Only a ghost of Tasty World remains.
The Top 40 hits come from speakers rather than a band. At the bar patrons mill around, but the stage no longer hosts the drag kings and queens who were so familiar three years prior.
What once was Tasty World — and now is Magnolia’s — has changed.
Over the years numerous bars, including New Earth Music Hall, have entered Athens. ALLISON LOVE/Staff
Since 2008, many establishments and venues in Athens have shifted, adopting new names, new management and new themes. The business mind-set has changed,too — from a post-graduation procrastination project to a corporate, profit-driven model.
“You no longer have just two guys who want to own a bar,” said David Hanson, manager at Magnolia’s. “More and more it’s becoming a couple of people who are looking to make money off of the bar business. I think in the next couple of years you’re going to see more people who are like outside investors coming in. For example, Volstead. They came from out of town, saw potential in a space, and now they’re here.”
Staying alive in any business means catering to public whims. In college towns, trends turn faster than a viral video.
Smaller venues trade band space for floor space. Western-themed bars adopt pop singles. Low-key bars make room for a dance floor.
Becoming somebody means catering to everybody.
“The way I see it is because technology has caused our culture to speed up so quickly, I think you see a faster transition in social trends,” Hanson said. “And what that causes is over a four-year span people’s tastes are radically different. I know people who are 22 who are here, and I’m 26. It’s like we have almost nothing in common except for a few staples — sports, music, girls.”
Causing a scene
Drawing a general crowd is a staple plan for bar owners who wish to remain long term. But 30 years ago, bar owners struggled to find a crowd at all.
Barrie Buck, owner of the 40 Watt since 1987, said nighttime entertainment in the early 1980s was not normally found downtown.
“There weren’t any bars in downtown then,” she said. “A couple of restaurants had bars and there was maybe a couple of student bars that came and went. But there wasn’t really a fixture like you think about with The Georgia Bar or Roadhouse.”
Bars then normally stayed on the outskirts of town, populated by locals, artists and a few musicians. Students’ ability to have alcohol on campus meant a lack of University life downtown.
“This was before there were a lot of restrictions on how many people could live in the same house, and there would be huge parties every weekend so there wasn’t that big of a bar scene,” Buck said. “People would have keg parties in their dorms. Until the University put a moratorium on alcohol on campus, there was alcohol at frat parties and stuff.”
National concerns over alcohol use among teenagers led to tougher restrictions, and campus culture found itself caught up in the process. By 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act raised the age limit to 21.
“There was a huge amount of changes,” Buck said. “There was the introduction of [Mothers Against Drunk Driving] and those kinds of policies. The drinking age went from 18 to 19, 20, 21. People would still smuggle in alcohol to football games and injury would occur and they would say, ‘That’s it.’ So it was just part of the national consciousness, the ‘just say no’ kind of Reagan era view of alcohol.”
As students changed, so did bars.
Music flourished. In the mid ’80s and early ’90s, R.E.M. and Widespread Panic found favor. Local bands came together and fell apart in a flurry. To amateurs and professionals alike, Athens was becoming an attractive music space. Venues became famous for the music they hosted rather than the services they sold.
“Athens is a music city,” said Wilmot Greene, owner of the Georgia Theatre since 2004. “When you have music, when you have entertainment like that, then you have a built-in audience. I would love to say that people come here because it’s the Georgia Theatre, but they don’t. People come here to see whatever band we have.”
For bar owners, everything revolved around the music, including business locations. Department stores and smaller retail shops were closing and venues often had their pick of spaces, rents and clientele.
Bars would settle in, open up and move on. And their owners would do likewise.
“It was really only in flux for that five-year period,” Buck said. “There would be different owners and people would be like, ‘Oh, I’ll do it,’ and then be like, ‘Oh, I can’t, this isn’t what I wanted,’ for whatever reason. It wasn’t always some grand business plan. It was just how the place evolved. It was such a different town then.”
Survivors
Trends, once established, give birth to more trends.
As the ’90s approached, bars that once shifted stayed still. Those that had weathered a decade of change gained notoriety for their efforts.
“In my opinion what makes bars really legendary bars or long-standing bars like The Georgia Bar or The Roadhouse … is that you’ve gotta get the double cycle,” Greene said. “You gotta last for four years and then those people gotta tell their younger brothers and sisters.”
But successful, stable businesses drew fewer successful, more experimental startups. Graduates looking for the next big thing often have a desire to become it. Opening a popular bar was a way to keep the college dream alive.
“And so that’s also where you see part of that transition,” Hanson said. “A lot of people, they start a bar, all their friends come and see them, but once their friends move away, they sort of lose their taste for it. It’s no longer fun because what’s the fun of having a whole bunch of strangers hang out with you in a bar?”
As more graduates took ownership of downtown venues, themed bars became more prominent. Changing tastes and hands led to a constantly shifting scene.
Less-established, locally-owned bars with a profit goal prayed for fewer party-driven neighbors.
“That’s a strange part of being in a college town is how do you compete with a bar like that?” Greene said. “If you’re in a bar across the street and you’re across from a trust fund bar you’re in trouble because they have a different motivation than you do. “
Athens then faced another change: with a legal revision, smoking in bars was no longer an option. Patrons would step outside to smoke — and there was nothing to guarantee they would come back.
“You’d walk out and have a cigarette and it would be like, ‘Oh, let’s go over there,’” Greene said. “And there were none of these little railed-in sections that the bars have now, and they’re always crowded. Cigarettes and alcohol go well together. Back then you didn’t have to hand-stamp because people would come in and there was a lot less in and out.”
Patrons sought the latest fad more than a comfortable hangout. Consequently, social groups became less strict.
Students began filtering into bars traditionally visited by professionals, artists and locals. Minority groups began to find sanctuary among more general crowds. In some cases, this meant the end of popular places with limited audiences.
Drew Meyer, owner of New Earth Music Hall since 2009, who then worked at now-closed Blur, watched as the decline of Athens’ gay bar coincided with wider acceptance of LGBT and minority groups.
“Knowing that as a bar manager, looking at the numbers, we were declining tremendously,” he said. “When Adrian Zelski — who is my business partner and the lead singer of DubConscious — he came in to do some DJ stuff and was like, ‘Man, this place is awesome.’ And I was like ‘I know. But I can tell you right now, that I predict that by summertime this place is going to be empty and there’s going to be an opportunity there.’”
With a landscape that demands venues remain flexible to a traveling crowd, bar owners now find ways to stretch scattered profits over longer hours: venues add food to their list of specials, open for lunch and cater to families and fraternities.
Extending profits, Greene said, was one of his reasons for turning the Georgia Theatre’s roof into a watering hole.
“When we rebuilt it I thought about it a lot, that it needed to be a theater and a bar,” he said. “Before the fire, we didn’t open before 9 o’clock at night.”
Though owners continue to adjust, some attitudes remain the same. Some demands never change: clean venue, good music and reasonable drink specials.
Being part of the town can often last longer than being part of the trend.
“I think a lot of people would agree that a lot of the economy is dependent on the class schedule and what the students are doing. Even if you’re not a student, the University is such a huge employer,” Buck said. “So you’re always aware of that — but this is where my home is, this is where my business is, this is where my nieces and nephews are. There’s a different kind of mind-set when you live here versus when maybe you just graduated and you want to do something cool.”