It was a women’s bar, primarily, which we don’t always get very much. There was lots of tables and pool tables, but they also had this other area that was like a lounge,” L’Hoste said. There was several bars that you could go and sit at. “When you walked in, there was a huge dance floor. Sixteen-piece orchestras played in the early evenings for the older crowd, and the patio stage was the place to be on Friday nights. The Martini Room was home to jazz, gospel and comedians.
It was “really hard to get bored” once customers walked through the door. “As a gay man, I felt perfectly comfortable going in there.” “It wasn’t just a lesbian bar,” Atlanta LGBT historian Dave Hayward said. It was a rockin’ bar Thursday through Saturday, but offered a place to hang out Sunday through Wednesday. Stacey L’Hoste, an Atlanta resident who frequented the Otherside, remembers dancing under that same disco ball, drinking beer with her girlfriend and watching the late drag queen Amber Richardson perform. I remember being there after hours or before hours when it was closed, my parents were doing their business and they would turn the disco ball on for me so I could play on the dance floor. “I don’t remember a lot, but the stuff that I do remember is kind of magical. Kellyann was a young child when her mothers had the Otherside. Sometimes, when they had no family left, the Otherside became their family, taking them in on Thanksgiving and Christmas, turning the bar into a holiday feast for those who couldn’t go home. Her proudest memory at the Otherside, which opened in 1990, was talking to her customers, many of which came from broken homes that threw them out. “My dream again there was just to have a club for everybody to have fun, to have different sections of the club, different ages.” “It was very important to me early on that I would have a business, no matter what it would be, where everyone was welcome: gay, straight, black, white,” Beverly said. The family moved to the city and grew by two - Kellyann McMahon and Justin Ford. She went to Atlanta and bought 1924 Piedmont, formerly a steakhouse. The bar expanded, and Beverly decided to franchise it, despite regular attempts from city officials to shut the place down because it was owned by a lesbian. She and her business partner drew names out of a hat to decide what to call their new nightclub. The two began their lives in Florida, where Beverly opened up the first Otherside Lounge in Fort Lauderdale. He said, ‘You better hold onto that one.’ I’ll never forget that as long as I live. “We were on a blind date, but I fell in love with Dana instantly and I didn’t want to do that,” Beverly said. The women she’d dated previously were wealthy, less likely to take advantage of her own money - she owned several salons and a nightclub at the time - and she fought her initial feelings for Dana.
Just do this one.’ I said, ‘One time, that’s it, and it better be good,’” Dana said.īeverly was cautious of settling down. Neither 21-year-old Dana Ford nor 40-year-old Beverly McMahon wanted to go. Long before Atlanta heard of Eric Rudolph, two women met on a blind date in Florida.
In the beginning Dana Ford, former manager of Otherside Lounge and partner of former owner Beverly McMahon, returns to the site of the bar, now home to Midtown Urology. And he especially didn’t like LGBT people who owned bars like the Otherside Lounge, putting their sexuality in the public eye. With its well-lit, doctors-office-sterile atmosphere and multitude of artwork on the walls, it’s hard to believe that 20 years ago, 1924 Piedmont Road was home to a bar where two bombs were hidden by a man named Eric Robert Rudolph. The rest of the place is home to Midtown Urology. The two-story brick building there has a personal trainer occupying half the downstairs. The regular traffic hustles up and down Atlanta’s Piedmont Road, and occasionally a car turns into the unassuming parking lot at 1924. It’s a breezy, sunny day in February just cool enough to require a jacket.