Buckhead Village: The Backlot Parking Tales

Lyrics

We never went straight in.
You remember that?
The real door was the back lot.

Summer, 1999. The asphalt was still breathing the day's heat.
Eighty-five degrees at midnight, behind Lulu's Bait Shack.
Past the dumpsters for Caribou, past the service door for Chaos.
Every car a different radio station, a different drum machine fighting for air.
Hoods up, coolers out.
A tailgate party for a game that never started.
Just us, under the humming orange of the sodium lights.

This wasn't the waiting room.
This was the main event.
This was the kingdom of cracked white lines and bottle caps.
The real club wasn't inside Tongue & Groove.
It was here, on the hot blacktop, between the bumpers and the last cigarette.

Your trunk speaker rattling the license plate.
My speakers answering back from the Civic.
Someone had a story about a bouncer at Mako's.
Someone else was pouring something clear into a paper cup.
And that one payphone against the brick wall...
It would ring and ring, a ghost call for a bartender who needed a ride home.
We'd just let it go, another piece of the noise.

This wasn't the waiting room.
This was the main event.
This was the kingdom of cracked white lines and bottle caps.
The real club wasn't inside Tongue & Groove.
It was here, on the hot blacktop, between the bumpers and the last cigarette.

Then came January, 2000.
The orange lights got washed out by the blue and red.
Suddenly there were cameras, and tape, and questions.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution parked where we used to park.
The game was over.
They were just counting the score.
And the asphalt got cold.

Now it's all valet signs and perfect concrete.
No room for a cooler, no space for a memory.
But sometimes, driving down East Paces Ferry...
I can still hear the glass breaking.
I can still hear us laughing.