Big city blues

Awww, poor babies. They go all the way to Atlanta expecting to have a real good time, and guess what? There's nothing to do:

When it comes to efforts to lure conventioneers, Atlanta's got the hotels, the easy access to the city via the nation's busiest airport and even the attractions with the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola.

Now what the city needs is a little more nightlife.

[. . .]

But downtown, where most of the conventions take place, is missing the after-hours component.

Keeping conventioneers coming is critical to Atlanta's $11.4 billion tourism industry. Conventioneers' dollars keep hotels and restaurants full and help keep businesses like florists, caterers and linens suppliers operating.

Both ACVB and GWCC board members agreed that getting nightlife downtown is easier said than done. To attract after-hours hotspots, more residents will have to move downtown and suburbanites, many of whom view the area as unsafe, will have to visit more frequently than an occasional sporting event.

Granted, actual Atlanta is barely above 500,000, but the metro area is above 5 million people, and there's nothing to do? So Atlantans are just going to have to move downtown so the night spots will open so the conventioneers will come so they can get drunk and bore their co-workers for years with stories about what fools they made of themselves. Sounds like a plan to me. Let's get to work on that here. Just plunk down a couple of hundred thou for a Harrison Square condo, and do your part to save downtown.

I think every place I've ever lived I've heard the complaint, "There's nothing to do here!" But, really, there are mostly the same kinds of things to do everywhere. People who complain about nothing to do usually really mean they have nobody to do it with. If you can't get drunk and stupid with your co-workers in any city in the country, some