Graveyard Tavern

This bar is fulfilling their namesake because what was once a cool bar in East Atlanta is now dead. The managers and some of the staff at Graveyard represent everything they claim to be against. The underlying personality of Graveyard is ‘F’ Buckhead and ‘F’ pretentiousness which is why I originally was a fan. The more I frequented this tavern the more it became apparent that the Graveyard is just up their own ass as the bars in Buckhead they claim to differ from. The managers are more pretentious than any bar staff in Buckhead. The only difference between the ‘S’ hole bars in Buckhead and the managers and establishment of The Graveyard Tavern is darker clothing and more tattoos. The tipping point that made me realize this tavern was a dump was early February 2011 when I was there with a group of friends celebrating a birthday. An independent movie on the range of televisions was playing as they often do around the bar and on the big screen. The movie had at least three scenes depicting a young woman being raped in the woods. The graphic rape scenes were hitting a personal and awkward note with one of the girls in our group. We had to aggressively complain three separate times to the management before they finally turned the film off. The request from us to turn the film to something else was treated as an attack to their bar culture. Idiots, it was movie depicting rape and it was offensive to a young girl plain and simple. As a real touch of class on their part when the film that was turned on in lieu of the rape movie was a movie showing horses engaged in graphic sexual acts. Nice one GY, way to get that symbolic last word in to trump our ridiculous request. There are some points to Graveyard I will credit. The atmosphere is pretty cool and is engaging when they’re not showing rape and horse porn. The food at times can be pretty good and they have a pool table, darts and cheap domestics. Overall, if you’re in East Atlanta avoid this ‘S’ box.

Four of us went last night for my husband's birthday. We sat in a booth for a solid 45 minutes and never saw a server. We had to go to the bar to get our drinks.

Since the booth backed up to the server station, I'm pretty confident that SOMEone working there must have at least noted the warm bodies in her station, but apparently s/he didn't think that asking if we were doing OK, did we need anything, etc. was worth the bother.

No worries - plenty of other establishments are happy to have my business.

I agree the food at the Graveyard is good, but how are you supposed to enjoy it unless you're a chimney-lipper? When I spent an evening there with a friend and had some drinks, by the time we decided to order food the bar had been rendered uninhabitable for non-smokers by those who (as usual with zero regard for the non-smokers around them) had decided to light up their cancer sticks and puff away. No serious bar/restaurant can allow smokers and non-smokers to be stuffed in together in this manner. The Graveyard is in fact large enough, IMHO, to have smoking and non-smoking areas, so their failure to do so is especially galling and reflects sloppy management.