Here is the original version of my article about the Clermont Lounge in Atlanta. The grainy picture above is of Stroker receiving his lap dance. The photo is grainy, but that’s perfect for the place and occasion (and to protect the innocent…and the guilty).
I was in Atlanta over the weekend, and I had just gone to the rehearsal dinner for my good friend Stroker Ace when someone said, “We gotta go to the Clermont Lounge.” Not being an Atlanta native, those words meant nothing to me, but mere minutes later, they would have devastating consequences.
It was a little after midnight when Stroker, myself, and about 15 people from the rehearsal party walked into the Clermont. It didn’t take long to be startled. A woman on stage who looked to be in her mid 50s (age) and her mid 250s (weight) dropped her French maid’s outfit to the ground and gyrated to the music, buck naked.
The Clermont Lounge is Atlanta’s longest operating strip club, opening in 1951, and most of the women on stage on this night look like they were doffing their nighties during the Grand Opening festivities. The smoke in the air is nothing short of stifling, and the floor is covered in what feels to be syrup. This place makes McGlinchey’s look like the Four Seasons.
As it was the night before his wedding, my good friend Stroker Ace was privy to a very special lap dance from a healthy young* lady named Blondie. Blondie, whose belly shook like jelly, pirouetted around Stroker then shook her ample bosom inches from his face. Her grand finale was nothing short of spectacular, as she crushed a beer can with her bottom, and deposited it in his coat pocket. The rotgut I had been drinking began doing laps in my stomach, and I stumbled out into the night air, trying to come to grips with what I had just witnessed. Five days have since passed. I still have not come to grips with it.
*and by young, I mean old.
Here’s my column in today’s Metro
