget to take into account that the Athens-Clarke PD also has to deal with the other 100k Athens citizens that live there year-round. Plus, there's the students who go to Athens-Tech, Gainesville College, and Piedmont. At this point we're talking about 1 officer to every 500 people total.

Again, it's a game of numbers. The cops simply don't have the resources to crack down on underaged drinking. And even when they do crack down - for example, underaged drinkers are now brought to jail instead of just being written a citation and sent on their way like they used to do - it doesn't do a hell of a lot.

Sure, it exists and we all see it every time we're downtown, but the fact of the matter is that one underaged arrest takes an enormous amount of time and energy from the police officer, the jail, the courts, judges, prosecutors, the probation office, and UGA as well.

Do I think it's a problem? Absolutely. Underaged drinkers make life uncomfortable and inconvenient for all of us. I remember innocently standing in line for the bathroom at the now-defunct "Bird Dog" years ago and getting puked on by a grossly-underaged frat boy who had taken too many shots of whiskey. On the more extreme end of things, I had a drunk kid punch me in the face last weekend while I stood at the door. He was of age. So underaged or not, drunk people do stupid shit.

As a matter of personal opinion, I think some of the cops take a "been there done that" sort of attitude. I went downtown when I was underaged. Some of them did, too. A lot of us have. It's a a common thing to do. That doesn't make it right.

But at the end of the day, even if they had an "Underaged Drinkers Task Force" that got together on Friday and Saturday, breaking up house parties, cruising through the local pools in the afternoon and checking the ID's of every person to set foot downtown after 11pm, what would that really accomplish? Besides the feeling of a police state everywhere you went, in the long term it would clog up the courts, and ultimately make UGA and Athens a less attractive option for college students and athletes, which is the revenue engine the entire town runs on.

It's probably a combination of the above reasons that the police choose to enforce it when they have to. It's an annoying problem, and it can be deadly, but until they figure out a way to eradicate it (which they'll likely never do) underage drinking among college students is here to stay.

At Least I Didn't Get Puked On

2010-07-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Somehow, someway, I knew I'd be back. I knew that I would find myself putting on the shirt, stuffing the rags into my back pockets, and walking around shaking my finger and scolding some drunk frat boy for any number of infractions that I've outlined extensively in this blog over the years.

And so it began several weeks ago, and there I was, doing the exact thing that I had desperately tried to escape for years.

I have every reason not to be there. I really do. I finished college. I have a full time job that pays me substantially more than I could ever make in a bar. They give me the day off and still pay me...a little known benefit called "paid time off". I have health insurance and my very own retirement plan. I have everything I'd thought I'd ever wanted. And nothing about my real job includes cleaning up puke and shit or physically forcing someone to leave a bar.

Thank God.

The truth is, part of me will always enjoy working in a bar.

The sad part is, I'm much older than I once was. It's almost impossible for me to connect with any of the decade-younger kids who's fake IDs I check at night. I seem further away from understanding what makes drunk college kids do what they do than I ever was. Not that I'd even try to nowadays anyhow. Understanding is a unicorn I chased for years, and never caught.

My long-buried and years old temper peeked its head a few times in the past few weeks, however.

A misguided, upper-middle class white college student with an overt sense of entitlement and a few too many vodka and sodas immediately cried racism over his non-white friends rejection at the door for a dress code violation. The same song and dance I'd done dozens of times in the past.

"That's r-r-racism!" he slurred. "You won't let him in because he's black!"

"He's barely black," I replied. The guy looked more white than anything. "I'm more concerned about his shorts that go all the way down to his ankles."

Who wears that shit, anyway?

What I had was another white kid who felt the need to stand up against white "oppression" to the black man. A entirely misguided way to do so, I thought, at a completely misappropriate setting - the door of a no-name bar in a standard college town not far from the trailer park. This isn't important.

I wished I was able to convey years of this shit to them in only a few moments conversation - and I tried - to no avail.

The end result was that they didn't get in. I won, based on this alone. That didn't stop them from wasting their time downtown, hurling insults and threats from the bar next door. One claimed to be a police officer and made sure to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that all I said would be included in his "report". I'm not sure what report he planned to file at his make-believe police department, but at the very least his claim to be a police officer made us think twice about beating him and his friends faces in until they cried and hailed a cab back to the dorms. It didn't, however, scare us into granting him access to the bar though. Tough shit.

Later, I found myself on top of an unfortunate patron on the sidewalk, jamming my forearm into his face and throat. Funny, I thought to myself. If he had only just walked out like we asked him to, then I wouldn't have him begging me to take my forearm off his neck so he could breathe. He didn't listen to me, so I didn't listen to him. I figured if he could talk, he could breathe, so I continued what I was doing until the police handcuffed him and led him away.

This was a far cry from my normal struggles at the office, that usually involve the printer/scanner/copier that always seems broken.

The joys of downtown Athens never seem to change. Downtown Athens is stuck in a perpetual state of drunken, sexual frustration and constant threats to the manhood of 19 year old frat boy college kids attempting to prove their hyper-masculinity by drinking too much, starting fights and puking wherever convenient.

It's nice to be back.

2010-07-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

I'm back.

New posts coming...

The Bartender Hates You

2010-06-21T07:18:00.001-07:00

This is a series. Here's the first one and they go on from there if you go to the Youtube page. It's not too bad.