All these replies and no Atlantans yet? (Or did I miss one?)
My favorite bar no longer exists. The Stein Club recently succumbed to encroaching commerical development after more than 35 years. The owners talked about relocating, but to my knowledge haven’t done so. No other bar in Atlanta drew such a varied clientele; sixty-year-old geezers playing chess at a back table, old hippies who’d been coming there for two-thirds of its existence, the beautiful people, the horrifying people, and everything in between, including a larger number of attractive and apparently unattached women than any other place in town (this might reflect more on my taste in women than on the Stein Club, but I don’t think so). Cheap beer (something like $3.50 for a pitcher of the house beer). Decent mixed drinks. Sign over the bar reading “Hangovers installed and serviced.” By far the best jukebox in town, with some selections having been there for the duration. And how can you not love a bar that sponsors an annual spelling bee, with the winners’ names being engraved on a plaque on the wall?
A friend of mine and I spent nearly every Friday evening of the summer of 1993 there – our girlfriends were both out of town for the summer, so we’d meet after work, grab a bite to eat, then hit the Stein Club early so we could grab a prime people-watching table. He’d have a couple of vodka martinis, I’d knock back two gin and tonics, then we’d switch to pitchers of beer. Then we’d watch the parade pass before us. My two favorite memories are of watching Game 6 of the 1991 World Series (Braves-Twins) at the bar, while the Stein Club’s 30th Anniversary Party raged around me, and of the night some drunk wandered over to hit on the two women at the table next to us, in his sock feet, claiming to have left his shoes at their table earlier – these were not shy, retiring women at all, and they were merciless.
Honorable mention in Atlanta: Manuel’s Tavern. Even older than the Stein Club, and far better known. The owner was for many years the CEO of DeKalb County (an odd form of local government obtains there, with a CEO often at odds with the county commission). Manuel’s wears its association with the Democratic Party proudly: there are smoke-grimed portraits of every Democratic president this century (with the possible exception of Clinton), as well as many local and state party worthies (like former Georgia governor and current U.S. Senator Zell Miller); legend has it that much of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign was planned there. In addition to the political portraits, there are a number of other paintings (some purportedly offered by the artists in lieu of cash to pay their bar tab), a huge beer can collection on the wall behind the bar, bumper stickers and pennants from ages ago (including the geographically questionable “Would the lady who left her 11 kids at the Metrodome please pick them up? They’re beating the Vikings 10-7 at the half”). The bar area itself is miniscule, with just room for the massive mahogany bar (a relic of a bygone turn-of-the-century downtown hotel) and a single row of booths along the other wall, but the side rooms are huge (except the no smoking room); the place can probably fit 500 to 600 patrons at a time on a busy night. The Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern took advantage of this, staging their performances in a back room for several years before building their own space downtown. Manuel’s also is about the only place I know of in Atlanta that still has phone booths – actual nooks in the wall outside the restrooms with doors that close and fans in the ceiling for ventilation. When I lived across the street and couldn’t pay my phone bill, the booths at Manuel’s were my home phone. The food, while nothing special, is usually above average bar fare: nachos, burgers, hot dogs, fries, and selection of specialty sandwiches named for employees and customers; the only comment-worthy item I can think of is the boiled peanuts (not something I’m into, but some folks love 'em). They do have a wider range of draft beer options than most other places, and a broad though not overwhelming range of bottled beer to choose from. I’m not sure that either I or anyone I know has ever ordered a mixed drink there, so I can’t comment on that.
Flawed but fun: Limerick Junction, an Atlanta interpretation of an Irish pub, was practically my home for the first year or so that it was open. Within walking distance of my apartment, and only the second place in Atlanta to offer draft Guinness and have some clue of how to draw it, how to maintain the taps, etc. Live music from acoustic solo or duo acts most nights, focusing on Celtic music during the first few years. Ossian, the singer/waiter, used to promote a beverage he called an Irish Cannonball: a Black and Tan with a full shot of Jameson’s spooned into it between the Harp and the Guiness. I’ve survived as many as six of those in an evening with a couple of Black Bushs straight up for dessert, though not without serious ill effects (nearly ended my budding relationship with my wife as soon as it started, that one did). Food was never more than OK, but that was never the attraction. After a year or two, the Emory undergrads and the Va-Hi yuppies overran it, so that it was always crowded with people I didn’t care to be around; the music shifted toward your usual acoustic guitar attached to a singer stuff (the Jimmy Buffet songbook, the Jim Croce songbook, etc.). I moved out of the neighborhood and it really wasn’t worth schlepping back for. I still have many fond memories of the place, though, not least of which is kissing my wife for the first time. We went back this year after dinner on our anniversary, and it happened that Ossian was playing that night, so we had a couple of rounds for old times’ sake.
The Churchill Arms in Buckhead predates the whole faux-pub phenomenon and is still (or was when I was last there) the most authentic British pub experience you’ll find around here. Small, somewhat disheveled, with dart boards in the back and a battered old upright piano along one wall that’s actually used for singalongs most weeknights.
Other Atlanta bars that don’t suck: Jagger’s, in Emory Village, though how it’s faring under it’s new name (The Park Bench) I can’t say; Moe’s and Joe’s (used to be the closest place to Emory U. to buy beer when DeKalb County was dry, huge Pabst Blue Ribbon neon sign over the bar, Horace the ancient waiter, and used to have a jukebox to rival the Stein Club’s); Rock Bottom Brewery, a typical trendy corporate brewpub in super-trendy Buckhead, but the food is excellent, they have lots of pool tables and plenty of room, and it’s very close to my office. I’m sure there are others, but my nocturnal activities are limited to getting the kids bathed and in bed most nights these days.
In Little Rock, I have to put in a good word for the bar in the Capital Hotel. Across the street from the newer, flashier, larger Excelsior Hotel (notorious as the site of Bill Clinton’s alledged indiscretion with Paula Jones), the Capital has been the grande dame of Little Rock hotels since the 1870s. The bar is what you’d expect: lushly appointed, quiet, elegant, with cocktail waitresses in full length, very discreet dresses. My college girlfriend and I used to go there occasionally to pretend to be grownups and have quiet, serious conversations. The only hotel bar I’ve ever enjoyed as much was the Julien Bar in Le Meridien in Boston.
