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Obviously.Screenshots from videos posted to Parler showing the unfolding events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.THE INSURRECTIONInside the Capitol Riot: What the Parler Videos RevealThe trove of more than 500 videos recovered from a largely pro-Trump social platform provides a uniquely immersive account of the violence and confusion as seen from inside the insurrection.by Alec MacGillisJan. 17, 3 p.m. ESTProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.The man’s smartphone camera pans the crowd on the east side of the U.S. Capitol. It’s smaller than what had amassed on the west side, but still an impressive sight. As he pans from atop the steps, he gives a front-line dispatch at 2:10 p.m., an hour after President Donald Trump had finished his remarks goading on the thousands of supporters who had come to Washington to protest the official certification of his electoral defeat.“The cops were shooting us for a while, then they stopped,” the man says, referring to an earlier series of flash-bang grenades. “We’re up on the Capitol. I think they’re going to breach the doors. It’s getting serious. Someone’s going to die today. It’s not good at all.”He was right. Someone did die during the assault on the Capitol — not just one but five people, not counting the Capitol Police officer who took his own life three days later. And no, it was not good at all. It was an ignominious catastrophe the likes of which the country had never seen before.Get Our Top InvestigationsSubscribe to the Big Story newsletter.Email addressThis site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.But there was something else that set the attack apart: Not only had we not seen something like this, but we had never been able to see any major civil clash in the way we did this one, thanks to a seemingly limitless trove of video documentation. The internet has been awash with viral clips taken by participants and members of the news media — of one police officer being brutally beaten in the crush of a mob, of another officer leading attackers away from the Senate chamber, of outlandishly dressed invaders in the Capitol.In fact, there is vastly more video to examine because of the circumstances of this protest-turned-invasion. Not only were a great number of the participants using their smartphones to document themselves and their compatriots as they launched the attack, but many of them in turn shared the footage on Parler. That social media service had of late become the right’s chosen alternative to “Fascist-book,” as one participant at the Capitol referred to Facebook. Parler’s failure to “effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others” led Amazon to expel the site from its cloud-hosting servers.Some people managed to grab the material before Parler went down, and one of them shared a trove of videos with ProPublica. We culled the collection to some 500 videos uploaded to Parler by people in the vicinity of the White House and Capitol on Jan. 6, and sorted them by time and location, thus giving the public an immersive experience that would previously have been impossible to achieve without being there amid the clouds of tear gas and pepper spray and the crush of bodies pressing toward their goal.The videos are certainly not the last word on the subject, but taken together they do help us answer two key questions about the mob: Who were they and what were their motivations? In a decade, historians will still be writing doctoral dissertations about these questions, just as they did about the crowd that stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789 or the mob in Adolf Hitler’s beer hall putsch. But these Parler videos deepen our understanding and take us beyond the glimpses visible so far from the relatively small number of people who have been charged with crimes.Interactive: See the VideosWhat Parler Saw During the Attack on the CapitolProPublica sifted through thousands of videos taken by Parler users to create an immersive, first-person view of the Capitol riot.To watch most of these videos, as I sought to do in recent days, and see the seat of our representative government turned into the object of a violent attack by fellow Americans is overwhelming. And what struck me most about them is just how much this assemblage of people assaulting the Capitol reminded me of people I had seen and spoken with over the years at regular Republican campaign events, going all the way back to Sarah Palin’s electric appearances in 2008. At my first Trump rally in 2016, at an airplane hangar outside Dayton, Ohio, I had been amazed by the cross section on display: There were husbands in golf caps with well-manicured wives, frat boys, fathers with sons. All of them, all that year, had thrilled to Trump’s toxic rambles about heroin-toting Mexicans, Democratic voter fraud (a theme he had picked up from plenty of more conventional Republican politicians) and “the swamp” in Congress. Never mind that the Republican Party controlled the lower chamber of the legislature for eight years of the decade and the upper chamber for six.And now here were many of the same people, or at least, the ones with the means and will to make the trip, a sort of travel-team self-selection of the usual crowds, combined with ranks of the white-supremacist warriors who had descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. As at all those rallies, there were the rootless young men spoiling for a fight, and there was also a huge range of more bourgeois sorts — from people who presented as suburban dads to one real estate agent who flew in by private plane, announcing her plans to “storm the capitol” on Facebook — eager for a spectacle, or something more. And they were saying the same things I’d been hearing from them for years.Except there was one difference: They were actually there, in Washington, at the Capitol — the very targets of their rhetorical fury all those years. And one way of looking at the videos is that they are the story of thousands of people discovering the connection between the rhetoric and the fact of their presence there, at the actual building. Some are so stunned by the connection that they don’t really know what to do about it and mostly hang back. Many others respond to the sudden proximity as if a forgotten, dust-covered cord had been plugged into a power source. They feel the inexorable surge, and they advance.The view from atop the inaugural stands. “We took it over,” says the man with the phone. “This is our house.”Another man is panning with his camera from atop the inaugural stands on the west side of the Capitol. “They’re firing their tear gas at us, the flash-bang grenades, but there’s nothing they can do,” he says. “And we said, screw it, you’ve only got so much tear gas. They shot it all and now look, we took it over. This is our house. This is not their house. Our tax money pays for their salaries, our tax money pays for everything. It pays for their freaking $40,000 furniture allotment for their offices while we have families starving in the street.”Our house. It is the most dominant phrase of any of the chants shouted by the mob as it presses into the Capitol. It is an expression of entitlement — white nativist entitlement, as many have noted: This is our house, our country. It’s the entitlement that leads one invader to pick up a phone in a Capitol corridor in one video and say: “Can I speak with Pelosi? Yeah, we’re coming for you, bitch. Mike Pence? We’re coming for you too, fucking traitor.”What is striking about the videos, though, is how often this entitlement is laced with insecurity. The attackers profess ownership of this house, but so much of their commentary betrays discomfort and alienation within it, bordering on a sort of provincial awe. “This is the state Capitol,” a man says to his young female companion inside the visitor center, his struggle to grasp the grandeur of the place encapsulated in his incorrect terminology. “It’s amazing,” she says, as a man dressed as a Roman centurion, complete with sandals, wanders by.Read MoreWhy We Published More Than 500 Videos Taken by Parler Users of the Capitol RiotThis collection of clips from the insurrection, while incomplete, offers a unique experience of the historic event through hundreds of participants' eyes.Upstairs, an invader rushes into the Capitol Rotunda with the mob, but then he can’t help himself. He turns astonished tourist, as his camera sweeps up to the dome. Outside, a young man in the crowd pressing past the inaugural stands’ scaffolding shouts out to no one in particular: “All these fucking years I couldn’t see in here. I’m going to see it today!” Nothing, in fact, had ever kept him from seeing this public building. But in his mind, he had been barred.The uncertainty of the claim to possession of the house manifests itself in the mob’s ambivalence about whether to trash it. Again and again, various people in the crowd decry those who are actually trying to do the violent work of breaching the building that the mob is pushing to enter. When a pudgy-cheeked young man jumps up onto the sill of a large window on the east face and smashes in four panes with his fists and feet and several cops rush over to tackle him, an onlooker shouts out: “The police are just doing their job. He’s breaking the law!” When a middle-aged man climbs up to one of the arched windows over the West Terrace doors that would become the site of the most violent clashes and starts trying to smash it in with a heavy tool, many in the crowd lash out at him as others pull him down. “Oh God no, stop! Stop!” “What the fuck is wrong with him?” “He’s Antifa!”And when two men who have, to great applause, climbed up onto a painter’s rig dangling in front of the building start trying to break the windows, the crowd turns on them. “Don’t break my house!” someone shouts. “No, no, no.” It’s not hard to imagine the perplexity on the part of those attempting the violent break-in: Are you all trying to invade this building, or aren’t you?The shakiness of the claim of ownership is also apparent in the now-famous moment of Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman shrewdly leading the invaders up the stairs and away from the Senate chamber, which one of the Parler videos shows from the perspective of the mob. They might as well be Visigoths sacking Rome, so out of place are the trespassers here. (Driving home the barbarian comparison is the cry of another attacker: “Where are the fucking traitors? Drag them out by their fucking hair.”) The invaders’ disorientation is plain as they follow Goodman up the stairs, haplessly dependent on his guidance even as they threaten him. “Where’s the meeting at?” one calls out. “Where do they count the fucking votes?”Soon afterward, some marauders do reach the Senate, but it is by this time emptied of senators. They stand aimlessly in the balcony. “Where did you go?” one of them calls out. Another shouts, to no one in particular, “This is our house.” But there is less conviction than ever behind the declaration. If it was indeed their house, would they have been stood up like this?As the crowd advances west of the Capitol, police fire flash-bang grenades and the crowd hollers in anger.The flash-bang grenades sail into the crowd on the west side of the Capitol. “Fuck you, fucking traitors,” shouts someone as they explode. “Fuck you!”The traitors are, in this instance, the police. If the mob’s bewilderment over the great building before them is one dominant feature of the day — whether to trash it or venerate it — its bewilderment over the police is even greater. Watching hundreds of Parler videos shows that the disturbing ones that first surfaced publicly, of officers taking selfies with protesters and otherwise laying down for the attackers, offered a picture that was far from complete.The police visible in the videos fought tenaciously, and the resulting sense of betrayal in the crowd is palpable. All summer, as the police had battled with Black Lives Matter protesters and rioters, the American right had defended them as guardians of law and order. And this, the Capitol protesters seemed to be saying, is how we’re rewarded — with billowing tear gas and blows from batons? “You motherfuckers,” shouts a middle-aged woman in a wool pullover and a “Spread Love” cap as another tear-gas canister whistles down.Also on the west side of the building, another woman shouts: “We’re done with the police. You’re going to have Antifa, Black Lives Matter and the Republicans all hating you guys!” Nearby, a man joins in: “You’re on the wrong side of history, guys.”The cries echo for hours:“Oath over your paychecks! Fuck you, guys. You can’t even call yourselves Americans. You broke your fucking oath today. 1776, bitch.”“You should be ashamed, fucking pansies.”“They’ll play like your friend, then stab you in the back.”“You serve us.”“They don’t treat Antifa like this.”“They’re gonna fire on Americans, these bastards. You treat us like China. This isn’t China.”Here and there, there are glimpses of invaders still assuming the police must be on their side, such as the man who, describing the fatal police shooting of Ashli Babbitt inside the Capitol minutes earlier to people on the outside, says that two other cops at the scene were opposed to the shooting. “I feel sorry for these two guys, because they were just like, ‘Why did you do that?’” As reinforcements file into the Capitol, one of the invaders shouts out: “Back the blue. We love you!” as if the cops were there for some reason other than her and her mates.And here and there, there are glimpses of people trying to restrain others. “Do not throw shit at the police,” a man says through a bullhorn on the west side. “Do not engage with the police.” “Do not hurt the cops!” shouts another. But this does nothing to prevent the coming clashes, including the extraordinary melee after the mob breaks across the terrace on the west side and one man lurches forward with a nasty blind-side body-blow against an officer, toppling him over a barrier, and another man rushes forward to hurl a fire extinguisher, hitting an officer in the head. (This was separate from the attack in which a fire extinguisher was used to strike Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, in another of the day’s fatalities.)It is hard not to notice that the tension appears especially intense in the crowd’s encounters with Washington’s municipal police, which include a visibly higher share of Black officers than the Capitol Police, as in one moment where the cops strain especially hard to hold their line outside the Capitol, or when some new reinforcements march in on the periphery. “Trick or treat, trick or treat! What is this, fucking Halloween?” shouts one man, mocking their riot gear, before pivoting to mocking some of them for being out of shape: “1-800-Jenny Craig! Call Jenny Craig. She can help you assholes.”More representative, though, for its sheer contradiction is the scene as another group of cops arrives near the Senate office buildings along Delaware Avenue.A woman walking in the opposite direction, with her camera out, tells them: “God Bless. Thank you.”A man walking with her tells the cops: “Don’t kill no more of our patriots. You guys won’t kill Black Lives Matter, but you’ll shoot us.”“God Bless,” she tells them.“Remember your oath,” he tells them.“Stay safe,” she tells them.The view from inside an office suite on the first floor of the Capitol that the marauders have taken over.Inside the Capitol, in a stately, high-ceilinged office suite, marauders mill around, grabbing things off the desks, knocking things over. “Don’t break stuff!” a young woman hollers at them. “Stop! That’s not why we’re here.”But why are they there? The more videos one watches, the more overwhelmed one is by the variety of motivations and profiles. Seen one way, this is one of the most homogenous large crowds one could ever find in America 2021, so heavily white is it. Seen another way, it is a hodgepodge, a cross section of America that includes hardcore white supremacists and people you might run into at a mall or a country club.It is mostly men, but there are also many women. There are young women who look like they could have come straight from a college campus, in puffy jackets and pompom hats. One, watching the invaders scale the lower Capitol walls on the west side, tells her friends: “They are climbing the walls! I mean, I wish I could, but I didn’t bring the shoes for it.”There are many middle-aged and older women, too. Some keep warm by wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes, like marathon runners with their tinfoil sheets. Others are draped in wool scarves and nice blankets, presenting a far more conventional and even upper-class vibe than the viral images of young men costumed with animal horns and pelts. Some of these women even enter the building.There are so many older men. Some of them are walking with canes or in wheelchairs or scooters. And some of them are at the front lines. Here, two sixtyish men bashing in an ornamental wooden window box, one using a flagpole. There, a white-haired man, easily 70, engaged in some of the most violent brawling at one of the east-side entrances.There are men, older and younger, who slide gleefully into war-reenactor mode, tossing off battle lingo as if they are at Antietam or the Ardennes. “OK, what’s happening is at the front, we’re pushing forward as hard as we can,” one paunchy man with a white beard and white MAGA hat recounts. “While we’re pushing forward, they’re shooting us with percussion grenades. They’re also pepper-spraying us. They’re bull-spraying us.” He takes his cap off to show off the brown pepper-spray stain on the back. “We’re not going to stop. We’re going to push forward.” One young man, barely out of boyhood, clambers up the inaugural scaffolding wearing a full GI Joe getup of fatigues and vintage-style M1 helmet.And here and there are glimpses of the men who fancy themselves closer to actual warriors, like the twentysomething ones furtively removing their black tactical gear under the cover of a tree outside the Capitol as the action is subsiding and pulling on red MAGA sweatshirts to pass as mere Trump supporters. But there are actually few such ominous glimpses in all these videos — perhaps because these men are too discreet to be caught on camera, or possibly because there were actually relatively few such organized elements in the mix. If the latter, it would help explain why there was not more violence done within the Capitol itself, or why there was such chaos on display that at one point, a man was left hollering hopelessly at a motley crew of invaders inside a Capitol corridor, like a nursery school teacher before naptime: “Quiet! Quiet! Calmly and quietly sit down in this room.”More typical in the videos than the furtive crew under the tree are characters like the young bearded man who speaks to the phone he is holding just outside the building while brandishing a Capitol Police shield. “All right guys, we are at the Capitol right now. We are going to go back in,” he says, and then comes the deadpan boast. “I’m the only one with a shield. I don’t know why no one else brought a shield, but I brought one just in case they start shooting. Make sure, if you ever take over the Capitol or take over any other big place, you bring a shield.” He pauses for comic effect. “You can’t get one any place except out of a cop’s hands.” He grins. “OK, guys, thanks for watching.”There are so many flags — mostly American, but also Confederate, Gadsden, Canadian, Israeli, Romanian. One young woman accidentally whacks a young man with her flag and apologizes profusely. “Oh, my goodness, you’re fine,” he responds, smiling. “What better flag to be hit with?”There are many such snatches of fellowship in the videos: strangers advising each other on how to get the pepper spray out of their eyes, or sharing news updates from the Electoral College proceedings inside the Senate, before the senators fled to safety. Watching these moments of cooperation and social warmth, the same thought crossed my mind as did in watching last year’s mass protests over the police killing of George Floyd: that these events were grounded in political anger but intensified by the social dislocation of a pandemic and its associated lockdowns, which had left so many hungering for human contact and stimulation more than they themselves probably even realized.A young man leaving the Capitol is eager to show off video of himself and others being pepper-sprayed.As the assault is winding down, an older man stands on the west side of the Capitol recording people as they walk away from the building. “Good job, patriots. Whoo! Good job, man. Real Americans, right here. Americans! Women. Look at the women. Went up there. Good-looking guys. Nobody feared.”An older woman walking by stops and interrupts his encomiums. “You know they shot and killed a girl up there, don’t you?”“No!”She tells him about the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt. At that moment, a young man marches up to the older man. He is wearing an expensive-looking winter coat and a MAGA cap clipped to his backpack, and he is full of bravado over his hijinks during the Capitol takeover. He wants to share them with a random stranger.“I got pepper-sprayed,” he tells the man, proudly. “Not me, but the people in front of me in the crowd, and the wind came and hit me. Dude, you got to check out this video I got.” He reaches around to his back pocket for his phone, but the older man breaks in.“They said a girl got killed in the House,” he says, somberly.“How?” asks the young man.“In the House. She went in the House and they told her to stop three times and they shot her in the neck.”The news of this death doesn’t faze the young man at all. Still smiling coolly, he wants to pick right back up with the story of his adventure storming the Capitol. “See, I went all the way up there underneath the scaffolding. … I climbed up it. … Everyone was like push-push-push and the cops started pepper-spraying. … You got to look at this — ”“They killed an American girl,” the older man says, trying to get him to focus on that fact. But it’s no use. The young man keeps trying to show him his video clip of the pepper spray.At almost exactly the same time, a man standing outside near the northwest corner of the Capitol — middle-aged, professorial-looking with glasses and a face mask dangling below his chin — speaks into his camera for a sober-minded report on the day. “Well, we were here,” he says. “Until they can run free and fair elections in this country and make people believe it, we’re going to have problems. They just have to figure out how to get these elections to work properly so there aren’t all these irregularities and things that appear to be cheating, even if they’re not. They just got to figure it out.”Read MoreThe InsurrectionReporting on the mob that attacked and breached the Capitol, the fallout from that day, and ongoing far-right violence.The man goes on. “I’m usually a pretty even-keeled, level-headed kind of guy, but all you’ve got to do is look at some of the videos to realize there was some shit that was really fucked up about the election.” He pauses. “Clearly, there’s millions of people in town today. There’s people packed like sardines from the White House to the Washington Monument today. For the first time as far I’m aware in history, they broke the perimeters at the Capitol. I mean, they’re pissed. I’m not keen on violence and breaking doors. But outside of that, there seemed to be no violence, and after hearing all summer long about city after city getting burned down, this was a mostly peaceful protest. This was what a mostly peaceful protest looks like.”He didn’t appear to know about the deaths and extent of the violence. He had only his vantage point. But we now have many more vantages. And they give us the picture of what happens when something that was gathering across the land for years, and recklessly and cynically fomented by those who knew better, reached a culmination. There undoubtedly were some dangerous organized elements within the mob that attacked the Capitol. But what is scariest about these videos is that they show the damage that can be done by a crowd of unorganized Americans goaded and abetted by the leaders of an organized political party. The radical fringe is a cause for concern. The thousands of regular people whipped into a murderous rage is the real nightmare.Correction, Jan. 18, 2021: This story originally misstated the location of the inaugural stands at the Capitol. They are on the west side of the building, not the east side.Get the latest news from ProPublica every afternoon.Email addressThis site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Alec MacGillisAlec MacGillis covers politics and government for [email protected]@AlecMacGillisWHAT TO READ NEXTWhat Parler Saw During the Attack on the CapitolProPublica sifted through thousands of videos taken by Parler users to create an immersive, first-person view of the Capitol riot as experienced by those who were there.Why We Published More Than 500 Videos Taken by Parler Users of the Capitol RiotThis collection of clips from the insurrection, while incomplete, offers a unique experience of the historic event through hundreds of participants' eyes.Members of Several Well-Known Hate Groups Identified at Capitol RiotA ProPublica-FRONTLINE review of the insurrection found several noted hardcore nativists and white nationalists who also participated in the 2017 white power rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Before Mob Stormed the Capitol, Days of Security Planning Involved Cabinet Officials and President TrumpA Pentagon memo offers one version of events — six days of preparation for a rally that quickly spiraled out of control.LATEST STORIES FROM PROPUBLICAInside the Capitol Riot: What the Parler Videos RevealWhat Parler Saw During the Attack on the CapitolWhy We Published More Than 500 Videos Taken by Parler Users of the Capitol RiotMemphis-Area Residents Without Internet Must Wait Days for Vaccination Appointments, While Others Go to the Front of the LineClose this screenClose this screenClose this menuStay informed with the Daily Digest.Enter your emailSite NavigationSECTIONSProPublicaLocal Reporting NetworkTexas Tribune PartnershipThe Data StoreElectionlandBROWSE BY TYPETopicsSeriesVideosNews AppsGet InvolvedThe Nerd Blog@ProPublicaEventsINFOAbout UsBoard and AdvisorsOfficers and StaffDiversityJobs and FellowshipsLocal InitiativesMedia CenterReportsImpactAwardsCorrectionsPOLICIESCode of EthicsAdvertising PolicyPrivacy PolicyFOLLOWNewslettersPodcastiOS and AndroidRSS FeedMORESend Us TipsSteal Our StoriesBrowse via TorContact UsDonateProPublicaJournalism in the Public Interest© Copyright 2021 Pro Publica Inc.

Hitch Hiking AdventuresThere was a time in 1950s America when hitch hiking was a great way to get around, especially for a young sailor like me that was exploring the country on weekend liberties. It was safe and a fast; a ride was always available, as people trusted each other. But not today, hitch hiking would be considered foolish and dangerous and no one would pick you up.When I was stationed in Bainbridge MD for 8 months going to FT School very few sailors had a car, only the fleet sailors who had a little rank and were coming back to school could afford to have a car. Recruits like me had to depend upon hitchhiking to get around the East Coast. I found out that a sailor in uniform could safely hitchhike to any destination quickly without any fuss or safety concerns. The 1950s were innocent times without serial killers and sexual perverts driving around looking for sailors too pickup and terrorize. I hitchhiked in uniform all over the Northeast and it was easy, stand by the side of the road and quickly someone would stop and ask where you were going. Even families, cars loaded with kids, would stop and pick us up. If their destination were close to yours, off we would go. Often, several rides were necessary to get to our destinations. Before the Interstate Highway System, getting around the USA was on secondary roads that meandered through the countryside and, although colorful and quaint, it took forever to get anywhere. The east to west Interstate Highway System was being built that allowed fast access to most major cites.It connected people and was the major reason society changed and evolved into the Great Social Revolution of the 1960s. Another reason was the mass communications, which allowed new telephone services and TV Broadcast coverage. Bottom line, people were getting connected and moving into unknown areas and their world was changing. The new highway system also allowed for Hitch Hiking, one of the cheapest ways of traveling. You can meet a lot of people and make lots of friends, but you can also become very frustrated, or encounter danger on the way. All you had to do was waiting by the tollbooths or on/off ramps to the turnpikes to pick up ride. It was a great feeling to get a ride after you've been waiting for a long time. People who do pick up hitchhikers tend to be very friendly, however, you had to be careful, as hitchhikers also risk being picked up by someone who is an unsafe driver or even personally dangerous. During my hitch hiking days, I spent the night in a junked pickup truck in a Delaware field and avoided a tornado on the way to Chicago. One driver slept through a six-foot visibility blizzard while I drove him up to New York City on the New Jersey Turnpike. Another time I stood, with snow piling on my hat, by the highway from Reading, PA. until a trucker took me into Baltimore, where I shed my wet clothes in an all-night Laundromat. A good thing no one came in to see a naked sailor waiting for his clothes to dry.Hitch Hiking to MilwaukeeFor example I was going to Milwaukee to visit my family and after leaving the Bainbridge Main Gate I began hitching in Haverde Grace at 7:55am with a sign proclaiming an interest in me 40 North. Men in pickup trucks offered me at least two rides but I held out for a more comfortable car. After a 45-minute wait, I had a ride from an old seemingly senile man. He dropped me off at a truck stop outside Baltimore. The old codger seemed to have the idea that the nearby truck stop would fetch me a good ride. Then there it was . . . my ride. A pickup truck towing a trailer full of pigs stopped on the ramp. I climbed in between a couple of typical looking West Virginia men. They were skinny and tanned and had bad teeth. The one with long skinny brown cavities between his teeth and who could sing country songs well and play guitar was called ‘Ted’ and the other guy who had curly hair and did the first leg of the driving was ‘Bill.’ They were going all the way to Parkersburg, which was in my general direction. On the way I was exposed to a good deal of West Virginia Americana. On learning I was going to Milwaukee, they asked if there were any jobs there. We pulled into a gas station in Covington, and after filling the tank; beers were busted out of a cooler. Typical of West Virginia hospitality, I was provided one and as we cruised down the road, through the artificial canyons of Route17 to Beckley, Ted told me of this one time he was hitch hiking out near Las Vegas and got picked up by a family of Blacks.But a half hour later, he remembered he'd left his guitar at a gas station back where he'd been picked up . . . and asking to be let out, his driver asked why, and Ted explained about his guitar. Now would you believe it, those Blacks turned around and drove all the way back so he could get his guitar.All the rest of the way those Blacks were laughing and having him sing country and play his guitar. In general, it seemed Ted had nothing but good encounters with Black people, but like many people in poor white culture, he reserved a special disdain for them, perhaps because his only remaining pride was racial pride. As they drove, they talked of wanting to live in remote little green West Virginia valleys and such with a woman and a case of Jim Beam, just fucking' and drinking' all day long. That's a kind of variant of the American Dream I could name "The West Virginia Dream." We'd stop on the breakdown lane of the interstate now and then and unload our bursting bladders.After a normal 50-minute wait, I had a ride from two fat guys in a compact car. The driver asked "Any weapons?" as if I would tell him about my battle-axe and compact assault rifle. I said that all I had was a Swiss Army Knife. Well I was in the back, kind of cramped, drinking Budweiser they told me to help myself to. It was all worth it. They were going up to Akron. They got gas and I took a much-needed piss in Newcomers town on US 36. They wanted beer and were directed to some place west on 36 by someone in the gas station. So we headed for a little distance into the boonies, so we turned round and got beer elsewhere. I'd had six beers by the time I was dropped off on familiar old route 162 to Akron. Then there was my ride . . . a beautiful - big and heavy - black woman driving a sports car with a diminutive white husband at her side. The woman asked if I was carrying any guns or whatever, and I said no, but that they could probably take care of me if I tried to pull anything. She corrected me, saying she could take care of me if I tried to pull anything. The husband was passive through all this and through her insane driving. She drove as fast as possible, maybe 120 mph, weaving back and forth through people going sane speeds. I told her, "You drive very fast." She agreed. She pulled into a restaurant and dropped me off; I was kind of disappointed by getting such a short ride. I decided that the woman had been trying to demonstrate to her ineffectual jealous & manipulated husband that she was not afraid to die. She could drive insane speeds and pickup axe murdering hitchers because she commanded the world. I walked to the nearest on ramp and waited for as ride, but the traffic was slight, and I wasn't getting a ride.The region was a commercial district. Hitching from 18 east bound was even more dismal . . . there was almost no traffic on that ramp. So I returned across the grassy distance to 18 west's ramp to 77 and waited doggedly, hoping to fetch a ride before sundown. Would you know it? An Airport Limo van stopped, and the vaguely Hispanic seeming driver told me to hop in.It was weird, because I feared he might want me to pay a fair, but it soon came clear he was just picking me up, even though he wasn't suppose to, but since he wasn't carrying anyone anyway. He was a quiet guy, but I didn't feel much like talking anyway. My third ride on the Ohio - Indiana - Illinois Turnpike system got me as far as Chicago. Left on the Chicago outskirts, I waited for ages trying to get a ride. Then by a stroke of luck the tiny car with two old Jewish men arrived and offered a ride to Milwaukee. They had a place for me, but it was in the cramped back seat of the car loaded with rugs. Without hesitation I got in. The only thing that really got in my way was a medium sized Arabic carpet, which inevitably had to rest between my legs. It started raining while we drove listening to some Jewish music when the men started to have a discussion in Yiddish. It was a great show, albeit a bit dangerous with the stuntman part, but they got me to Milwaukee safe. When I got to Milwaukee I called my Dad and he drove over to pick my up. He couldn’t believe my story about my hitching ride. Well, sailors were somewhat like that, a grand adventure unto himself or herself, from Norfolk to New York or elsewhere, always a barrel of fun.Washington DC LibertyWeekends were spent exploring, meeting people and chasing girls. We would group up, catch a bus, and off we would go to the museums, the famous land marks, the Capital Building, Arlington Cemetery, the Navy Yard . . . anywhere we could travel by bus or foot. You may have never set foot in Washington, DC, but most people are very well aware that the city has a rich history, what with its being the Capital of the USA and having tens of thousands of federal workers, many being young females, and tons of bars and nights clubs to meet them in. So it is no surprise that many of DC’s bars have played an important role serving drinks to politicians, staffers and even presidents - history-filled watering holes around the District that are still serving up drinks to some of Washington DC’s most influential movers and shakers.Liberty in Washington for a sailor involved two things; one was the monuments and memorials and the other the bars and dance clubs. Generally, we would spend the day visiting the city’s attractions and during the evening we would hit the bars. There is no denying the down and dirty appeal of the Florida Bar and Dance on 14th and U Avenue. Squeezed in among a growing number of new businesses along 14th Street, this bar stands out for its distinctly funky New York City feel. There was a band playing all the latest rock and roll songs and plenty of women looking for a date, after all, there were ten women to every man in D.C. The place fills up quickly on weekend nights, but during the week, it is a romantic escape from the bustle outside. One day, several shipmates and I were visiting Fernandez's Bar, next to the Trailways Bus Station, in Washington D.C., when I had spotted a very attractive woman at the bar, a leggy lovely approximately 30-years old with big breasts. I offered to buy her a drink and invited her to join us and after several drinks things got relaxed and more familiar. Unfortunately, I soon discovered the she was a he, but definitely a fine-looking person. My friends had set me up. They knew and a lot of laughing went on after I cooled off, funny now, but not at the time.One weekend a group of us went to D.C. and spent the day visiting all the monuments around the White House. I ran full speed, two steps at a time, up the Washington Monument without stopping. During the day, we had spent all our money and could not afford a hotel so we parked across the street from the White House to sleep. This had to be the safest part of town we thought. Trying to sleep with seven sailors in one car wasn't easy. Later on that night, the D.C. police knocked on our window and chased us out of the White House area, suggesting we go to a church mission for free room and board. We went there but the Hell and damnation lecture about the need to repent and be saved was too much pain for a room and board so we went back to the White House and parked again to sleep. The D.C. Cops let us stay this time.I bet you have heard this one - “He just wants some jungle booty.” Well, maybe. So question is: Why was I attracted to black women? I know that my attraction started in Washington, D.C. when I was stationed at the Naval Receiving Station and went out night clubbing every night. It will not be fair to bundle up black women as one since everyone is their own person… be it in appearance or personality, there is the confidence with which they walk, the manner in which they talk, the sway of the hips? Or the lushness of their lips, maybe it's the beauty of their hair, or the mahogany skin when bare. Or when the music makes them move, with that incredible sensual groove, or maybe it's that magnetic pull, as my defenses begin to lull, as they put my concerns to rest, making my comfort level at it's best.The availability of authentic Philadelphia-style hoagies in D.C. and the ability to sink your teeth into a 9th Street Italian Hogi (Genoa salami, capicola, prosciutto and provolone) or a big beef burger with fried onions at 2:30 a.m. still makes the H Street location a sensation. My worst DC hangover came after drinking 7 hurricanes (I don't even know what they are). I remember waking up in a hotel room - not my own - with nothing but my boxers on. Everything was blurry and I had the worst headache that I have ever experienced. It seems my friend; Ralph Blakney had gathered me up in his room. The next night I ended up at Ben's Chili bowl, my way of salvaging a pretty terrible night on U Street. Whenever it's late and I'm in the area, I always try and make a quick stop there, whether it's to get some fries or just a milkshake.This time, I went for the chili cheese fries and they were awesome, of course. Although, there was much more cheese than chili, and I would have preferred it the other way around. The place can get crazy crowded and the restaurant is definitely not designed to handle large influxes of people, so it can be pretty hard to maneuver in and out when it's late at night.At the heart of my trips to Washington, DC were visits to the monuments, the National Mall, a two-mile green expanse from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial - I loved walking the Mall, there is so much to see and explore along the Mall. It is a great place to people watch. I go for foot power - since I was stationed here and know my way around. But this is an exceptionally easy city to find your way around. There are a lot of organized tours and the Trolley having all day on-off policies but the trolley goes to Georgetown and to the National Cathedral. So if you like walking and exploring a city that way, take trolley and walk. After our tour of the Capitol, we head to the National Mall.The National Mall sat at the feet of the Washington Monument - The 555-foot monument is the defining item of the Washington skyline, there is a 72-second elevator ride to the top where a park ranger describes the construction and design of the building. On clear days, visitors can see as far as 40 miles away in each direction, but they will have to jockey for prime vista-viewing position in the cramped tower top. But I never took the elevator; I just took the 896 steps, two at a time to the top.The Lincoln Memorial is probably my favorite of all of the memorials on the Mall in Washington, D.C. - A Greek Classical looking building that was on the U.S. penny for years with a 19-foot high marble statue of Abraham Lincoln seated in contemplation. The 16th President sitting on his throne facing the U.S. Capitol, how can it get any better? Growing up as a kid, Lincoln was always one of the more popular presidents, so getting the chance to see his memorial was amazing! You won't fully understand the magnificence until you've experienced it for yourself. Stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a great view of the Washington Monument, the Mall, and the Capitol Building at the other end of the Mall. Visit the Jefferson Memorial while you're at this end of the Mall. It is located across the tidal basin. It is a beautiful domed, circular building with a statue of Thomas Jefferson inside.The Iwo Jima Memorial, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier what with its changing of the guard, Memorials to World War II and the Korean War, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and of course, the White House and the U.S. Capitol Building could be considered monuments all by themselves...as could the U.S. Supreme Court Building and the Library of Congress. What's nice is that the monuments and the cherry blossoms are in the same area of the cityTake some photos and enjoy a view of the White House grounds. The seven-acre public park across the street is a popular site for political protests and a good place to people watch. Then onto Arlington National Cemetery serves as a cemetery and a memorial to America's persons of national importance, including presidents, Supreme Court justices and countless military heroes. The Cemetery was established during the Civil War as a final resting place for Union soldiers on approximately 200 acres of Mary Curtis Lee’s 1,100-acre Arlington estate. The property was expanded over the years to encompass more than 624 acres of burial grounds of more than 400,000 American servicemen.The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery stands atop a hill overlooking Washington, D.C. There buried are unknown soldiers from World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. Being buried at Arlington gives these families a place to grieve and pray. Guarding the Tomb was not just an assignment; it was the highest honor that can be afforded to a service person. The tomb has been patrolled continuously, 24/7, since 1930. Elite guards stand watch over their graves in humble reverence, ensuring they rest in peace. They must commit 2 years of life to guard the tomb, live in a barracks under the tomb, and cannot drink any alcohol on or off duty FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. They cannot swear in public FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES and cannot disgrace the uniform {fighting} or the tomb in any way.The Smithsonian was my favorite tour activity; I could never get enough of it and toured there many times. The Smithsonian Museums, located on the National Mall, actually were 15 separate museums and the National Zoo in Washington, DC. From the origins of man at the Natural History Museum to the future of space ... I particularly liked the National Museum of Natural History. There is a huge pterodactyl hanging from the ceiling in the Dinosaur exhibit. Ice Age Mammals and Early Life will definitely change the meaning of the words "a long time ago" for you. The Bones, Reptile Hall, and The Insect Zoo are where you will find the children. The Geology, Gems, and Minerals exhibit is a must see for the entire family. The Hope Diamond, the largest diamond in the world, is on display here. At the center of the museum is a magnificent African elephant in a display very much like its native habitat. You could easily waste a lot of time and money on lunch. The museums have cafeterias, but they get busy and are pricey. You may want to bring a picnic lunch or buy a hot dog from a street vendor. But, your best bet is to get off the Mall. If you head north on 12th Street towards Pennsylvania Avenue, you will find a variety of places to dine. Aria Pizzeria & Bar is a reasonably priced casual eateryGetting around DC was easy - there were Street Cars - they were phased out in the 60's, in favor of buses - then 14th Street and U Avenue were the center of town, with night clubs and thousands of lonely girls working in those endless federal government buildings looking for a man to hook up with - I mean marry. I also remember pulling the overhead contactor off the overhead trolley wire and stopping the trolley, forcing the driver to get out a replace it. All of the streetcars in DC were electric and ran off of DC (Direct current) power either from overhead or underground. You got on at the rear and paid a fare. And the motorman was signaled that all were on and ready and he would drive the trolley. It had wicker seats, which could be converted to two facing each other if desired. They were replaced by the so called St. Louis trolley, made by the St. Louis Car Co., which continued in operation until they were phased out all together, many still run in South and Central America. By the way Glen Echo Park was one of many such parks all over the country owned and operated by transit companies.ManhattanI was exploring the East Coast and fell in love with New York City, to me it was absolutely the most freedom oriented, socially diverse, colorful and exciting city in America, but it always had a slightly dangerous or gritty feel to it. It made you feel that something wonderful was around the next corner. It was a big city and in 1950, was the only city in the world with a population of more than ten million people. The streets were full of people, tall buildings were everywhere, there were a thousand things to do, and you could get free pickles from the big barrels on 8th Avenue. There were many Irish and Jews in NYC and the Holocaust still burnt in New Yorker minds, and I learned the Irish Jig and Jewish Horah's "Hava Nagila" at dance clubs in Manhattan. No other city in the USA had the magic stuff found in New York. One significant thing that sets the City apart is its huge mass transportation system consisting of subways, trains and buses. Every thing about New York City was rambunctious, big, brightly lighted, and rich with excitement. Standing in the middle of Times Square, you are surrounded by neon lit boarding’s advertising plays and shows around the theater district and various other famous products such as Apple, Coca‑Cola, etc. It is a mad house, what with the traffic and the thousands of people all scuttling around nipping in and out of the shops taking and posing for photos and making their way to find somewhere to eat or other places to go. It is here that the ball drop occurs on New Year’s Eve to mark the start of the New Year. Cops, making it feels quite safe even late at night, also heavily patrol the area. Despite its seedy nature, what with 8th Avenue massage parlors and prostitutes walking about, Times Square is part of the iconography of the American Dream.Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaOne of my friends, Glen Crummy, in Fire Control School lived in Pittsburgh and invited me to his farm for many enjoyable weekend liberties. Al Heasly had relatives in downtown Pittsburgh, so I went many times with him to spend a weekend carousing the downtown bars where there were always plenty of clubs and girls to meet. Al, his relatives and I, went to Kennywood Amusement Park, one of the best amusements parks I have ever been too, every weekend I was there. A popular Pittsburgh destination since 1899, Kennywood has some of the best rides, from the magnificent carousel to the charming "Noah's Ark." My hometown, Milwaukee, was somewhat like Pittsburgh; they were both middle class bastions of flats and bungalows in a city attached to water. Whereas Milwaukee was on the shore of Lake Michigan, the third largest lake of the Great Lakes, Pittsburgh is beautifully situated, being at the juncture of the two rivers, the Mongahela and Allegheny, which then form the Ohio River. Nothing can be more picturesque than the triangle of land that became the beautiful city of Pittsburgh.BaltimoreOne of my best friends, Milt Hayden, had family in Baltimore and we would hitch hike there for weekend liberties and hang out at Gwynn Oak Park or the waterfront. Baltimore was considered 'The South' then so it was segregated - a fact I would never get used to in the south . . . in fact, that made me want to go to Washington or New York instead. I was watching a friend's band play in an awful bar in Baltimore. I was playing pool with my friends when a guy and his girlfriend/wife got into a screaming and cursing match that ended with him punching her. The entire bar went silent. The jukebox stopped. I was absolutely convinced that I was looking at a dead man, because everyone knew that this was the wrong bar to be pulling that shit in. There were probably fifty people around at the time, and at least twenty of them who would go on any sane person's "does not f--- with" list. This guy was huge, at least 6'6" and 275lbs, and he had absolutely no chance in this bar. He must have been sober enough to realize that, because when the bartender told him to leave he started walking toward the door right past my table. Where I didn't have the sense to move around to the other side and give this drunk, belligerent, massive man a wide berth. Did I mention that I was 5'10 and 150lbs? He pushed me against the table and drew back his fist, and I grabbed a billiards ball and hit him with it as hard as I could. He dropped like a sack of potatoes and didn't move. He didn't move when the whole place exploded with laughter.Later, after I went to a local concert, I wound up in a very seedy water front bar with Al Heasly. It was one of the local Irish pubs trying out the Guinness. Then a drunken guy messes with one of girls playing darts. He just walked up and grabbed her tits. She slapped him, and he tried to throw a punch. The next thing you know, her boy friend jumps him, the drunk's friend’s jump in, and my beer glass gets knocked out of my hand in the ensuing brawl. Someone punches me. I grabbed the guy by his throat with one hand and his arm holding an ashtray with the other. I pinned him against a wall and told him to chill the fuck out and walk away. He then tried to punch and kick me anyway that he could, and I guess instinct kicked in because I peeled the ashtray out of his hand and broke it across his face. It put a bunch of gashes in his facial region that from what I heard later required a good amount of stitches. I punched him a few times and then he fell to the floor and I walked outside the bar. I lit up a cig outside the bar just as the cops roll up. They get out guns drawn because someone called and said weapons were involved. Al and I went to Denny's.Another time, as I recall, we turned left out of the naval station and headed toward Baltimore. It was pretty east ocean side countryside. After driving a few miles, I spotted what appeared to be a nice restaurant set back about one hundred yards off the right side of the highway, out in the countryside. I said, “There’s a restaurant. Let’s go there.” We pulled in, parked and went inside. There were a few people eating in a spacious dinning room. It wasn’t quite six in the evening. We were early for dinner. No one greeted us, so we all sat down at the first table we saw. We were having a good time enjoying each other’s company and jabbering away as we waited for service. Finally, a waitress came to the table and spoke to one of the Sailors opposite me.He leaned over and passed along the information to the one sitting next to him and eventually the Sailor sitting to my left leaned over and said to me, “They don’t serve blacks here.” I’ve just been informed that because two of us in our group are black, we will not be served in this restaurant. Shocked and surprised, a monster began to well up inside me. All I could think was, ‘this group of young men serving in the military of their country, serving to protect the freedom of these people, has been refused service by those people because of the pigmentation in their skin. WTF kind of scum is these people to refuse us service?’ By this time I had my war face on me wanted to kick some southern bigoted ass! It’s an involuntary thing. It just happens under such circumstances. I began to slowly rise out of my seat. Suddenly I felt the hand of the Sailor sitting to my right come down hard on my forearm. I looked down to see a black hand gripping me firmly. Then I looked up and into his dark eyes. There was fear in those eyes. He spoke softly to me, “Let’s just go.” I relaxed back into my seat, our eyes still locked. I thought, ‘He’s the one they will hang. I’d better behave myself as he suggests.’ I nodded in the affirmative to him. Taking a moment to get my emotions under control I then rose and spoke to the table, “Men, it has come to my attention that this restaurant is not up to US Navy standards. I suggest we take our leave of this establishment.”In the parking lot everyone in our group was talking about where to go to eat. I was sullen and pensive. Dragging myself back up to the present I said, “Let’s just head on into Baltimore. We’ll find another place.” I was thinking, ‘We’ll play it safe and find some soul food.’One of the black Marines said, “Naw, y’all go ahead. We’re going to take off.” I protested, begging them to stay with us. They laughed it off as they got into their car, and we parted ways. This disturbed me deeply and still does to this day. On reflection, it is clear to me that those two black Marines wanted to get the hell away from us white boys before we got them killed. You see we didn’t know that we had waltzed our black buddies into a cesspool of bigotry and racism. That was our “white privilege,” to eat in that restaurant, and we were clueless to that privilege, until we took our black friends along with us. This is just one example of white privilege. I have others; more recent I could tell you about. But, it’s after midnight, and I’m tired.PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia . . . The city with the 'Big Heart' is full of diners and trolley cars. The big “Greek-style” diner reigns supreme in the Northeast Corridor. From the New York Metro Area, especially in New Jersey and all the way down to Philadelphia and D.C. you see them everywhere - the expansive “diner-restaurants” with menus that seem to specialize in “EVERY DISH EVER MADE!” If you can’t get it at one of these places you probably never heard of it anyway.We were in Philadelphia one night and were looking for a nightclub, not too far from our hotel and the Impulse Club showed up. We walked from our hotel near Independence Hall. This is easy to find, just down the street from the Museum of the American Revolution. We arrived at about 10:30 pm and the place was pretty crowded. They were charging $10 per person as the entry fee at the door. We quickly grabbed our drinks and hit the dance floor. Within another 30 minutes or so, the place was totally packed and there was hardly any space to move. The crowd was good and it felt like a "dive night club". The DJ was playing popular tracks and kept everyone dancing. We ordered local brews and pretzels. We also had a couple of other appetizers - Angus sliders and olive dip. It definitely sticks to the character of the neighborhood - large columns on the outside, older/dive vibe on the inside. Philadelphia dance clubs were full of pounding music, flashing lights and laser light shows and Top 40 music. It's up to you what makes the perfect night out. No matter where you end up in this city, you're sure to find great drinks, music, and the chance to let your hair down, which is really what it's all about.And LastlyIt was the winter of 1958, I had turned 20 in February and I was headed for a weekend liberty in New York. This was before I bought my 1952 Cadillac and I was short on cash so I was hitchhiking. From Norfolk, I'd gotten as far as Baltimore, Maryland when my luck turned bad. I'd been there about two hours, trying to catch a ride north on Route 40. No luck. Even worse luck: it was raining and it was dark, about 8 o’clock at night. I'm drenched, wondering if I'm ever going to get out of there, when this baby-blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air goes screaming by. Zoom! Whoosh! Splash! Screech! The driver slams on the brakes and starts backing up. I grab my bag and start running for the car. I hop in, throw my bag in the back seat and take a gander at who just picked me up. It's a young woman in her mid-twenties, a good-looking brunette with a hint of plumpness but far from being overweight. We engage in some idle conversation – you know, who I am, who she is, where I'm head­ed, where she's headed – that that sort of thing. It turns out she's an English teacher, on her way up to Brooklyn for her spring break. I'm struck by a change in her use of language during the course of our conversation. At first, she's all prim and proper. Pretty soon, she says, "Damn." Then it's "goddamn." Next, in quick succession, it's "hell," "shit" and then the "Fuck" word. Then darned if she doesn't proposition me. "Look," she says, "would you like to come along to Brooklyn with me?" "That's nice of you,” I replied, “but I don't have any civilian clothes, just the uniform I'm wearing and a spare one in my bag." "I'll buy you all the clothes you need. I've got close to $4,000 in travelers checks." "I couldn't let you do that,” I said. “Besides, I really do want to get to my friends house in Mt Vernon." I was too young to know that “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” and I said, "Naw, I really do wanna get home and see my mother."She pulls over, stops and tells me to get out. I grab my bag and get out. The tires on that baby blue Bel Air screech again this time from digging out instead of stopping. I manage to get home in a couple of days, spend my leave and then get back to the ship. I go down to the mess decks at lunchtime, grab a tray full of chow and sit down at a table with some guys I hung around with. One of them was Tommy Lee Crabtree. I told them about the English teacher. Tommy Lee looks at me, stands up, picks up his tray, looks down at me and says, "You have got to be the dumbest son-of-a-bitch alive."

AtlantaI am a 40-year New Yorker used to Manhattan's walk around exotic creature filled streets, riding the A train from the Bronx into Brooklyn through every ethnic barrio known to man, a city with ten thousand things to do and the best being eating at Rosie O'Gradies 11th avenue Diner where the waitresses sing Broadway songs and dance in the aisles. NYC is exotic what with entertainment laden story book night clubs and Irish bars begging more life experiences, hanging out with the NYPD at McSorelys and with the NYU academic types in Washington Square, having a beer at the Chelsea Place music and dance club riffing with the high achieving business and technology types along with the IBM, FBI, Secrete Serve, Network TV and Hollywood celebes. Or dancing the Two Step at the Texas Cafe in Tribeca and most of all enjoying the diversity world problem solving ideas found in Greenwich Village espresso cafes where very creative people - writers and producers assemble and writ large the acting and singing ganja scene.I was getting out of high tax New York, the cold and snowy winters were getting to me as I got too old to shovel five feet of snow, so I was moving south. Even though Atlanta was the most civilized part of Dixie and considered the New York of the south, I still heard a lot of bad things about Atlanta. My perception of Atlanta was that of a progressive city surrounded by a very conservative Tea Party confederate oriented Georgia. I found myself moving to warm and inexpensive rural Atlanta area for retirement and picked a new house in a development in Monroe, Walton County, a small town 40 miles on the outskirts of the Atlanta metro area. I quickly learned after I moved here, "the war ain't over, the confederacy ain't dead and the south would rise again." Between their Confederate flags, white Christian Right churches, hating all us Yankees and our demented values of personal freedom and appreciation for 'Live and Let Live' diversity, it could be a nice place.There wasn't much going on in the 1970s - 1980s south . . . still a backward, segregated, Bible Belt, ultra conservative bigoted region. Then there is Atlanta, a more progressive southern region that was working on joining the modern world. DEC had invested in Atlanta a Customer Support Center and was sending its northern big city sales and customer service teams to Atlanta for educational classes held out on the 285 perimeter. We would search out things to do in a southern city that was still segregated with limited night life options. We tried the Underground, it was shabby and unsafe, roamed downtown Atlanta and found little around. It was definitely not - a thousand things to do - New York City. In many ways Atlanta in the 80s was not too terribly different from what it is today. There was Marta, massive freeways, big league sports, the Arts Center and the world's busiest airport. Downtown was more of a business center, but most of the downtown and Midtown skylines were under construction. Lenox and Phipps were the premier shopping districts. Neighborhoods like Virginia Highland were fully gentrified (and pricey!), and the suburbs were growing like mushrooms. In 1982 one of our close friends moved "way out there" to Peachtree Corners in 1982 and now that's considered close in. You find yourself drinking a lot and you’re growing a pretty sarcastic beard, which weirds out all your friends because you can't actually grow a full beard. You have not a care in the world. The illusion has been shattered. Atlanta is not New York, LA, Chicago, DC, San Francisco, Miami, Austin, Portland, or even Cleveland. It’s a sexier Nashville with seemingly better people.Unlike other Southern cities like New Orleans, Savannah, or Charleston, Atlanta became an urban center relatively late, during the railroad boom rather than as a port city during the colonial era. From Civil War to Civil Rights, Atlanta has a very rich history, in two regards especially: it is the only American city to be burned to the ground during an act of war and then rising from the ashes (hence its symbol, the phoenix), and it was the birthplace and headquarters of Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement as well as the swiftest Southern city to integrate and abandon Jim Crow laws.This is the initial shock that Atlanta not only doesn’t suck, but is basically a magical land of mystical wonder, freaks, brilliant people, chicken biscuits, and butt-naked booty clubs that are somehow socially acceptable (and encouraged). Traffic is horrible and like playing Tetris with cars, and every day you lose people to accidents. People in Atlanta are into "Bling" and pretend to have more money than they do, and that’s mostly because they blew it all living above their means until they realized they could have played it smart and lived a less-ridiculous lifestyleAtlanta, compared to most cities in the South, is way ahead philosophically, but way behind major cities like NYC, Chicago and Boston. It will never have the mass transit, restaurants, diversity and sophisticated civilization of the north. It's still a southern city with lots of confederate baggage and I don't think that will ever change. There is a lot of corruption in the city, bad neighborhoods, Aids, crime, drugs, gun violence, and lousy education.Georgia is extremely slow! There isn't much to do out here, seriously. Everything is so far away. You MUST have a car if you want to get around because there are literally no trains out here, except maybe in the city. Taxis are very hard to find if you’re not in the city itself.Atlanta has long summers, usually around mid to high 80s, there are days in the 90s too. Politics in Atlanta is Democratic, outside its the confederacy and hard Christian right ultra conservative Republican - kinda like the black vs. white thing.Atlanta gets referred to frequently as Black Hollywood. It is, like Los Angeles and New York, a city in which no small number of celebrities feel it is important to maintain a presence. It was then - circa early 1980s - that we happened upon a black strip club called Foxy Lady. It was rough, it was one of those kind of motorcycle clubs, but I fell in love with strip right then, was just amazed at the atmosphere. It was the first time I ever experienced strip down here in the South. I didn't know you could get naked like that. They can, indeed, get nakeder down here than they can in many places. Strippers can be fully nude in Atlanta. They don't just get naked here, they get asshole-naked. You could tell me to get naked standing in this room and I might do it. Then you'd tell me to bend over? Nope. Like I said, the girls were rough in there and I wondered: What if you had some real pretty girls in the club? What the hell could happen then? We tried a new place called Magic City which opened in 1985 with a single dancer. But a single dancer with, as they say it, with a perfect balloon butt. Then they hired a woman named Indigo. She brought one of the first big butts in Atlanta. Just a big round perfect butt. You could bounce a quarter off of it." But no one had yet thought up the kind of butts that you find in the strip clubs of Atlanta now, the anatomically impossible, fantastical, warped, unlicensed-plastic-surgeon-designed asses that have blown the minds of people for many years. Alas, butts are just one ingredient that made Magic City into what it is today.In the 1980s, I have pleasantly been in Atlanta dozens of times for business meeting and product line training every year and gotten to know the city well. We bad boys happened upon a black strip club called Foxy Lady. It was rough, it was kind of like one of rough neck leather jacketed motorcycle clubs found in Manhattan, and a strip club too. A very raunchy strip club. I fell in love with the place right then, was just amazed at the atmosphere. It was the first time I ever experienced strip joint here in the South. I didn't know you could get naked like that. I mean nasty, totally, but hole bare ass naked. They can, indeed, get nakeder down here because they are much dirtier than New York. I never thought there could be such a place. They don't just get naked here. They get asshole-naked.You could tell me to get naked standing in this room and I might do it. Then you'd tell me to bend over with lip stick on? Nope. In fact . . . "Fuck You!" Like I said, the girls were rough in there and I wondered: What if you had some real pretty girls in the club? What the hell could happen then? We tried a new place called Magic City which opened in 1985 with a single dancer. But a single dancer with, as they say it, with a perfect balloon butt. Then they hired a woman named Indigo. She brought one of the first big butts in Atlanta. Just a big round voluptuous perfect butt. You could bounce a quarter off of it." But no one had yet thought up the kind of butts that you find in the strip clubs of Atlanta now, the anatomically impossible, fantastical, warped, unlicensed-plastic-surgeon-designed asses that have blown the minds of people for many years. Alas, big black butts are just one ingredient that made Magic City into what it is today.While I was in Atlanta during my countless business meetings, I drove around and found the region is growing, I saw literally thousands of new housing developments and commercial stuff going up. Atlanta gets referred to frequently as Black Hollywood. It is, like Los Angeles and New York, a city in which no small number of celebrities feel it is important to maintain a presence. Atlanta is not perfect, it is way ahead of most southern cities, but is way behind to major cities like NYC, Chicago and Boston. It will never have the clubs, mass transit, restaurants, diversity and civilization of the north. It's still a southern city with lots of confederate baggage and I don't think that will ever change.Endless sprawl is everywhere. City planners did not think at all when the area was booming. They will allow 100 homes to be built in a lot that is really suited for 70 homes, and the new subdivisions have one way in and one way out without stop lights. The place is an unorganized discombobulated mess. No side walks to accommodate joggers or walkers driving is a task only someone born here would think this place is A gem. If you are black and you think this is a paradise for blacks. WRONG get that out of you're head. But I do think that over all many blacks are better off in the south. In fact I will say that blacks better define the south these days. Politics in Atlanta is Democratic, outside it’s the confederacy and hard Christian right ultra conservative Republican - kinda like the black vs. white thing. If you get too far away from Atlanta, you enter real redneck territory. I stopped once in a Race Track in Jefferson, GA which just 30 to 45 minutes north of ATL. I heard two men talking about our president saying, "if that Nigger walked in here right now I'd kill em!" Dealing with people in Jefferson was like experiencing a Jerry Springer episode first hand.Atlanta is a nice, but a very uneven city. It's not a 'walk around' town because there are no sidewalks, street cafes, or neighborhood shopping off the street, the traffic is horrendous and there are few street crossing. In midtown, you could be driving down Peachtree, in awe of the beautiful downtown buildings, but take a wrong turn and on the very next street run into blocks of boarded up buildings with two black men sitting on the back of a Cadillac passing a joint greeting you. The gap between rich and poor here is very noticeable. Atlanta gets particularly hairy if you venture off the beaten path; you'll notice that there is suddenly a liquor store on every corner, people on foot everywhere you look, and even the gas stations look poorly maintained. I use 'uneven' to describe Atlanta because not two miles from this part of town I just mentioned is a gated community, a well paved street, and a few large and expensive houses. It seems like the poor sectors are fairly well hidden, but it's easy to notice the wealthy communities.House Hunting in the Atlanta AreaDuring the 1990s my wife and I traveled to Atlanta many times hunting for housing. As we drove south, the weather got hotter and hotter. When we pulled off for gas in Winchester, Virginia, the local drivers were extremely rude. If they tried these “it’s my road” in New York City, they would be run over by a truck. They really had terrible road manners, and I bet there were many local accidents. Another stop we made for gas was in a very rural area in Virginia. When I tried to pay for my gas, I could barely understand the older white lady who was behind the counter. She was very nice, smiled and laughed generously, but she suffered from an enormous southern accent and used words unknown to a northerner. There was nothing in this area but farms, so I imagine she grew up in these mountains in a farm family, worked hard all her life, and took this job on the interstate to help out at home. Later on, when we made out last stop in Georgia for gas, I could not understand what the young white teenager behind the counter was saying. He spoke so slowly and in a drawl filled with words I could not understand that it was difficult to pay for my coffee and get change. I gave up asking him to repeat what he said and counted my change carefully. He stood there talking this baffling southern drawl to other people around him. They all spoke in this strange language and I could not understand a thing they said. I thought, we were in a large town close to Atlanta and people would have to speak better English. I wondered how they could get by in school or mingle with society when they could not speak standard English. How could they relate to television and movies? Doesn’t the school system teach these kids how to talk? Then I thought, maybe everyone in this community, including the teachers, talks this way. This is the south!We start every day at the quick trip to buy a newspaper and take a drive to learn the Dekalb area. I find it is 100% black. Whenever I see a new housing development - and they are all over, literally hundreds of them - I stop in and look at the models. There are new housing developments on every road, especially near the Panola Road area. Brown Mills road and Covington Highway are loaded with developments of new homes. The highways are loaded with signs pointing the way to models in the low 100s, middle 100s, and upper 100s. Most of the houses are two story types, but there are plenty of ranch styles too. All homes had two car garages, two and one half baths, central air and heat, sodded and landscaped lots, curbs and cement drive ways, and buried utilities. There was no question that you get a lot more for your dollar in the Atlanta housing market. I found most of the houses to be extremely well built. They had open floor plans covered with rugs, tray bedroom ceilings, large kitchens lined with excellent wood cabinets, master baths with large tubs, dressing rooms, walk-in closets, showers and separate toilets. What you saw is what you got, there were few options in these models. They were already loaded with standard features. Options included nine-foot ceilings and wooden floors. Although I wasn’t crazy about many of the floor plans, I did like several colonials and all the ranches I saw. These were all in the $120 to $140 thousand dollar price range. Then I found some upscale developments that were in the $180 and up price range. These homes were beautiful and rich looking and three times better than my house. They contained 9 foot ceilings, 42 inch kitchen furniture-grade cabinets, brick fronts, hardwood floors, ceramic tile foyers and kitchens, and exquisite luxury designs with much more room. I would buy one of these in a second. After I visited Snellville and looked around, I was asking myself, when do we move?We drive out to Gwinnett county to Snellville which is still a majority white area, but is well integrated with about 30 per cent Blacks. The area looks like our Orange County area, but it is more developed. Here, congestion and traffic would be my concern. Interstate 78 runs through Snellville and it has every kind of store, mall, and restaurant known to man. It is a much more modern and developed area that Orange County and I liked it. The area was full of new real estate developments and some were close to the retail centers. Snellville is well integrated and the Whites were not running. Most of the people living here were immigrants from the North, especially New York. There was nothing old about Snellville. It was the personification of the New South and would be my pick if Bettie and I moved to Atlanta.Comparing Real Estate Markets - Atlanta vs. Orange CountyIn Orange County, New York, it costs about $100 a square foot to build a house. It only costs $80 a square foot in near-bye Pennsylvania - or less, while in Atlanta it costs around $30 a square foot to be a production house. Because there is no snow, Atlanta does not have four foot deep cement footings, or 2 x 10s joists and rafters. Mexicans build the homes and do an expert job for far less money than the union wages in New York.Taxes, government fees and labor laws add at least 20 per cent to real estate development in New York. The average cost of a house in Orange County is now over $175 thousand. Less than that will get you a used small bi-level older house in Scotchtown with anywhere from five to seven thousand dollars of local property taxes. The only houses getting built now are two-story colonials that start at $200 thousand. Similar houses in Atlanta are much cheaper. If you go to Rockland County, which is only thirty-miles away but closer to Manhattan, the average house is over $300 hundred thousand dollars. It is hard to compare apples to apples, because New York is so different from Atlanta. New York is an older area that has millions of rich people who live in wealthy neighborhoods filled with custom houses. The average person in orange county lives in a bi-level ranch or a small two story homes. But in Atlanta, average people can afford the two story colonials typically found in the well-to-do neighborhoods of the North.Considering all that, I find that the homes in the Atlanta area, compared to Orange County, are half as expensive with a fifth of the taxes. If I sold my house and cleared a $100 thousand out of it, that amount would buy a $225 thousand dollar house in Atlanta with 1/5 the taxes. And the Atlanta house would be better built. Why better, Mexicans build houses in Atlanta and they do a better job than the union people in New York plus the inspections are tougher and demand higher quality.Meeting Southern PeopleEvery time I am in the Atlanta area, I speak with many different people. Just going to Wal*Mart or the Home Depot was going to give me an opportunity to meet new people. When I was looking at new homes, I met some interesting people who were the hostesses in the model homes. They were fore-rightly honest and we talked about Atlanta’s racial make-up., which is to say, Atlanta is basically segregated, but not by law as years before, but by people living with their own kind, as they said. As a New Yorker, I found that disgusting. Own kind? I don’t measure people by race but by class and values. But Atlanta does have redeeming values. It’s called youthful enthusiasm and opportunity for Black people and had become an area full of the beautiful people.One young lady was at the Brayson home models in Snellville. Her name was Susan and she was born and bred in Atlanta. She said her grandfather is a bigot who hates Blacks and loves the Old South that represented slavery. Her father, on the other hand, was not a bigot, she said, but prejudiced. He stereotyped Blacks, thinking they were all dirty, but had a lot respect for many Black people he knew. He did not love the Old South and was embarrassed by it. Susan was a Christian and said she was so ashamed by her grandfather and father and prayed for their deliverance every day. She envied people like me who lived in a multi-cultural world. But she was afraid of the North and New York in particular. Susan considered everything ‘up North’ to be too big, too fast, and too dangerous. And of course, New York City was like a mysterious and foreign land. Susan was like so many Southern people I met. They had a great fear of New York City, but wanted to talk to me about what it was like. It was similar to the phenomena of “Tell me about your experiences in combat.”Barbara, another hostess I met in a model home on Covington Highway in a Black section, was born in Atlanta. Barbara is White, in fact she went to Farrington, Morgan’s school, when the area was White, about twenty years ago. She told me to look in Snellville and when I asked if she told me that because I am White and we were now in a Black area, she said yes. That opened the door to a frank discussion about race in Atlanta. I asked her why all the whites moved out when the middle and upper class blacks started to move into Dekalb County. She simply said “this is the South.” We talked about southern bigotry. Barbara said it was changing, but there were still many of the old timers around who believed in segregation. These people flew the Confederate flag and sent their kids to private school. She said that these Confederates lived much farther out in rural areas and do not bother the Black residents of the Atlanta area. However, they do still have their Ku Klux Klan meetings to intimidate and harass the progress of Blacks in the Old South. Only a few Confederates still lived in the immediate Atlanta area. Barbara was awed and enchanted by New York City even though she feared and hated it.To her, New York City represented everything exciting and immoral, it was forbidden fruit and that was what made it enticingly desirable. She talked about religiously watching NBC’s morning show and reveling in the scenes of people being interviewed in Rockefeller Center. Barbara was in love with Mat Lauer, the host of the morning show. Like many Southerners, Barbara had no idea that New York State was a mountain state. That it contained the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway, Finger Lakes, Lake Champlain and the Hudson and Delaware Rivers She thought all of New York was like Manhattan.Looking at New Houses, around Atlanta, all the neighborhoods are black, and there are no (very few) white people. After living in New York where all kinds of people are mixed and living in the same neighborhoods, Atlanta seems strange and disconnected from the real world. Or maybe there are not enough white people to go around and integrate all the many hundreds of black neighborhoods. But there was no question that you get a lot more for your dollar in the Atlanta housing market and I found most of the houses to be extremely well built. They had open floor plans covered with rugs, tray bedroom ceilings, large kitchens lined with excellent wood cabinets, master baths with large tubs, dressing rooms, walk-in closets, showers and separate toilets.Comparing Real Estate Markets - Atlanta vs. Orange County. In Orange County, New York, it costs about $100 a square foot to build a house. It only costs $80 a square foot in near-bye Pennsylvania - or less, while in Atlanta it costs around $30 a square foot to be a production house. Because there is no snow, Atlanta does not have four foot deep cement footings, or 2 x 10s joists and rafters. Mexicans build the homes and do an expert job for far less money than the union wages in New York where taxes, government fees and labor laws add at least 20 per cent to real estate development. The average cost of a house in Orange County is now over $175 thousand. Less than that will get you a used small bi-level older house in Scotchtown with anywhere from five to seven thousand dollars in local property taxes.I came back to New York feeling strongly that I could like to move to Atlanta because it is cheap and warm. And many blacks are finding Atlanta an opportunistic environment too, so many are moving there, including most of Bettie’s family. Atlanta is cheaper but its culture is very different from New York’s. I would have to put up with white southerners who are very opinionated and socially reclusive, still live in the segregated past and worship the confederacy and I would have to stay away from them! Atlanta is such a different culture and we would have to start over again to establish the recognition and reputation we enjoyed in New York but I think it would be impossible to achieve the same success in Atlanta. As White Southerners say, being from the North is bad enough, but being from New York is unforgivable. Bettie is against it, but if I pushed the issue, maybe she would agree to a move. I will look around in Pennsylvania to see what is offered there. Looking long-range, I think New York with its taxes is too expensive for Bettie and me to live in. Right now, we pay enough taxes to pay for a house payment in Atlanta.Moving to the Atlanta RegionThen I found myself moving to warm and inexpensive Atlanta for retirement where my perception was that of a progressive city surrounded by a very conservative Tea Party confederate oriented Georgia. I quickly learned after I moved here, "the war ain't over, the confederacy ain't dead and the south would rise again." Between their Confederate flags, white Christian Right churches, hating all us Yankees and our demented values of personal freedom and appreciation for 'Live and Let Live' diversity, it could be a nice place. Atlanta, compared to most cities in the South, is way ahead philosophically, but way behind major cities like NYC, Chicago and Boston. It will never have the clubs, mass transit, restaurants, diversity and sophisticated civilization of the north. It's still a southern city with lots of confederate baggage and I don't think that will ever change. There is a lot of corruption, bad neighborhoods, Aids, crime, drugs, gun violence, and lousy education.I found the people to be nice and southern hospitality is alive and well – on the surface. Underneath there is a southern culture that loves itself, fears the outside world and modernity, hold Yankees in loathing (especially New Yorkers) and loves fast food. There are lots of very obese people. The church is where people socialize; they are not used to the diversity of races, religions, ethnic types and different ideals and hang with people like themselves. Remnants of the old south are still around. I would say it’s all about two things, the reverence for the Confederacy and twisted believe systems around the Civil War – it had nothing to do with slavery they say and evangelism still runs the show here. Being a Christian conservative is square one to being elected.I live in a beautiful new development in Walton Cnty of ranch style homes and paid $200K with taxes of $900 for mine. This house would coast more than 500K in upstate NY with taxes of about 15K to 18K per year. But my development has a nerve wracking HOA - we don’t have them up north, and they worry about “Bling” here - grass and hedges and how many cars in your driveway. In my neighborhood in upstate NY people gathered for block parties and constantly visited each other as kids played in the street. It’s not like that in the south where people don’t intercourse socially – unless it’s in church.Living in Atlanta is a mixed bag. It's all about how loads of homeless people, a bar, gun / pawn shop is on every corner, along with pay by the month motels and used car lots with questionable titles is typically what you find within the I-285 perimeter which is also filled with modern skyscrapers, corporate headquarters, world class hotels and convention centers. I wonder, is it a southern thing that so many people seem to be very materialistic and attracted to appearances (how you look, what you drive, how big your house is, etc.). Atlantic traffic is fast, heavy and loaded with trucks, and I'd like to be able to let my kids outside to play without being constantly scared they will get squished by a car.I think Atlanta tingles with bling, crime and unnecessary racial sensitivity. At 60 percent, Atlanta is predominately a black city, the south side being black while the north side being white with Buckhead where the Governor and many celebrities live alongside Decatur my favorite section of town, which is the closest thing to Mayberry you'll ever find. In fact, articles have been written describing Decatur as "Mayberry Meets Berkeley." No particular area is completely wonderful nor completely safe. But in general, there are a lot of great places to live, both inside and outside the I-285 perimeter. Atlanta is, after all, a teeming 5 million population metropolis the same as New York City or Los Angeles. You gotta have a car. There is no way to walk to where you got to be and even though the MARTA rail and bus serves small parts of the city well, everything is spread out.So, how does Atlanta stack up overall? There are ten things about Atlanta that stand out. Horrible traffic and crime and schools got to be number one, two and three. Building a new world class Braves stadium with no parking is number four with "What the Hell were they thinking." Atlanta being an amazingly diverse place for being in the 'Deep Bible Belt' very judgmental South' is number five. The greasy spoon Varsity is number six, and is not only the world’s largest drive-in restaurant, but it’s also arguably Atlanta’s most famous "Greasiest" burger restaurant too. It's a bit divey, a bit touristy, and a definite fixture of Atlanta history. The Varsity is the real deal . . . a drive-in with car-side service in the old style. They also have indoor counter service and lots of seating. Most days, the restaurant claims to go through an estimated two miles of hot dogs, 2,500 pounds of potatoes and 300 gallons of chili. In ONE DAY. Those figures are still relatively slow compared to Georgia Tech game days, when The Varsity is visited by an estimated 30,000 people. Another fun fact? The Varsity’s been around longer than the famous Atlanta novel, “Gone With The Wind.” It's got to be on your 'Bucket List.' Actually, I love this place! A trip to Atlanta wouldn't be complete without a stop at The Varsity for chili dogs, onion rings and an orange frosty. So, whenever I am in Atlanta, whatever time of day it happens to be, we will stop at the Varsity and have something, like hamburgers or chili slaw dogs. I like them with their crunchy and somewhat greasy onion rings. This is stick-to your ribs (and roof of your mouth) comfort food. Ironically they have a sign that states they use a healthy oil . . . I suppose that's what lends the lite flavor to their very-good fries. Yes, you can find better food, better service, better location ... however it wouldn't be THE VARSITY, and as such just wouldn't be what this place is. As I said: this is the real deal. You will get hooked . . . I have been back a dozen times.Tonight the crew and I are hanging at the Lazy Lounge in Five Points. They have Mexican food so hot you could remove dried paint from your driveway. I tried some of their chili and it took me four beers to put the flames out. My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted a wicked Hershey mist and four people behind me said “Oh my God.” The server seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. It was then that we happened upon a black strip club called Foxy Lady. It was rough, it was like one of those rough motorcycle clubs found in NYC and I fell in love with the place right then. It was the first time I ever experienced a strip club down here in the South. I didn't know you could get naked like that. They don't just get naked here, they get asshole-naked. You could tell me to get naked standing in this room and I might do it. Then you'd tell me to bend over? Nope. Like I said, the girls were rough in there and I wondered: What if you had some real pretty girls in the club? What the hell could happen then?As long as we are talking down and dirty, the Clermont Lounge has to be number seven.This was a "thing' everyone in Atlanta has to do and is really worth writing long about. Located at the end of the dingy Clermont hotel with its rusty and deplorable look, there is the Clermont Lounge with the most eclectic crowd you can find in Atlanta. Big belly red necks mix with worn out COPs and shifty business types, black street hustlers and decrepit cowboy truck drivers. It's Atlanta's claim to fame for outrageous characters. There is a $10 cover that opens the door for experiences you will never forget. My first time there I walked down some seedy stairs behind an old hotel. Then you pass shifty retired prison guards security and walk into one of the lost circles of hell. The place was packed and smelled like an ashtray, the "club" is tiny and dirty, the broken down "bar" is a conglomeration of duck tape on top of the torn vinyl tiles. To the left there's a big stage where everyone is dancing and then in the back there are tables where the dancers that work there are mingling with guests. To the right when you walk in there's a (the one) big circular bar - and in the middle of that bar one dancer is on stage (rotating every few minutes) all night. It ranges - some young some old - all different shapes and sizes. All great people watching! There was a bandanna covered white haired Dixieland band playing while skinny wrinkled strippers were onstage dancing to the drums and wailing saxophone. We watched one dominatrix stripper spank the hands of tippers with a crop, the lady must have been in her 60's wearing a weird costumery boo peep peak tits and pussy getup.Definitely no place for prudes, so if you're expecting to find a fine wine no cussing smoke-free environment and you don't enjoy a raunchy grab ass good time, then this isn't for you. The qualities of this establishment is not the aging dancers, but how the uptight folks deal with each other. You watch them squirm. People-watching is key when visiting the Clermont, so keep your eyes open, and keep your narrow minds in the car. Laughter and conversation is good. Be entertained. Grab some wrinkled ass. The dancers will love you for it! This was the start of a fantastic evening of drinks / shots / naked ugly dancing women / more shots and breathing second hand smoke and finally getting drunk. I got to motorboat some breasts and spank them, so I'm not complaining. So let me tell you, If you are looking for a ritzy, classy night on the town, this is not the place for you. If you're looking to let loose, down some cheap drinks, and sing along to country classics, then head on down! The club is jammed packed, Extremely hot, nasty, jammed pack, did I mention hot?! Yes sir, this is not your typical strip joint. This is an Atlanta institution where people rarely go for anything except to say they have been to the Clermont and make new friends with the deplorables. The crowd consists of people who would probably never hang out together in their daytime everyday lives, but somehow this rowdy atmosphere is the perfect catalyst for coming out in rare form. You'll find all walks of life visiting this establishment - people you would never expect. So you shouldn't feel out of place. It's loud music and trashy white 'Adult Fun,' where aged strippers go to get the last strip in before death becomes them.The ladies are very unique looking, not your typical sweet young thing sexy dancers with big boobs with hot hooches. These old dancers are fun and sweet as pie . . . maybe not as sweet as your grandma, but nice! There's the old lady who uses a handheld light-up rainbow ball thingy to flash you her 'camel toe.' Then there's the lady who attaches sparklers to her nipples. There's also the young chick who dances to 90s pop rock, causing me to get all weirdly nostalgic. My favorite dancer had glow-in-the-dark panties that were slowly being eaten by her giant ass as she moved back and forth on the top of the bar. And, of course, there's the infamous Blonde'. She is the icon, the crème de le crème of Claremont Lounge, has been working here since they opened. I think she may have been one of the construction workers or maybe formed out of the rubble. She is a hustler but I can't resist, getting her to crush a beer can between her boobs for $5.00. That kind of entertainment pays for itself!I ended up sitting on the side of the bar where the dancers enter the "stage" and I really got to know them pretty well over the course of the evening. Here's the thing: everyone goes to this place because of the quirkiness of it, but sitting there while nursing my drink (s) it's pretty obvious that these women take their craft seriously. The girls are, to their credit, incredible - I suppose it is not easy to get up there and display to the world your wrinkled goodies - and they do show you all the goodies - roast beef and all . . . frankly they were great. The crowd is very mixed and this humid, seedy, smoke filled dive bar, fat bottom girl strip club can definitely be an "attraction" for bachelor parties and anyone who just likes to people watch for a good show. Apparently this is also a Celebrity attraction place.You are likely to run into someone famous here. The whole place was packed out with T-shirted big-bellied red necks, leather jacketed motorcycle gangs (no colors allowed) and business people in suits.Oh and I forgot the name of the dancer I met right away. She was from upstate New York Ithaca and her silicon filled tits were amazing. Most of the dancers are WAY past their prime. These are women you don't dream to have sex with but rather have a great time with kidding around. There was one who had the tits of a 20 year old and the saggy ass of the 60-whatever years she was. The "strippers" do their gig on top of the main bar. To say it’s a freak show is an understatement. These are ladies who look pretty rough around the edges and some are easily in their 70's. There is one blonde lady who looks exactly like Baby Jane and dresses like a German Beer hag. So she lifts her skirt if you give her money, and it’s hilarious if you are Steven Spielberg looking for a intercellular creature, but disturbing if you have a soul. Not a place for the faint of heart. I did see lots of breasts and pussy and meet cool weird people - all my type. I also questioned the legality of what was going on around me more than once.I will tell you, as an ex Navy man, the Clermont is much like a one night stand in Bangkok or Karachi. A night at the Clermont Lounge will change your life. For a prude it can become painful. As for me, I was trying to put it out of my mind and concentrate on other topics: Pulled teeth. Prostate exams. But nothing was going to change the reality: I was on a collusion course with destiny. Destiny was a fat women who was funny as hell who sat squirming and squealing on your lap and I liked her. Then there was Ruby and Porsha and the woman who sets her nipples on fire. The Clermont is not so much a strip club as a super divey basement bar with crazy people having fun with body-positive dancing women.This place is the real deal. There a side show performance featuring hooks, snails, and a performer who would only accept tips if they were taped to her body. I was also impressed by the strippers being so nice. They walk around and say hi. This is literally the least intimidating strip club ever. Between the nice older strippers not working hard for tips, to the super nice bartender, and the cheap drinks, it’s really a great hang out for people that love being out of the ordinary. It was fun and very odd and hot. This is a place you visit to cut loose and make memories. Just remember Ginger is my true love so if you see her tell her Jerry L recommended a lap dance from her. I sipped some Purple Thunders (which I'm sure is a mixture of purple Kool-Aid powder and Everclear), and we danced ourselves silly after we spent all our cash on the dancers and jukebox. The second hand smoke was awful and so was the bathroom, but the hilarious conversations with strangers and watching Blondie's infamous beer can trick made up for that. This place is the best dive bar and strip club imaginable. The women are from all ages of life and looks and they know it but don't be a jerk about it. No one likes people like that. This is a business, and they mean business so treat the ladies nicely, pay your cover charge, and enjoy the show. The best time to show up is around nine in order to get a spot at the bar. And going to Clermont Lounge for the first time is like losing your virginity all over again. It's awkward. It's dirty. It's sort of life-changing. But no matter how bad or how good your experience is, you want to do it again to see what's in store for your second rodeo. I can also see Clermont as an excellent venue for sales team building or acquiring a new blood brother or sister. Or contracting Hepatitis. Holy $hit, I need to go to church next Sunday but I am going back to the Clermont ASAP! . . . P.S. BTW ask for Barbie, the really hot big ass blonde with great tattoos! Tell her Jerry L sent you!The excellent reviews from native Atlantans that sparkle with love and friendliness is number nine. Couple that with "Hollywood mentality" of "rappers" and folks hanging around trying to "get discovered," mega church wannabe superstars, and those nasty liberal New York attitudes disparaging native faith based Christian values. All real Georgians wish that the folks from California, New Orleans and New York would go home so we could have their beautiful city back to the nice right wing conservative white place it was, but alas it was not to be. ALL of Georgia is backward now, and Atlanta is rightfully known as a "diamond in a pig's ass." Now it's just a bunch of over-bloated Ugly New Yorkian liberal messiness.Atlanta gets less 2 inches of snow per year, not per hour. There is still genuine southern hospitality. One can buy a nice house in the burbs for $250k, the public schools outside the city are fair to very, very good and suburban neighborhoods, by and large, are safe from violent crime. One thing that you just cannot ever get over is how green and lush this city of 5,000,000 people is. It is truly beautiful. Traffic is only a real problem if you choose to live in the suburbs and your work is downtown or on the other side of the city in a different suburb. Downside: Atlanta itself is a high crime city and it's mostly black on black crime. I lived and worked in New York city for thirty years and have never lived in a place like Atlanta where people are murdered EVERY DAY and robbery and home break ins are never ending. It's ridiculous, they don't just rob but they have to shoot you and most killings are by these ugly scary looking black thugs under the age of 25. The politicians are hopelessly corrupt and inept. Some areas are VERY southern, but much of the Metro area is a blend of transferees from around the USA. And finally number ten is the directions one gets when driving around. There are more than 40 Peachtree streets, they call them lanes, circles, west east, south or northern streets all having the name.