boy. Weekend ran together.

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more aggressively once I found the wormhole.

I can't tell you how many hundreds of ND and OSU fans looking to drown their sorrows/celebrate walked by a closed Hard Rock Cafe that would have made a tidy sum of money if they were open.

and the concession prices were, indeed, wonderful.

But Atlanta sucks. There's no good reason to host a major sporting event there, especially not a college sporting event.

We didn't encounter a single commercial enterprise anywhere downtown that didn't seem taken by surprise that the event was happening. Completely understaffed and undersupplied.

Buckhead, where we hoteled, was, I suppose, fine, but there's nothing out there of any interest. Just a bunch of generic suburban commercial zone crap.

You know everyone is headed to the same area.

The town is great and the Rose Bowl as a tailgating venue is fantastic, especially on the golf course. And then you get to watch a game in the Rose Bowl.

BTW you did see me at the TG LOL! Like with IU, with the winter gear it was hard to recognize people. I really wish the weather was warmer in order to hit more tailgates, but was still great.

Missed you Jay, maybe next year in Pasadena?

Being near forests so there's a ready supply of cheap wood to use for building can have its downside.

city but 7million+ in the area.

at about 9 am.

It was kind of a hard place to find but there were a few hundred peeps.

Lots of people at that game. Saw some guys I had not seen since college.

Saw albie but not at the TG.

Seemed like mostly Dillon, Alumni and Holy Cross.

Did see Stams and Stonebreaker at FADO. Hilarious.

Just too many people to see and too little time.

is that like 85% of the businesses in FQ are bars and/or restaurants. All of that stuff seemed more sparse and spread out in downtown Atlanta (which is, in its defense, probably closer to a normal city downtown), thus putting more stress on those spots individually.

it doesn't feel like ATL.

I went to Highland Tap, the Majestic, Moes and Joes and Taco Mac.

It was slammed if you did not get there at the correct time.

Highland Tap was like a damn SEC/SCC sorority house.

Good restaurants, bars, and the concert venue, the Roxy, moved there from Buckhead Village. I've seen a number of great shows there. Downtown is mostly for tourists, esp. since CNN left for the burbs. The place is dead at night if there isn't a game or concert going on. Even then, it isn't great.

I left at 10 pm on Sunday night. Nice people there but they were definitely not ready. Saw them turn away Shane Gillis because they couldn’t find him a table.

all over the state!

We'd been told to expect a nightmare so we got there almost 3 hours before takeoff. Literally just walked up through general security and had our pick of TSA agents to check IDs -- no line at all.

My sister's family flew out of there 2 days later and she sent a photo of the crowd in the same spot -- just an absolute zoo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Atlanta's down town is just not very warm. Not a lot of residential.

The new baseball park is kind of cool, they created a nice feeling up there, but still very new.

I prefer lived in.

character.

By 11 pm we were down to “two of whatever you have left.” I asked the manager in all sincerity if this was a going out of business party. He wasn’t amused but had no explanation why they weren’t stocked up.

They oversold it and a number of our friends got turned away, even though they had prepaid. Then they were running out of beer left and right. Guinness was gone in the first hour. All for a cool $160 a head. Great job everybody.

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A 15 minute drive to downtown. Indpls should host basically everything.

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and really convenient to a number of places (Grant Park, Virginia Highlands, Inman Park). Not a huge fan of the restaurants/bars in downtown, other than Park. We usually go to Wild Leap brewery before Atlanta United games and eat at the food trucks there.

The upper decks are low slung and pretty vertical so that the best seats are probably up there. Right on top of the field.

Wonder if that's eased some of this.

and large families?

It's the best I've ever seen in terms of sightlines, amenities and value.

How is the Superdome? Is it a good place to watch the game?

over at his college buddy's empty loft in Cabbagetown, which was fucking great. Spent a couple hours at Milltown Tavern early Sunday and then had a burger down the street at Little's. Later in the day, we pulled some other friends staying downtown who got tired of the huge crowds back to Milltown on Sunday evening, which was a much more relaxing and enjoyable experience overall. Stuff around the stadium and Centennial Park was a lot more hit-and-miss in terms of crowd, stock, quality of food/service, etc. Not unpredictable but certainly could have been better.

Fado in Buckhead ran out of Guinness about 9:00, which was odd because the CFP signs were up at most of the hotels in Buckhead so clearly the business community knew.

BTW, shout out to the front desk guy at the Hotel Colee in Buckhead who was a legit ND fan not just doing the host thing wearing the colors. Said he was looking forward to CJ Carr next year. I think Marcus Freeman has truly made ND likeable to the casual fan and potentially opened up a whole new demographic for ND.

As I said, it was like showing up at the neighborhood tavern except it's "Trivia Night" with the most obnoxious host ever. Except a hundred times louder and you can't walk out.

Still, I suspect that bit was a CFP-induced problem and not necessarily MB itself.

since the downtown area is not a particularly great area. I like MB but agree that the acoustics there, esp. for American football games, is way too loud. If we have to pick top bowl sites, I like New Orleans or Miami (can't speak to Pasadena or Glendale).

When I got to the pregame gathering on Monday, people were ordering buckets of Saison DuPont at 6.5% ABV because it was all the place had.

Atlanta is also so big. I preferred Miami where everyone just headed to the beach and you could meet up or run into people.

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--
Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

Although no clue how it is to fly in or out of there. But there's a really nice setup by Lucas Oil.

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Freeman's got so much riz they need to call him Aura Parseghian

The sound system was ear-splittingly loud. Obnoxiously so.

Having a DJ for a game is hokey and stupid. While we were down 3 TDs, ND fans were hamming it up for the camera like they were in a club.

The rows of seats were unpleasantly narrow such that it seemed like a major imposition to leave your seat for food or a piss.

I spent the second half standing at the railing of a concourse bar. We could see most of the field, but at the end, the jags in the luxury seats in front of us all stood up and largely obscured the view.

Big thumbs down for me.

Some of my best friends from school live in Atlanta, and I had a ball seeing them. But overall, it was a pretty poor game experience.

One of them who travels a ton figured it out early yesterday and told the others coming a couple hours later to head directly to International and then double back on the train. It was the only thing that saved them from missing their flight.

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Opening early next year. Heh. I rode a shuttle from 1 to Bradley last year and the screen/audio was of the beloved Mayor telling riders how excited she was for the people mover to be opening in spring of 2023. Next you'll tell me the Green/K line extensions (north and south) will both be fully functional in time for the Olympics, as planned and promised.

--
The 2007 ND-UCLA game was a once in a lifetime experience, I hope

like the Super Bowl or National Championship or Final Four?

In theory, it seems as they have all the infrastructure to make it successful (a domed stadium, big airport, big convention space, lots of hotels) but I'm not sure it all works. The stadium was cool (and concession prices very reasonable) but other than that, meh. Atlanta in January/February can always be a bit dicey weather wise and while I know parts of Atlanta are very nice, I am not sure I can say that about downtown Atlanta.

Someone floated the idea of the Rose Bowl hosting the CFP title game each year and I do like that idea.

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As busy as that airport can get, they know where the issues are and continually work to resolve them, including the LAX Automated People Mover opening early next year.

There are some airports where Priority is faster. Or where precheck is faster. Or where Clear is faster.

At Hartsfield, literally everything sucks.

It was almost outside. It went from the Northside through the middle, snaked around baggage claim, along the outside doors, back on itself to the middle, then along the interior walls to the security entrance. This was TSA PreCheck. People kept asking each other if that’s what it was.

What a mess.

I had priority status on American and somehow lucked into learning that there was a separate priority line and so breezed through (relatively) in about 25 minutes, but my friend didn’t and it took him nearly 2 hours to get through the same process. It was chaos.

We started waiting in that line for downstairs Clear/Pre Check. Then some TSA guy told us the line at that other end of the terminal was only "7 minutes long." So we trucked over there with our stuff but ended up waiting 50 minutes to get through.

The luggage scanning process was interminable. I went through the metal detector, then waited 4-5 minutes for my luggage to come through. I couldn't believe how slow it was, had to have been a major factor in the long lines.

Apparently the hack was to go to the international terminal where the security line was shortest, then back to your terminal on the tram.

Friends were stuck in a 2-hour security line and let me know, so I hustled over there several hours ahead of my flight. A rep suggested I go to a “downstairs line”, where the Clear queue was a mile long, but I breezed through in about 15 minute with TSA pre. But yeah, all seemed pretty disorganized. You’d think one of the busiest airports in the country would have its act together.

I fly out of there fairly regularly and despise TSA there. They constantly change the procedure and yell at folks who don't follow it. When I fly out of other airports, it is so much nicer. There are times I'll drive to Chattanooga to fly out just to avoid the shitshow.

Is there a major airport in the US that does a worse job than Hartsfield with regard to TSA security? This wasn't a one-time thing but obviously made worse by the influx of ND-aOSU fans. But does seem like every time I'm there the airport employees are confused about what they should do with respect to creating lines, organization, and structure.

“I’ll either surf or ski”

We actually had the same thing happen to us at the Crowne Plaza (now Sonesta) in Redondo over the holidays. System was down and we got an occupied room. Luckily the guy’s latch was on.

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this afternoon as the snow was falling. Taxied out, thinking okay, we’re good. Proceeded to sit for 90 minutes while waiting to de-ice.

Made it to Denver, but missed connection.

At hotel near airport, massive water leak knocked out the front desk systems. Staff furiously trying to manage the place on notebooks and clipboards. Can’t print keys so they’re running people to their rooms.

Get to my room, she unlocks the door and there’s a couple in bed. Shit, sorry!

Second room — same thing! But at least the guy had it latched.

Finally in a room of my own. Deadbolted it just in case.