A night at your favorite gay watering hole in Atlanta is a time to reflect on life, cherish the friends that are so special and exhibit your tolerance of others who aren’t like you. Puhleese. It’s for getting drunk, being snarky with drag queens and snippy with those outside of your clique, and getting laid. To help your gay nightlife – whatever its ambitions – here are a few things that should be banned from our bars. Forever.

Smoking

Really, Marlboro Man. It’s time to kick the habit, even if just for a few hours. Bars should help by banning this nasty habit inside their venues. No one wants to inhale your second-hand smoke as we’re trying to knock back our second, third and more cocktails. No one likes the burn of a cigarette on their arm from some sashaying drunk twink that can’t hold their liquor or their smokes like a responsible adult. Cockpit, Mixx and Bellissima – we salute you for your insistence on burying the buds before stepping inside.

Flip-flops

Yes, fashionable queens. This easy breezy summer footwear has no place in a bar, club, speakeasy, tavern or most any other nightlife hotspot. Your feet are not the body part we want to see or cruise while we’re working it in the bar. And really, you should care more for your feet than to bare them in such hazardous conditions where they risk getting stepped on, spilled on and otherwise damaged because shit happens when you’re in a bar. Like broken beer bottles and there you are with your exposed toes, pedicured or not. Ouch.

Drags shows

Now hold on, all you drag wannabes. Don’t get ready to cut us. We’re not advocating an across the nightlife spectrum ban on drag shows like we want for smoking. We’re not talking a shotgun approach to what seems to be Atlanta’s fascination with having a drag show in every bar on every night. Our approach is more surgical: Only have drag shows in bars with enough space to comfortably mix the performing queens with the drinking queens. Otherwise, it just turns into a sloppy mess that’s uncomfortable for everyone, especially the nightlifers who are also trying to smoke while wearing flip-flips.

Bachelorette parties

Listen ladies, we love our fag hags and are happy you’re marrying your high school sweetheart that we blew that one time in the lockeroom after practice. But please, please we implore you to take your tacky friends and direct your tacky white limo to someplace other than our bars. You get loud, you spill drinks, you shreek louder than us and really, it’s annoying. You spoil our evenings and piss off the bartender because you don’t tip and they take their frustration out on us after you leave. It’s okay to leave your gay for that one special night. When you do, leave your soon-to-be hubby with us, too. We’ll take good care of him. Really.

Grindr

Isn’t it enough that you interrupt our dinners together with your incessant interaction with Grindr than with those sitting across the table? Yes, we know the waiter is cute, gay and interested in you – he’s going to burn a hole right through your crotch as hard he’s looking every time he comes to the table. You never notice because you’re buried in your iPhone trying to get the Daddy two booths over to send his Top Daddy Dominator pics to you. Same goes for the bar. You’re there to drink with us and watch drag in this cramped, smoky place. If not, you’re there to cruise and isn’t it easier to just look up, walk around and see the hottie you want to bag face-to-face rather than screen to pixelated screen? Besides, if you’re walking around the bar with your head buried in your Android, you’re going to step on our flip-flopped feet and singe our worked-out biceps with your cigarette. You might run into a drag queen in the middle of a show, too, and girl that would be bad for you.

Plastic cups

This one is for you, gentle bar owners. Do not deliver our over-priced cocktail in a plastic container. Do you know how silly we look sipping it through a straw in a plastic cup? Yes, yes. That looks silly even with a glass. But still. We are classy ladies and deserve a glass. We'll guzzle my PBR in a can, thank you very much, but we want our Vodka and something with a slice of something else in a glass. A clean one. So we can drop it on the toes of the queen next to us who’s on Grindr and keeps flicking her ashes on us. Did we miss something you’d like banned from the bars? Leave us a comment below. Photo by Lea Bennett Photography