He was great for advice because he was so candid.īarney: In the first years of Magic City, I was married, but I was here most of my hours. He didn’t teach them how to be hoes he taught them how to be women. He’s the one who taught the girls how to do it. Barney held his workers to high standards of behavior, professionalism, and beauty.Ĭecil Glenn, aka “DC the Brain Supreme” (member of rap group Tag Team early Magic City DJ): He was the leader. (He would purchase it around 1990.) Magic City, which began with one dancer, focused on customer service. In 1985, Barney leased a building at 241 Forsyth Street-a former print shop-for $10,000 a month. That was my goal from the beginning: the nicer woman. I always imagined if I could get a higher quality of women, how it would go. You’d go in and sit down, play around for a couple hours, and get out. Back then, there was Montre’s, Purple Onion. Michael “Magic” Barney (Magic City founder): I used to go in with a suit and tie and watch them beat people and drag them out. He was so good at the job he earned the nickname “Magic.” After visiting his first strip club, Foxy Lady Lounge, he decided the concept could be improved. A native of New Jersey, he moved to Atlanta and sold toner cartridges over the phone. In 1978, Michael Barney graduated with a history degree from Duke University. We asked Dupri, along with Barney and his DJs and his dancers-oh, and of course Big Boi-what made Magic City so, well, magical. Heck, when Atlanta United won the city its first major league sports championship in a generation, it was to Magic City where the team took the trophy to celebrate. Somehow, Magic City has survived arson, the arrest of its founder, and the unstoppable march of time.

Your browser does not support the audio element. Over the past 35 years, the strip club that was the brainchild of a toner salesman named Michael Barney has become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon, a place where, as Jermaine Dupri puts it in our oral history, “you can go on Monday night and stand beside a millionaire, the biggest thief in Atlanta, the biggest drug dealer in Atlanta, the police, and one of the biggest rappers or R&B artists in the world-all in the same room.” 🔊

So why no love for Magic City, sitting like a solitary neon beacon on a lonely street in south downtown? The recorded announcement on the MARTA train when it approaches Garnett station namedrops all kinds of nearby points of interest, from City Hall to the gloomy Greyhound terminal just down the stairs.

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