Where else can you/could you get that experience? If you find yourself in Hotlanta craving fast (and I mean fast) food, you owe it to yourself to check out the Varsity. Just be ready to have your shit together or they'll get it together for you. It's not a place for first-timers to stand there pondering the menu. Oh, dear GOD...I just had a terrible thought. With this PC-bullshit and "snowflake" society we live in today, where everyone's offended by everything, it could have changed. I hope they haven't toned it down. That was half the deal.
It'd be a real shame if they now had to go "Hello si...uh, I mean hello, person. Welcome to the Varsity. Please take your time and peruse our extensive menu. Don't forget any special orders, 'cause they don't upset us, but whatever you do, don't hurry." Man I hope that didn't happen but I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe they have signs that say "Please do not dine at this establishment if you are easily-offended, hypersensitive, can dish it but not take it, etc. etc. YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE THIS RIDE."
This is a rant for sure, but it's about how it is. Sorry. See? It works. Anyway I'll try to calm down and finish the post. It's been a long time since I've been there and things have changed. I'll tell this from the way it used to be and hopefully still is. 'Cause man, they'd fuck with you. Shoot, if they had to change that policy I bet half those people would quit if they couldn't fuck with people any more, and they've been there in some cases for decades. They's family. Of course most of them are gone by now I reckon. Age and onion rings took 'em down. RIP, y'all.
You'd walk in, hopefully not too wasted but they'd seen it all, and you'd hear this sort of rap going, way before Rap was invented. It was freestylin' but they had it down. It sounded sort of like they were going "Jeeba-Jabba-Jooba" at first, if you'd never been there anyway, but you could make out that they were saying "Get ya mind on ya order and ya money in ya hand. What'll ya have, What'll ya have, what'll ya HAVE?" It was a trip. So what you did was you got your mind on your order and you got your money in your hand. Well, I guess they had to change the bit about "money in ya hand" anyway. Ha-ha, in a few years when everyone has the chip they can change it to "Ya money IS ya hand." Ha ha ha.
I'll still go to Atlanta for a concert or something but I gave up on it very early on. My cousins lived there and they had a beautiful home and property and I'd visit them some, but I turned my attention elsewhere by the time I was 21. I saw some legendary shows there and tons of other craziness happened, but the city started growing so fast that there was constant road construction and stuff like that. People from the South who wanted a big-city experience moved to Atlanta, so they started building even more shit. More than that though, the whole city seemed to take on a 'tude. "Welcome to Atlanta, California." Back in the day before that all kicked in Atlanta was the South's dirty little secret.
For a couple of years the legal drinking limit in Georgia went down to 18. Something about "If they're old enough to serve their country they should be old enough to get a beer," or something like that. It was perfect for my friend George and me. We'd just graduated high school, he in Chicago and me here. We met that Summer and became friends in about 24 hours are are still friends. We'd drive over there all the time; not just because of the drinking age but because it was still fun back then. We'd go to a place called High Times. This was not long after High Times, the weed magazine, came out. Although it didn't serve pot brownies or anything they ripped off the name and even the exact all-caps font. Of course they got sued by the magazine, so they did what a little kid would do if they forgot to put something in a homemade lemonade-stand sign or whatever. They put a tiny little "ol'" between High and Times, so it looked like HIGH ol' TIMES up close but you couldn't tell from the street.
There were countless stories and some have happened over the years, but I remember one that had a decent punchline. George and I split a Quaalude, hit the Proto-Pipe and went out drinkin' at HIGH ol' TIMES. 'Ludes were one thing by themselves, but mixing with any amount of alcohol was asking for trouble, and probably a damn good story to go with it, that is if you could remember anything. Quaaludes and alcohol could easily put you into a blackout, where you'd keep doing shit, usually stupid, but you might have no memory of it at all the next day. Nearly every morning after a serious Ludens episode, first thing you'd do is run look in the driveway to see if your car had made it home with you. Don't get me started even on all the times you'd wake up somewhere "strange," if you get my drift.
I don't remember much after the first drink or two, as far as incidental little things like what happened at the bar or driving home. That's interesting because the way things have always been in Atlanta, let's just say that a single heterosexual male is a hot target for women, and most trips to bars there led to some stories, even if mostly about women going nuts trying to pick you up and such. I vaguely remember a brunette but most of 5-6 hours were lost. It's funny though the things you do remember sometimes. I remember luckily making it back but getting sick as shit and violently throwing up. I remember George eating a normal dinner but for some reason my dumb ass only ate raw broccoli with ranch dip, and my stomach couldn't keep up with George or the Bacardi or whatever it was we drank. I remember eating "dinner" and driving to the bar and ordering a drink but the next few hours were a blur, until I found myself kakking my guts out. After a little broccoli though it was all dry-heaves, but it was the worst case in my life. It was really loud and it woke up my cousins.
They had a huge house and I always crashed in the sunroom so I could lie there and look at the sky. George was in the guest room and the girls' rooms were nearby. George was out cold and he didn't even know about it until we told him at breakfast next morning, which made him howl. He never heard a thing. I was violently heaving and making heinous noises and at first my cousins thought an intruder had gotten in and I was being stabbed. They crept closer and figured out that I was probably throwing up but they weren't sure so they ran and woke up their dad, or Uncle Dick to me. That's his name, not a joke. I love Uncle Dick. They told him that I was probably throwing up but that there was a chance I was getting stabbed. He said "If he's getting stabbed I'll get up, but if it's drinkin' and druggin' I'm going back to sleep." That's classic. Can't fool Uncle D.
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah...the Varsity. I usually went there with the band and/or O', the keyboardist and my partner in crime for a while. We went to Atlanta several times either playing music or on solo trips for a concert or just to go. We'd try to hit the Varsity for the ambiance alone. I'm pretty sure that every time we went to the Varsity we were high. We usually managed to snap-to enough to get with the program and not hold up traffic, at least after we'd been there already and knew the deal. The first time we went was with the band after a gig. Five of us walked in and stood there like clowns for a minute trying to figure out what to order. We were the boulders in the stream if you will. We were on Quaaludes that night. Apparently we hadn't mixed any alcohol in because I can still remember what happened.
We're standing there like WTF and a dude behind the counter is giving us shit about standing there. After a bit they get into a rhythm with their "What'll ya have" deal and it sort of becomes a song. The guy had to change up the song a bit to be able to fuck with us specifically, and it was beautiful. "What'llyahave, what'llyahave, M'on, guys quit dreamin' what'llyahave? Get ya mind on ya order get ya money in ya hand. Guys, y'all ever been here before? What'llyahave, what'llyahave c'mon guys this ain't no funeral, what'llyahave, WHAT'LLYAHAVE?" After we got through cracking up we got it together enough to order and finish up quickly. I'll never forget finally walking down to pay and looking back at the guy. He was shaking his head but he'd launched back into his normal rhythm and everything was good. I bet it's not like that any more. What a shame. Damn snowflake society.
The experience was funny enough to write a song about so that's what I did. The basic song was finished the next day. It was called "Fry Pie Go" after what they'd say if you ordered an apple turnover to take home. I still remember the music and most of the lyrics. We never did officially work the song out and learn it, but I communicated enough of it to O' that we were able to sing the transition part and the chorus (Fry pie go, fry pie go, etc.) well enough to crack ourselves up. What was funny about the song is I did a major tempo shift to illustrate what it was like to walk into the Varsity for the first time; slowed-down on Quaaludes, and having to downshift and get with a program we were just getting a crash-course in. "You mean to say we can't just stand here holding up traffic like a drunken bowling team while we try to figure out what to order?" Ha-ha, I guess you had to be there. We were...sort of.
One cool thing about music is that you can take the tempo and speed it up double or more as long as you do it evenly, at least if you want to keep the same pulse. You can take 60bpm (beats per minute) and increase it to 120 or 240bpm. The song will increase in tempo but the same beat is there, just doubled or quadrupled. It's all mathematics. So the tune started out with a verse in a very slow Jazz-type thing, which was us sort of grooving into the place for the first time. It said something like "What's the deal with this dude, I JUST WANT SOME FOOD!" There was a stop for half a beat and then the classic "FAP" of the snare drum on beat 4, and then it launched into a Rock thing for the chorus at four times the tempo.
That was supposed to be us realizing that the guy behind the counter was sort of singing this song and getting onto us at the same time, which was surreal for sure, and having to pop our heads out of our asses and get with the plan or risk total public humiliation. Not really, but it was pretty crazy and I wanted to try to get that across in song. I guess it was good enough to give me and O' a good laugh every now and then. It ain't no gnarly band story like most of them, but then again most of the other stories didn't lead to a tune. I could sing it to O' today from across the street and he'd get a laugh.
There you have it- a long-winded post about song-inspiring fast-ass food. Who'd'a thunk it. If you ever make it to 'Lanta, as I called it as a toddler, be ready for some traffic's ass, and ignore people walking around muttering to themselves, going "One day we'll be LA...one day we'll be LA..." and if you can get past all that then you might just have a good ol' time. Or maybe HIGH ol' TIMES, if it's still there, but I seriously doubt it. If you have a hankerin' for some hot-off-the-grill fast food, check the Varsity. The knot in my stomach isn't over lost burgers; it's about having a funny feeling that things have changed, and the rap that was Rap before Rap is gone as it was, or at least has been politically-corrected. They offended NO ONE but I'm sure some flower will be offended by being rushed ordering fast food, so (eventually by law) they'll drop it. I guess it'd render the song obsolete. The same could be said for society. Sorry if I've offended anyone. Have a nice day, and stay PC, y'all. Bon apetit, yo.
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