{"id":630265,"date":"2026-02-28T12:43:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T12:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/630265\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T12:43:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T12:43:28","slug":"the-hawks-honoring-the-magic-city-strip-club-isnt-really-worth-your-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/630265\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hawks honoring the Magic City strip club isn\u2019t really worth your outrage"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are worse things to be vexed about these days than the Atlanta Hawks sponsoring \u201cMagic City Night\u201d next month<\/a> before and during their March 16 game with the Orlando Magic.<\/p>\n

Go ahead and vex, if that\u2019s your thing. I\u2019ll pass.<\/p>\n

Magic City is a strip club. Let\u2019s get that front and center for the uninitiated. The Hawks brought well-deserved laughs on themselves by trying to play it cute in their news release Thursday, calling it an \u201ciconic cultural institution\u201d rather than what it\u2019s most known for being.<\/p>\n

But Magic City has also been in business for 40 years, in case you\u2019re uncertain about its impact and longevity. It has been central to the development of the rap, trap and hip-hop scene in the city, which has produced a slew of multi-million-selling artists in the last 20 years: T.I., Migos, Jermaine Dupri, 2 Chainz, Killer Mike, Big Boi, Future and numerous others. And many of them got their starts handing out mixtapes to DJs at Magic City, particularly on what became known as \u201cMagic City Mondays\u201d at the club, praying that the influential DJs would play them \u2014 and the dancers on stage wouldn\u2019t clown the music as they performed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMagic City became an unofficial A&R hub,\u201d filmmaker Bayan Joonam, one of the executive producers of a five-part docuseries on Magic City that ran last year on STARZ, told Georgia Public Radio<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

It is, nonetheless, quite unusual for an NBA team to embrace and center a business in which, in the most charitable interpretation possible, women take off their clothes for money and dance provocatively in (very) close proximity to the (mostly, but not all) male patrons. The NBA is, compared with most other major sports leagues, pretty progressive. But it\u2019s still a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, with fans from all over the world and all parts of the political spectrum. Including some who, whether fans of the team or not, aren\u2019t cool with the Hawks centering a place like Magic City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those folks, though, probably didn\u2019t buy the nearly 2,000 tickets the team sold, according to a team spokesman, in the first 24 hours after it announced the promotion. Or the more than 90 percent approval the team says it\u2019s received on social media since Thursday\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that I\u2019ve gotten as many requests for tickets to a game,\u201d said Melissa Proctor, the Hawks\u2019 and State Farm Arena\u2019s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. \u201cI have people saying, \u2018Hold a hoodie for me on the side.’\u201d<\/p>\n

For this and other reasons, the Hawks aren\u2019t backing up at all. Their organization, up to and including ownership, has longstanding ties to the club.<\/p>\n

The actress, producer and philanthropist Jami Gertz \u2014 a co-owner of the team along with her husband, Hawks governor Tony Ressler \u2014 co-executive produced the STARZ docuseries. Her son Nick, now the team\u2019s principal adviser to his father, was a Georgetown University classmate of Cole Brown, the author and producer<\/a> who was helping Dupri get his memoir together a few years ago. One of the chapters in the book was about the impact of Magic City on the Atlanta music scene.<\/p>\n

And the first people Gertz met when she and Ressler attended their first game in State Farm Arena were the sons of the club\u2019s legendary founder and owner \u2014 Michael \u201cMr. Magic\u201d Barney \u2014 JuJu and Michael \u201cLittle Magic\u201d Barney.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know who they were; I didn\u2019t know what their family business was,\u201d Gertz said. \u201cBut they extended their hand and said if you need anything, we\u2019re here for you. They were the first people to extend Southern hospitality to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gertz, well-known for her roles in \u201cThe Lost Boys,\u201d \u201cTwister\u201d and \u201cStill Standing,\u201d was intrigued by the club, as Hawks fans, through the years, told her about how much business was done there and how the club\u2019s food made it a go-to hangout spot for people who \u2014 really \u2014 weren\u2019t just there for the strippers. Once she began digging into the club\u2019s impact and history, her day job as a storyteller kicked in. Among the many things that intrigued Gertz was that every dancer she contacted to ask to be in the documentary agreed, quickly, to be on camera and tell the unvarnished truth about working in the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst and foremost, this was an American family, a quintessential American family, that\u2019s been in business for four decades,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s a father and son business. The second (reason) was, this was a love note to my adopted home, Atlanta. I love it so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

From afar, it may seem absurd. But Magic City and the city\u2019s other strip clubs are part of Atlanta\u2019s cultural vibe, like go-go music is in D.C., or rapping and breaking are in Brooklyn, or jazz is in New Orleans. You can turn your nose up at it or look down upon the people who work there. But it\u2019s more likely than not that your favorite hooper<\/a> or football player \u2014 or, politician \u2014 has probably been up in Magic City over the decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt my funeral, don\u2019t cry. I had a hell of a run,\u201d the elder Barney said in a long, NSFW oral history of the club<\/a> in Atlanta Magazine in 2019.<\/p>\n

To be sure, it hasn\u2019t been all Disney World at the club. Every dancer didn\u2019t have a great experience<\/a>. The elder Barney was convicted in 1994 of a single count of conspiracy for allegedly being part of a drug ring. He served seven years in prison before being released in 2002. And the club became known as a favorite hangout spot for members of the Atlanta wing of the notorious drug trafficking Black Mafia Family, with many crediting BMF members for introducing the \u201cmake it rain\u201d concept to strip clubs.<\/p>\n

Barney regained ownership of the club after returning from prison. He doesn\u2019t run the day-to-day operations as much anymore but is still the club\u2019s central figure and remains beloved by the community for not just having superstars in his establishment,<\/a> but welcoming the city\u2019s rank-and-file with open arms, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, what\u2019s most inspiring about Mr. Maj is that he cares about, he\u2019s kept his prices reasonable,\u201d Gertz said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t forget about the regular Joes that come to his club, even though it\u2019s world-renowned. The swag is seen and sold all over the world, but he still runs it like a regular club. Many of (the dancers) were cheerleaders, they were musicians. They went to Spelman (College, the renowned HBCU for Black women in the city) and got extra money from dancing. The pride in Atlanta really comes out in it. They all came from different backgrounds. I think my idea of why someone dances changed dramatically after speaking with dancers who\u2019d danced there for years, dancers who dance there currently. \u2026 three of the dancers, we filmed them at homes that they owned. This is not a shameful thing. This is a family-run business and a family-run atmosphere, if I can say that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hawks didn\u2019t need to get permission from the NBA to have a team-themed night. This was all their doing. (They, like other teams, do have to clear the types of merchandise they sell at or from such team-themed events with the league beforehand.)<\/p>\n

Proctor, who\u2019s been EVP and CMO of the Hawks since 2016, said the idea of doing a Magic City night when Orlando came to town is not new. Gertz\u2019s involvement in the docuseries only heightened the team\u2019s desire to do something.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the schedule came out for this year, and we saw we played the Magic on a Monday, we thought, \u2018This would be cool,’\u201d Proctor said. \u201cWhat we thought about was, if we were going to do this, our motto is \u2018True to Atlanta.\u2019 And we thought if we could do this in a way that\u2019s classy to the city, with no dancers (performing), and is part of the connective tissue, that\u2019s how it netted out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team chose to feature the \u201cG-rated\u201d elements of the club, Gertz said.<\/p>\n

To that end, the club\u2019s famous lemon pepper wings \u2014 both the ones named after three-time NBA Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams and the \u201cregular\u201d version \u2014 will be on sale, along with a special version of the Hawks\u2019 Peachtree City Edition hoodies. A live episode of the team\u2019s \u201cAtlanta AF\u201d podcast (Atlanta And Friends, Proctor made sure to note), with the elder Barney and three-time Grammy Award-winning rapper T.I., will be broadcast pregame. T.I. will perform at halftime.<\/p>\n

The club\u2019s dancers will not take part in any aspect of the evening, Proctor said, but employees of the club will have access to a suite at the arena to watch the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis wasn\u2019t a cakewalk, easy decision,\u201d Proctor said. \u201cWe had to make sure we positioned the experience in a way that made sense for our business. That was 100 percent of how we landed where we did. So, dancers, no, but they talked extensively in the documentary about the music being a big part of the experience and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, I had to point out: Some of your fans, and some who aren\u2019t fans at all, legitimately object to the idea of celebrating the exploits of a strip club.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I understand the question,\u201d Proctor said, \u201cwe\u2019re spotlighting a place that\u2019s had a huge impact on Atlanta culture, at the end of the day. There\u2019s nothing that\u2019s going to be super provocative at the game. We are at the top of the league in our game presentation. If you\u2019re not from Atlanta, you may not understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not from the ATL. But I understand how, often, a city\u2019s actual history \u2014 who got rich and who didn\u2019t, and why the neighborhoods got to be how they are \u2014 is far from pristine. Empires, criminal and political, were built at the turn of the last century on booze, including alcohol sold and distributed during Prohibition. There\u2019s a lot of generational wealth in this country that was built on the free labor of others, from slaves to indentured servants to just plain poor folks, who received no benefits for their backbreaking work.<\/p>\n

So, as long as the club\u2019s most important employees keep their clothes on and don\u2019t display their talents at midcourt on March 16, it\u2019s not something to lose one\u2019s mind over.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun, and it\u2019s cheeky,\u201d Gertz said of Magic City Night \u2014 and, no, she wasn\u2019t making a pun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are worse things to be vexed about these days than the Atlanta Hawks sponsoring \u201cMagic City Night\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3776],"tags":[676,208,3874,7,2284,677,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-630265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-hawks","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-hawks","10":"tag-atlantahawks","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-culture","13":"tag-hawks","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116148319522030348","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}