The Gentleman’s City Guide
The
City
A banking city that dresses conservatively and negotiates hard. Quiet money, loud weekends. Underestimated by people from bigger cities — which is the whole advantage.
Resident since February 2007 · Thirteen districts on the map
The Map
Thirteen districts.
Each with its own hours, its own dress code and its own reason to go. Move across the city and it answers.
Hover or tab across the city · venues are being compiled
The Personal Map
Eight questions
worth answering.
Not a list of the best places. A list of the right places, which is a different thing and a harder one. The district map tells you where; this tells you what for.
Where to
Eat
The tables worth booking two weeks out, and the counter worth walking in for on a Tuesday.
Where to
Drink
Low light, good ice, a bartender who remembers your order and your name in that order.
Where to
Get Dressed
Tailors, shops, and the one man in this city who can save a badly cut shoulder.
Where to
Listen
Rooms with a sound system somebody actually paid for, and a crowd that lets it work.
Where to
Meet
Neutral ground. Good acoustics. Nobody performing for anybody.
Where to
Think
Where the phone goes face down and stays there for two hours.
Where to
Celebrate
For the nights that earned it. There are fewer of these than people pretend.
Where to
Build
Desks, studios and back rooms where the actual work gets done, unglamorously.
The right size to actually be known.
Big enough that the money is real. Small enough that if you do something well on a Friday, the right people have heard about it by Monday.
That is not true in New York. It is barely true in Atlanta. It is completely true here, and most people who live here have never worked out how to use it.
Uptown agrees things. It almost never celebrates them — that happens somewhere else, usually within two miles.
ConfirmedThe dress code is unwritten in every room that matters, and enforced in all of them.
ConfirmedThe best table in the city is not in the best restaurant in the city.
UnverifiedThree rooms decide more than the rest of the map combined. Two of them are private.
SealedStill being written
The venues under each district are being compiled — bars, lounges, speakeasies, country clubs, the tables worth knowing. It goes up when it is right, not when it is finished.