April 1st- Sutra Lounge and Opera Atlanta

Admittedly, I've been slacking on my outings but I have pretty decent excuses. For one, winters in Atlanta suck compared to winters in Las Vegas. You don't want to go out of the house. It's cold as hell. And why would you go out into the night to look at people when you can cuddle up with your honey and watch James Bond movies? Additionally, we've been doing more social gatherings at friends' homes. It's just so much easier. There's no cover charge or overpriced cocktails or unwarranted trifling behavior. It's funny how I absolutely relished these amenities in Las Vegas. They just made for good blogging. But as I grow older and wiser, I want to go to venues or functions where I can do what I intend to come there to do. If it's drinking then I don't want my wallet to get raped. If it's dancing then I don't want to wade through a sea of uncomfortable-looking 21 year olds just taking up space. And if it's acting a fool...well, I can act a natural fool anywhere, but I don't want to run the risk of getting shot doing so. I still have to have babies.

However, my girl Tanisha was visiting from Las Vegas so all bets were off. Now you may remember the lovely Tanisha from our adventure at Olympic Gardens. Good times. While I was in the midst of writing copy for a San Diego business lawyer's website, she called me to hit the club. We decided on Leopard Lounge in Midtown. I blew out my fro, stuffed my body down into some leggings and headed out the door listening to Incubus. As I drove into Atlanta proper, I laughed to myself at the people lining the streets. You would have thought it had been summer for at least three months. On Monday, it was 50 degrees in the middle of the day. That night, it was a very pleasant 69 degrees at 9:55pm and the city was buzzing. We found each other and preceded to Sutra Lounge for discounted cocktails. It's funny. We never saw any part of Leopard Lounge. Oh well.

Sutra was empty, which surprised me. It's not like I'd been there before but then again, it was a Thursday night, Sutra's a nice venue and the drinks were a decent price. But come to think of it, we were hitting the streets pretty early. It's not typical to reach any party down destination until half past 11, but seeing as I had to write a website for a catering company the next day, I figured that I should get out and turn in earlier.

So I was at the bar drinking vanilla Smirnoff and cranberry juice when this dude with a receding hair line grabbed my arm and told me how good my hair smelled. His hand was hella cold. His name was Juan and he was a 41-year-old contractor from some damn place. I forget. He looked kind of stupid. Like he was desperately trying to cling to his youth by hitting on women he supposed to be half his age. I love being 31 but I love not looking it. He kept on making remarks about how we were too young to know this or we probably didn't remember that. I just looked at him. He was with a guy named Derrick and another guy named Trevor who looked to be brothers. They planned on going over to Opera Atlanta which was just across the street and they wanted to know if we would accompany them. Hell no, we weren't just going to buddy up with them. Come on. I mean, there was nothing wrong with them or anything, but seriously. It's not like they offered to buy us drinks. Plus the last thing I was thinking about was pretending to tolerate some stranger. I was there to kick it with my friend. Have a few drinks. Chill. Dance perhaps. I needed to get in another half hour of cardio for the day.

We let them leave, closed our tab, went to the bathroom and then paid to skip the line at Opera. I hate, hate those nightclubs that have you standing outside in the free line just to give the impression that it's teeming with revellers inside. That mess is just ridiculous especially when you get inside and the club is still half empty. Also, it's not like you're going to have an easier time getting a drink if the crowd just trickles in. These places are notoriously understaffed. One almost always has to elbow his or her way through fools to be seen at the bar by some nervous, overworked drink-pourer. Sigh.

We got into Opera and I was totally convinced that the party was 18 and over. Women were on one side of the room and men were on the other. They were just standing there in packs. Just a couple of girls were dancing and that was with each other. We stopped to ask a bouncer what the age requirement was. He said 21 plus. I thought of my nephew. He'll be 21 in July of this year. I can't do this shit anymore. Not here anyway. We took a picture and then left. The bouncers asked us why we were leaving and we said because we were bored. They gave us wristbands for the VIP section, so we went back in. We went up to the balcony and looked down onto the dance floor. There was this bald albino looking guy just dancing by himself. Next to him was this guy wearing a hat kind of jerking around on the dance floor. We decided that we were going to dance with them and we did but the DJ kept playing mere snippets of songs. Tsk. The bald albino guy turned out to be a boxer who could give but couldn't really receive a punch. I'm not sure why he felt it was relevant to explan that, but whatever. We left again and this time for good, but didn't feel like walking all the way back to the car. So we hailed some Ghanaian guy driving past the club and got him to drop us at our parking lot. He was very appreciative when we gave him our VIP wrist bands. Bye now!

At our parking lot, we encountered a problem. The parking attendant's car was blocking Tanisha's rental and the attendant was nowhere to be found. We noticed that the window was halfway down so we reached in and unlocked the door from the inside. We got in, released the parking break and rolled the damn car out of the way. Suddenly the attendant came running up asking for the keys to his car. We didn't have you friggin keys, Fool. Jeeze. Louise.