ATLANTA!! It’s weird to me that I’ve lived long enough to see the Clermont Hotel go from being one of the most terrifying cracked-out homeless hotels to its current incarnation as a fancy boutique hotel. I mean, back in the day, this place was the scariest place you’ve ever seen. Tonight when I checked in, a young fella wearing a scarf asked me if I wanted a complimentary glass of champagne. Har!
Thanks to Jay Murphree, who set up this whole Atlanta–North Carolina wing of my trip, I’m staying here at the Clermont for a few days before the big Greg Germani benefit show at the Star Bar on Friday night. I just took a froufrou shower using my Hotel Clermont–labeled loofah and I wondered how many people OD’d in my room back in the day.
I’m happy to see that the Clermont Lounge in the basement of the hotel has survived, I guess simply because of its local popularity. What is the Clermont Lounge, you might ask? Well . . . it’s a strip club. But specifically, it’s a strip club where the South’s greatest array of elderly, deformed, and down-and-out strippers ply their trade. If you’ve never been, it’s like walking into a scene from a David Lynch movie. If you’ve been there a bunch over the years like I have, you just say, “And then Blondie will smash beer cans with her giant ti**y!” It’s a wild place! I’m looking forward to spending a few days in Atlanta, one of my favorite cities in the country, and enjoying my luxurious digs at the Hotel Clermont.
