Not Hot in Atlanta

When we first rolled into Atlanta, things seemed promising. The city is quite pretty and has amazing architecture in its residential districts. Plus, we started the day by visiting a cool local record shop (picked up MJ's "In the Closet" single on cassette tape, a Jackson 5 compilation, and some homemade tape that had intriguing, old-school-typed liner notes) and a favorite restaurant of Jenny's called The Flying Biscuit (the original location). The meal was top-notch and we were feeling all right.

We then arrived at the club, a funky and ginormous joint called the Drunken Unicorn, things were still looking up. The place has amazing unicorn-centric art all over the walls, some of it downright hilarious:


But we got a rather indifferent vibe from the other bands, especially the one we were supposed to crash with after the show. Both bands seemed a bit pissy due to the fact that a free show was going on just down the street, headlined by a local band with a good draw that overlapped with the audience for these bands -- which of course meant the crowd at the Unicorn would be thinner than everybody had hoped.

The bands were so frustrated by this that very few of the individual members even bothered to watch our set, even though we were courteous enough to sit through theirs. We played a solid show and got a good reaction from the folks who were in the crowd, but we were left cold by our interaction with the other bands and decided to skip crashing on someone's floor for a hotel room instead.

The hotel we chose was an independently-operated place built in 1927 called the Highland Inn. Again, it looked promising, clearly having a lot of character and charm. But the guy at the desk freaked us out with his odd and aggressive manner as he gave us instructions for filling out the form for our room. He kept repeating over and over, "Just fill out your name, address and signature. Don't fill out anything else." When we accidentally dated the form after signing it, he sneered, "I said only name, address and signature." We offered to re-do the form, but he blew us off and said in a dismissive and angry tone, "I will correct it." Weird.

The room was pretty nice, and included a love seat and full kitchen. The bed was fairly comfy, too -- check out Lisa kickin' it before sleepy time:


But the shower was extremely claustrophobic and for some reason reminded us of a penitentiary shower (not that we have any first-hand experience). Plus, Jenny had to construct her bed out of the pillows of the love seat:


We couldn't wait to get the hell out of Atlanta the next morning, and decided to peel out and get breakfast on the road. The good news? We ultimately ended up in some small Georgia town at the very best Waffle House any of us had ever been to. This was as gourmet as a greasy spoon gets, and we ate till our bellies were full.


The friendly waitress even sent Jenny home with a free Waffle House mug after Jenny expressed interest in buying one. Score!

Next stop: Nashville!