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Athens Georgia is the smell of stale beer and cigarette butts at 7AM on a Sunday morning.
It's stumbling home from the 40 Watt, ears still ringing. It's the unannounced shows at the Georgia Theatre. It's the forays into the iron triangle for enhancements. It's the house parties with JB's Sausage truck parked out front.
It's the insane location of the dartboard in the old High Hat[^1]; it's the searing pain of hot caramel on your palm. It's the taste of blood in your mouth behind the 40 Watt on your worst of nights.
It's the two dollar couches from Potter's House, the cheap beer and darts at Foxz, The Sunday morning burgers at Allen's, the late night (free!) pesto pizzas from Rocky's, the countless predawn cigarette's crushed in Waffle House ashtrays.
It's the coffee shops and restaurants you worked in, the classes you skipped, the Periwicks you never bought, the beds you lay in wondering, the porches you smoked on thinking, the beer you drank dreaming of elsewhere. It's all things that were and never will be again forever.
Athens, GA for 15 years I have danced on your bars, fallen asleep in your alleys, floated down your rivers, swam in your lakes, walked under your trees.
You were one of the last great places in Los Estados Unidos, but all of that, that was then, was that, that is gone, this is past.
I came here for this: (house pic of REM)
Now it's all this: http://gardenandgun.com/blog/my-town-susan-hables-athens-georgia
Is there anything wrong with rich new yorker's descending to drive up prices and drive out the next generation of musicians looking for a cheap place to live and practice? There sure as fuck is. The world doesn't need more smiling rich white faces in garden gun. The world needs more Neutral Milk Hotels, more Ishues, more Danger Mouse.
And the world will get those things. But not from here.
[^1]: You stepped out of the bathroom directly into the path of flying darts. Seriously. So far as I know no one was ever hurt.
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