Holed up at the Nail

The gigantic gun in front of the Rusty Nail sucked me into this joint for the first time. The enormous iron revolver sits upright, pointing across the street at a Buford Highway strip mall. It billows smoke all day, as if fired constantly. It's been sitting there smoking for years, since long before a certain strip club on Cheshire Bridge started (and stopped) displaying similarly threatening Apache helicopters on its roof. The gun's a better draw -- pun intended.

Subsequent trips to the Nail have yielded a series of revelations. First, I discovered that hanging out in a dark bar is much more enjoyable when you're playing Keno-like instant lottery games broadcast on the Nail's televisions, even if you lose a buck here or a hundred there. Then I tried the burger. Yeah, one night I diverted from the side of the menu with all the scrumptious smoked pork, chicken, and turkey sandwiches (smoked in what? The gun, genius) and devoured one of the juiciest cheeseburgers I've had in Atlanta. But not before I topped it with a few squirts from the biggest goddam bottle of mustard I've ever seen. And my companion, who was counting his carbs at the time, couldn't finish 20 of their tremendous wings, when normally he eats 30 to 40 at other places, which in itself is an entirely different -- and disgusting -- story.

Later, I realized that everything in the place is made of some type of wood, as if a really smart beaver had been the bar's architect. Even the damn light fixtures are wooden. There are more shades of brown in the Rusty Nail than you'd find in a furniture store circa 1973. Some of the best wooden features are the 7-foot-high pine partitions between the booths, which make the Nail a great place to talk about sensitive subjects, like planning a heist. Or a wedding. OK, not so much a wedding as a heist.

Beer at the Nail is relatively cheap and plentiful, and although the alcohol selection also includes wine and liquor, does anyone really need more than beer? The Nail ain't gonna pass you a menu with the latest hippie brews from Telluride, but offers Budweiser and all its kin. There's some fancier stuff like Rolling Rock. But the bartenders don't mix anything unusual unless you request it. You won't find many "girl-drink drunks" in there.

The dark and woody atmosphere of the Nail is either comforting or unsettling, depending on whether you're a bad ass who prefers gobbling up smoked meats and smoking cigarettes in a dive or a lame ass who nibbles on tapas in some converted warehouse full of marble and steel. You know who you are.

The Rusty Nail, 2900 Buford Highway. Mon.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-midnight; Fri., 11-2 a.m.; Sat., noon-1 a.m. 404-634-6306.