View From a Cop: Remembering the Blue Eagle and a Visit from 'Fantasy Island's' Tattoo

Howdy Partners. For all six of you who are originally from Sandy Springs or them parts close by, you might remember the Blue Eagle. It was a cowboy bar on Hilderbrand Drive that now houses The Punchline.

The Blue Eagle came along when the Urban Cowboy era rode into these here parts. Yuppie twenty-somethings came out of the woodwork with designer jeans tucked into expensive white cowboy boots and finely creased plaid shirts that never saw a lick of dirt out on the range. The look was completed with a Stetson hat and a belt buckle the size of a Buick Electra.

The Blue Eagle was outfitted for cowboys. The bar seats were not seats but saddles, saddles to be ridden by finely-dressed yuppie cowboys as they gulped down martinis and light beer. Many a young cowpoke rode the Friday night saddle, until they fell off from too many light beers or waddled off suffering from severe chafing.

Cowboy life was rough.

Celebrities occasionally hung their hats at the Blue Eagle. I brought the late Herve Villechaize  - Tattoo on Fantasy Island - to the club one night. He was in town and I was his security for the evening. I secured him while we went to just about every bar in Atlanta, ending up at the Blue Eagle around 2 a.m.  

Tattoo was very small so naturally, the drunken subdivision cowboys all wanted to pick him up like your drunken uncle wants to pick up one of the small kids at the family reunion, but you don’t let him because he’s drunk and you’re not really sure he’s your uncle.

Apparently this was something that happened to Tattoo a lot because his only request of me was to not let anyone pick him up.

I spent the night telling young cowpokes with martinis in their hand, “Hey Biff! Put Tattoo down!”

Girls on the other hand, well they wanted to go to our limo because they thought Tattoo had cocaine.

[Remember, this was the 1980s and everyone wanted to go to the limo because they thought guys in the limo had cocaine.] He didn’t have cocaine but he liked the idea of going to the car with a girl who thought she was going to the car to do cocaine.

I worried that once they found out that he didn’t have any, they’d flip out and hurt him or worse—pick him up.  

Side note—Villechaize was a really nice guy. He wasn’t in good health and he took a lot of meds to keep his life as normal as any 3’ 11” person could be but he was really nice. He said he wanted to come back and party with me some day.  He even agreed to my request at the end of the night, to say, “Da Plaaaane!!”

[In September 1993, Villechaize died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.]

Back on the south forty, the Blue Eagle had become a fairly popular saloon around these parts and a fond watering hole for several players on the Atlanta Flame Hockey Team. [The Flames preceded the minor-league Knights and later, the I-guess-they’re-gone-now Thrashers.]

My luck, I work security at the bar on the night big bulky hockey players came in. Hockey players are good at fighting because they do it for a living. They all have broken noses, teeth, and are known for fighting really well on the ice.  I’m sure they were even better on a beer-soaked floor.

Fortunately, these Mutton-Punchers were nothing but fun loving. They drank, laughed, danced, laughed, drank some more, and rode the saddle seats at the bar—occasionally with their pants down.

One of them just loved to pull his trousers off and ride the saddle bar seat in his skivvies, waving his straw cowboy hat, yelling something like Yippy Ki Yea—or whatever—I’m not sure. He was French-Canadian.

You can’t get more fun loving than that.

The few customers who complained were told that these particular hockey players weren’t desperados but only fun-loving hockey players, and if the overdressed belt-buckled, tight-jeaned, fashionable Stetson totin’ cowpoke had a problem with that, they could walk right over to the players and have their own personal showdown.

Turns out nobody wants to complain to a hockey player with a crooked nose, few teeth, and no pants.

Like all trendy bars however, the Blue Eagle had one last roundup and then faded into the sunset.

Tattoo never came back. The Atlanta Flames packed up and moved Calgary. The Blue Eagle closed their doors and the urban cowboys saddled up and rode off—in their mom’s BMW’s.

Giddy-up y’all.