We always enjoy when local gay establishments get a little recognition from the national gay press.

Take the Advocate, for example. The gay glossy weighed in recently with its list of “Top 10 Gay C&W Bars” in the country.

The geographically-diverse list stops in Dallas, Oklahoma City, Denver, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Chicago and Tampa.

It also had this to say about a place right here in Atlanta, which landed as the No. Two best country and western gay bar in the U.S.

The Daisy Duke of country bars, Hoedown’s is a sassy Southern stop. A friendly atmosphere and free two-step lessons help newcomers feel at home. Located in the Midtown Promenade shopping center across from Piedmont Park, Hoedown’s has been doing the do-si-do for over 10 years. It’s one of the only truly 100 percent country-and-western gay bars in the country.

Trouble is, Hoedown’s doesn’t exist. Oh, it used to and we certainly knocked some beers back with the best of them listening to our favorite country crooners and wondering how people learn to dance like that. We even loved the ballsy tagline for the bar — “You can’t keep a good ‘ho down.”

But the bar shut down — more precisely, was shut down — in August 2007 by a Fulton County State Court judge. The bar’s owners, who bought the venue from the original owners in 2005, were snared in a legal mess that included shuttering the bar and selling its assets. The operator at the time, Ben Elliott, now sits in federal prison for nine years.

The Advocate probably should have taken as its first clue that a Hoedown’s website doesn’t exist. But the magazine ran with Aefa Mullholand’s article with Hoedown’s included as one of only two places among the 10 without a website to accompany its write-up.

The space off Monroe Drive later emerged as another gay C&W club, this one called 3 Legged Cowboy.

Why let a little fact-checking get in the way, eh?

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