Clermont Lounge subject of new book: Characters drive the story

A labor of love in Atlanta’s quirkiest, celebrity-loved dive has come to fruition.

Dana Hazels Seith, a former CNN producer, will join one or two of the Clermont Lounge’s cast of irregulars tonight for a coming out party for the book “No Cameras: The Clermont Lounge.”

It was a three-year process of interviews, learning, and getting kicked out of the side show that positions itself as a strip club. Then she had to get to know the owners, find a publisher, think, write and hang out with the workers.

“I was naïve enough to go into this project with all I had to get it published and get it out there. Had I been a little more into it, I would have known what a big bite I was chewing off. Only halfway through it I realized how deep this rabbit hole was.” Seith said.

The Clermont has accumulated a veneer of history as deep as anything in Atlanta, when you consider most of what you see driving through the city was built from the 1970s to the 1990s. The Clermont has operated in the basement of a last-century brick hotel since 1965, and you can get the feeling that many of the characters you see inside had been hanging around for a few years when it opened.

It’s been described as a lot of things, from “The Greatest Show on Earth!” (Clermont website) to “less a dive than a complete submersion,” by a writer for self-consciously nouveau Southern “Garden & Gun” magazine, to “eye-searing” by a Yelp reviewer. The Clermont is known for being “non-discriminatory” when hiring its dancing girls. If you’ve never seen a 60-year-old stripper, well, you can check that off your list after visiting.

It’s unique ambiance and famous characters, such as Blondie the dancer (the women have to drop quarters into a juke box for their shows), attracts every college freshman and celebrity with a taste for Pabst Blue Ribbon and the unusual. The film and recording stars inevitably end up in photos, from Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro to Anthony Bourdain and the band Mumford & Sons, who got kicked out of the place last year for reportedly taking pictures with a cell phone and tussling with staff — “No Cameras.”

The same cast of characters that own (Tracey Brown and Kathi Martin), work and frequent the place is what attracted Seith, not the salacious side of the business, and she spent months untangling various versions of stories of the history, events and characters. Artem Nazarov came aboard as the photographer, and his artfully done shots document life there.

During the process, Seith took time off to have a child, and when she returned she realized one aspect of the Clermont that makes it a true institution.

“When I went back, it felt like no time had passed. You walk into the Clermont, and it is the same as it was the last time you were there. There is something great about that. You can depend on the Clermont Lounge.”