Clayton street shoots through downtown Athens, Georgia like a clogged artery, bringing into central downtown both the oxygen of consumers and the plasma of wares to be sold. There are bars, clothing stores, a few restaurants, music stores and more bars. Clayton street alone has fourteen bars, and most of them are packed on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. (Thursday nights exist as a kind of strained extension of the weekend, probably due to the fact that liquor and beer cannot be sold on Sundays in the state of Georgia.) In the old black and white pictures of downtown hidden in the Spaghetti Store or Rocky’s Pizza one can see the kegs lined up in stacks on horse drawn carts before Prohibition.

The Clayton channel is different from the veins and arteries in a body though, because it accomplishes both tasks of push and pull. On any given afternoon, an onlooker can find the push of at least two beer trucks and a UPS van parked along its five block stretch. By five, the business men and women filter out of town, dispersing from the banks and shops, sometimes stopping in for happy hour somewhere before being pushed out to the suburbs. There is a moment of calm before the storm then. A quiet afternoon requiem settles in around the dogwoods, oaks and old brick buildings before Clayton adjusts its flow and a sucking sound starts. Around seven, the push of the streets becomes a pull, and the drinkers and smokers and partyers of the evening begin to trickle in. By ten or eleven o’ clock, the sidewalks are coarsing. All parking in the city vanishes. The lights go down and the fun begins. The bars fill up and spill out onto the street as twenty-somethings in flocks of friends, gaggles of smartly dressed girls, and herds of late night gentleman thrillseekers, migrate from favored hangout to favored hangout.

At a little after four o’ clock, the June sun is still vibrant, flexing its solar flare biceps and punching the asphalt which bleeds heat. The Thunderchicken blasts down Clayton like a smuggler’s ship through a blockade, as John looks anxiously from one side of the street to the other for a parking spot. Ian is turned halfway in the passenger seat, with a cigarette in his mouth discussing “business” with Travis who is lounging in the center of the backseat, mafia-style. The bluesy rock and roll sounds of John’s bandThe Water Departmentblare through the speakers at Ian and Travis’s request.

“We’ll chill out tonight and tomorrow night, kick back, have some fun, until we get the information; and then get the shit out this weekend. We’ll have it done in two days.”

“Well…” Travis considers it for a moment. “Three,” he says, skeptically.

“Nah, dude, don’t worry about it. We’ll get it done.”

“Are you getting all twenty in a bunch?” Travis asks. What they needed were passport photos and index cards with information on height and weight and such. Plus, they usually demanded the money up fronta price which fluctuated wholly dependently on how well they knew who they were dealing with.

“I’ll get most of the stuff by tomorrow, I’m sure.”

“Right on.”

“Stop discussing your criminal delinquency in my vehicle!” John cries out as he pulls into a spot in front of Flannagan’s Irish Pub. They all get out of the car, fetch Travis’s amp from the trunk and hit the sidewalk.

“I gotta’ run down to the bankmake a deposit. I’ll catch up with you guys at the store,” Ian says, darting off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

Travis and John head up the street toward the Musician’s Warehouse. “You know what kind of mixer you’re getting?”

“Yeah. I came down here a couple of of days ago to check them out. One of the guys said he’d cut me a good deal.”

“Very cool.”

“Yeah. I think it’s just because we’ve bought a lot of our shit from them.”

“The band?”

“Yeah.”

They open the door to the store and amble inside. “You’re playin’ this weekend, right?” Travis asks.

“At the Watt.”

“Awesome.”

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