The place to be in Atlanta in the 1980’s was Timothy John’s.
Located off Roswell Road in Sandy Springs, it was one of the city’s hottest nightspots. Celebrities coming through town frequently visited what was one of the first sports bars in town.
Tim Ecclestone opened the bar in 1978 while still playing for the Atlanta Flames. The doors stayed open for 10 years before he moved the bar to north Fulton, renaming it TJ’s.
“It was special,’’ said Ecclestone, now 68, still showing up almost every day some 38 years later to open TJ’s. “It was the place to hang. All different types would show up in there. But we must have done something right because we are still going at it.’’
On any given night at Timothy John’s, the bar could be filled with players from all the professional teams in town. But it was the Flames players that made the place rock, a group which included Eric Vail, a hard-shooting winger, Tom Lysiak, the team center captain, and Willi Plett, the club’s bad boy.
Ecclestone still plays golf with Vail and Plett, both regulars at TJ’s. Lysiak passed away a few weeks ago at 63 after a battle with leukemia.
“We always hung together, we were the foursome’’ said Ecclestone. “It was tough losing Tommy as we were just at his funeral. I still play golf with Eric and Willi and we play a lot of cards. In fact, Eric is in here almost every day.’’
But while local athletes set the atmosphere in the old Sandy Springs location, it was also a place to see icons like Evel Knievel. The motorcycle daredevil rarely missed a chance to see Ecclestone when he was in town and a strong relationship was created until Evel died in 2007. Ecclestone had befriended Knievel early in his hockey career.
“Evel was incredible,’’ Ecclestone said. “Here is a guy that grew up in Butte (Montana) and when he was young, he was on the wrong side of everything. Then he had this vision of being a daredevil and I remember being in Timothy John’s one time and it was packed with people and he asked me, ‘Who do you think the biggest gambler in this place is?’ I said I don’t know and he said, ‘It’s me because I bet my life.’’’
Ecclestone went to see Knievel jump in Las Vegas and was standing next to the doctor who was on hand on Dec. 31, 1967, for his infamous jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace in 1967. He crashed and remained in a coma for 29 days.
‘That doctor was telling me that if he could not have been there, Evel would have died,’’ he said. “He said he went over there and kept him alive until they could get him to the hospital. I loved Evel. I could sit there at the bar and talk to him for hours.’’
About the Author
