Photo Alleges Athens Bar Serves Racially-Charged Drink
ATHENS, Ga. - The bar at the center of a social media firestorm did not open its doors to patrons Thursday.
A photo circulating online claims General Beauregard's, a bar located on Clayton Street in downtown Athens, serves a drink called the "N*****ita." Underneath the name, the alleged bartender's cheat sheet shows the ingredients for the shooter including watermelon and tequila.
Blake Aued, the news editor for Athens magazine Flagpole, published an online article about the picture earlier this week. He said the photo came from "a friend of the magazine" who allegedly got a copy of the behind-the-bar menu when a bar employee brought it into a copy shop to get laminated.
"Given the bar's theme, it makes sense to a lot of people that you know, they would do something like this whether they actually do have that drink or not," said Aued. "The controversy surrounding it was a story in and of itself."
The person who originally posted the photo quickly took it down, but not before it had been copied, shared and tweeted by people upset over the racially-charged drink.
"Please, please don't support General Beauregard's if you have any human decency," tweeted Langston Leake, a freshman at the University of Georgia.
Leake said the photo made him angry and he wanted to stress that this was more than just an African-American issue.
"This is straight out wrong," said Leake.
The bar, however, has denied that the photo is from their bar offerings.
Owner Daniel Simmons released a statement to Flagpole saying the drink "is not something we have ever served to customers or advertised and would never be approved by ownership."
Simmons did not return requests for comment to FOX 5.
Whether the drink exists or not, Aued said the controversy has spurred a deeper conversation.
"It's kind of opened up a lot of feelings about race in Athens, which is not an issue that we really talk about a lot because we perceive ourselves as being a really progressive community," he explained.