Up until very recently, the Clermont Lounge was a one-of-a-kind place.
Now, it's more like a one-and-a-half-of-a-kind.
The half — and even that's being generous, size-wise — is a miniature version of the famed Clermont that mysteriously appeared recently on the side of a bridge running over Ralph McGill Boulevard on the Eastside Trail of the Atlanta Beltline. Actually, "appeared" is being generous as well. Most people walk right by the mini-Clermont without ever knowing it's there, located a few feet down in a cement pillar on the other side of some metal latticework fencing.
Even the real Clermont Lounge was unaware of this pint-sized homage to its larger-than-life presence a few blocks away on Ponce de Leon Avenue.
"We know nothing about that," said Jack Barnes, spokesperson for the beyond unique strip club-meets-dive-bar where Blondie reigns supreme and everyone from locals to celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence, Lady Gaga, Morgan Freeman and Robert de Niro frequent. "We'll have to go take a look at it one of these days."
What they and anyone else who really looks for it will see is a replica in miniature of what customers see as they approach the 51-year-old establishment that's in the basement of the Clermont Hotel: The fire engine red sign featuring a pair of dancing girls, as well as a graffiti-scarred door where the words "No Cameras!" are painted in big letters (They're not kidding: Mumford and Sons stopped by the Clermont Lounge after a gig in Centennial Olympic Park a few years ago and wound up getting kicked out for trying to snap some cell phone photos of the goings-on).
If the wee Clermont Lounge is signed by its artist, it’s impossible to tell from its inaccessible location. But it turns out to be the handiwork of Sven Licht, who moved here eight years ago from Germany and was taken by the Lounge and what it means in a very transient place like Atlanta.
“It represents old Atlanta to me … sort of the embassy of my old Atlanta,” Licht wrote in an email. “There may be places like this (that have) closed in the last years, for the new money that is coming in town.”
Licht's creation has nothing to do with Tiny Doors ATL, the public art project whose clever little doors have popped up all over town from the Beltline and Krog Street Tunnel to the side of an American Elm tree along the PATH Trail near the Carter Center. Tiny Doors ATL's doors are meant to be publicly accessible and interactive — indeed, visitors and other artists frequently add to or leave small offerings outside the doors, something the project encourages (just this past Mothers Day, they left tiny pieces of chalk outside one of their doors to encourage passersby to create tiny sidewalk messages and art of their own).
Conversely, Licht wanted people to have to work to find his little Clermont Lounge across from the Telephone Lofts building on Ralph McGill.
“I picked the place … dirty dark spot below the bridge across from the telephone factory because the CL is sort of hidden in a dirty dark spot,” Licht wrote. “Also, it is more fun if not everybody finds the door right away. It’s a treasure hunt, and not a miniature billboard.”
Related: Tiny Doors ATL — petite public art project looms large
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