Sugar Hill Flirts With A Dating Website, Just Says No

I ain't sayin' my hometown's a gold-digger but it ain't messin' with no broke websites. Or is it?

When news surfed across the Internet this week that Sugar Hill, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb of over eighteen thousand residents, was considering an offer from the dating website Sugardaddie.com, the phrase "too close to home" became tsunami-like for me. Among the indecent proposals outlined by Sugardaddie's spokespersons were an exchange of money between $3.75 million and $7.75 million and Sugar Hill would become Sugardaddie.com, the Mayor, Gary Pirkle, would be known as Mayor Sugardaddie, and many signs including the park across the street from where I live and take my children to several times a week, would be changed to Sugardaddie.com.

The good and bad in the Internet and the business world seemed to be entrenched in this story. Many cities and towns across America are facing financial hardship. The businesses that seem to be thriving are ones of questionable ethics that exist online. For a few days, to Sugar Hill residents, and many others it seemed that a small town would become Luke Skywalker drawn to The Dark Side by a Darth Vader of affluent men who pay women, some of ill repute, to be their companions.

"Daddy, why's the park now called Sugardaddie.com Parks and Recreation?"

That question coming from the mouths of my own three daughters, as well as the ones from thousands around the city could make parents quake. But after a telephone interview with Gary Pirkle, it seems as tongues were mostly in cheeks, and the offer was never serious.

"It isn't as if money was ever on the table and so there wasn't an offer to consider. Sugardaddie.com was looking for some publicity and instead of getting mad about it, we decided to have some fun with it," Mayor Pirkle said this morning by phone.

Established in 1939, Sugar Hill was allegedly named after an incident where a large shipment of sugar was spilled. It also has history with gold miner sin the late 19th century. Mayor Pirkle said they they jokingly proposed to Sugardaddie.com that a statue of a gold miner be erected with the money offered to counter the website's thought of a Hugh Hefner (their patron saint) be put up.

Pirkle detailed email negotiations and a meeting with a Sugardaddie.com representative that appeared to be low of specifics and high on humor.

"With the 75th anniversary of the town coming next year, no one with Sugar Hill was considering changing the name to anything until after 2014. The initial report was that Sugardaddie.com wanted to offer several million dollars to change the name for 12 years. That's not something we, Sugar Hill, would've been interested in."

Sugar Hill, Georgia was mentioned nationally on television, radio, newspapers (yes people still read those), and the Internet for several days and Sugardaddie.com saw their Twitter account followers and website hits increase.

"They've done this with several towns, from what I understand. Sugardaddie.com will put out the offer, the town will react or overreact and then things seem to never happen. It's just one of those things where you have to decide to either get mad or upset about it or just have some fun. You could say we were having some fun. Sugar Hill will be Sugar Hill," Pirkle added.

This kind of town name selling isn't unheard of. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico is named after a defunct 1950s game show publicity campaign that has stuck for over sixty years.

For entertainment sake, it's a shame this was all much ado about web nothing. Imagine the Kanye West concert or even a Kardashian ribbon cutting ceremony. For now, and likely for many years to come, the town I live in will remain sweet in name. I just hope Godaddy.com isn't getting any ideas.