The wife and I went out for brunch, and it being a nice albeit cloudy day, walked through the heart of midtown. There are police everywhere, as if something big is happening. (We dined about 2 miles north of the stadium.) Two guys in the restaurant had SB tickets around their necks. People are everywhere also, as are limos, black Escalades mostly. I understand hotel rooms were jacked up, no shock, and are sold out. We walked by a new place call City Tap Room and took a tour, nice set up, 56 beers on tap, which is adequate, a lot of TVs but classier looking than a typical sports bar.
Patriots jerseys outnumbered Rams jerseys probably 5:1. I did see a fair number of Gurley jerseys. I was slightly surprised to see so many football jerseys from a lot of different teams. There is a large Four Seasons hotel near us that had I'm guessing 10 of the black limos outside and another place that had three spiffy looking large buses, which might be where one of the teams stayed, not sure. Yesterday I saw 3 planes and a helo dragging advertising banners, today I only saw helos, sounding and looking like security.
We get a lot of folks out when the weather is nice but today it's probably 2x normal. Peachtree Road was closed below about 8th street, it's kind of the main drag, I didn't get over to see the freeway, it could be packed on a normal Sunday.
I gather they had a rock concert last night not far from us at Atlantic Station, which is about 2 miles NW of us. There was a small protest in the park we passed yesterday about something, the paper said 150 people were there, it was really about 40. We saw probably 25 police officers at both ends, one guy with binos was eyeing two white dudes with backpacks wearing camo when we walked by. Apparently some skinhead types wanted to protest out at Stone Mountain Park so they closed the entire park for the day. Counterprotesters showed up and marched through the small town nearby but no skinheads showed up.
The bar next door is hopping and packed. It was LOUD last night until about 10 when they don't close but go quiet somehow. With the warm weather all the places have opened their outside seating which usually is shrouded so they can heat the space in winter.
I'm somewhat surprised what a Big Deal this is considering they only have about 75,000 seats in the place. I read a ticket is nearly $3,000 now for nosebleeds. I paid $280 for a nosebleed seat for the SEC CG. I was half tempted to walk further down towards the stadium but the wife demurred. I wonder what MARTA is like right now.