Story Time with Moon Dog and Huggy Bear
March 15-23, 2018
Coming from the Pacific Northwest, one needs a specific plan to visit New Orleans; it's not exactly a spot someone from our corner of the country can just pop on by. Both of us had always wanted to visit, and had even laid out plans to do a roadie through the Southeastern US a few years ago, but then Mazz was offered a job in Berlin that began right as our trip would have taken place and we moved to Europe instead, like a couple of mooks.
We considered it kismet then when Mazz had the chance to go to New Orleans for an international chemistry conference in the spring of 2018. Though it was a strange thought to come back to the US and not see our families, we'd seen them plenty of times and never seen the Big Easy, so we booked some flights to Louisiana.
Mazz had limitations for the dates of her flights related to what her work was willing to cover. Kirb scoured the airline websites until he was able to find an agreeable combination of timing and price, which ultimately put him into New Orleans a day early. With one night to fill before Mazz arrived and the Airbnb was ready, Kirb decided to go cheap and stay at a hostel. He was surprised to find that New Orleans was home to the hostel voted #l in the US in 2016, and decided to give it a shot.
Even the best hostel in the country is still just a hostel. You're still going to invariably end up in the bunk next to the dude snoring loudly all night, and because Kirb was jetlagged and woke up after 4 hours of sleep, he got to hear a lot of it. There's going to be one overly-loud and one overly-intoxicated Australian, and you can decide which one you want to become friends with and stay up later than you intended (Kirb chose the drunk one). Auberge Nola Hostel is famed for its group activities like trips to concerts and unlimited beer pre-funks, but as Kirb showed up around 11pm and left at 10 the next morning, he really only got to enjoy the parts of the hostel that are like every other hostel – the parts that make you think about your age and financial standing and life decisions and what exactly $100 more is worth in terms of comfort and privacy for a single evening. At least they had free pancakes and coffee for breakfast and good conversations with other travelers.
The famed sandwich of New Orleans is the Po Boy, and Kirb saw this week as a perfect opportunity to get to the bottom of exactly what made the sandwich so beloved in this part of the world. Our friend Runde, who goes to New Orleans every year for Jazz Fest, had given us a list of all his favorite spots for eating and entertainment, and Kirb decided to make his first stop Runde's favorite sandwich joint. After a quick ride on the charmingly antiquated St. Charles streetcar and a walk through a neighborhood of beautiful classic southern-style houses, he stumbled across Domalise's, which would be easy to miss if it weren't for the line coming out the door. Kirb grabbed a number and pulled up a spot at the bar, where the NCAA tournament was just starting on the TV. The walls were adorned with a bevy of autographed photos and drawings of beloved hometown football heroes Peyton and Eli Manning. The Miller High Life on tap was served in frozen gauntlets that made the beer so cold it turned to slush around the edges.
Though the line didn't seem particularly long, it took the three little old ladies who ran Domalise's about 40 minutes to make it through to Kirb's order. After seeing plenty of sandwiches come out of the kitchen, he decided on the shrimp Po Boy, and begrudgingly shilled out $18 after tax and tip for a sandwich named after frugality. Apparently, depending on which little old lady made your sandwich, you got a different result. The girl sitting next to him at the bar had a massive pile of a sandwich with fried shrimp pouring out of every edge. Kirb's was tidily under-filled, under-sauced, and underwhelming, with too much fried breading on soft French bread. If this was a fan favorite sandwich with huge lines, the appeal of the Po Boy had just become even more mystifying.
New Orleans is home to one of the best bar scenes in the country, and probably the world. Though the stereotypical vision of drinking in New Orleans is a wasted sorority girl with a giant daiquiri tripping over herself on Bourbon Street, the quality and multitude of the dive bars spread across the city is it's real treasure. The cheap, 24-hour dank cave populated with locals is what Kirb was looking for, and his first destination promised to be just that.
The exact moment Kirb walked through the door of the Club Ms. Maes, the bartender asked him, "Hey man, do you suck toes?" Kirb pulled up a seat at the bar and mulled it over, eventually responding, "I don't as a practice, but I suppose I'd be willing to if asked." That seemed to satisfy the man named Shelly, who was built like a linebacker and quick to ask Kirb's name, shake his hand, and start chatting him up. Shelly ran this bar loudly and with aplomb. When the classic rock on the playlist stopped and "I'll Be" by Edwin McCain started up, Shelly stopped pouring mid drink to let out a "WHAT THE FUCK?" that reverberated the walls.
As Kirb sipped his cheap beer and watched basketball, people in green shirts slowly started making their way into the bar. Kirb recoiled in horror realizing his folly. He had inadvertently planned a trip to New Orleans - a city notorious for people drinking obnoxiously - on the most obnoxious American drinking holiday of the year: Saint Patrick's Day. It promised to be a perfect storm, with Kirb and Mazz trapped in the eye of Hurricane Vomit. A green-clad bro ordered a Long Island Ice Tea and asked Shelly to, "Make it strong." Shelly, giving him the stinkiest eye, informed the bro he has opened up the gates of hell. He proceeded to make a cocktail comprised of 99% well liquor and the slightest misting of coke, informed the guy he's not allowed to share it, and told the group they're kicked out in 15 minutes. Mere moments later, a girl named Monica proceeded to spill the entire drink across the bar and sprint out the door in shame. Shelly and I saw her running down the street on the security camera TV and laughed in unison. It was her birthday.
The Airbnb we had booked was in a new-ish high rise in the financial district, and turned out to be much nicer than the type place we normally book. When Mazz arrived in a cab from the airport, we got to the lockbox to grab our keys and found it was empty. After 30 minutes or so in the lobby texting with the management company that operated the Airbnb, Tanesha showed up with some keys so we could finally get into our apartment. The girl working security at the front desk was sure that it was Tanesha's fault the keys weren't in the box in the first place. "She ALWAYS here," the guard informed with a scowl.
Jet lag and day drinking led to an early night, which meant we were up with the dawn and looking for an early breakfast. Though it wasn't even 9am yet when we made our way into the Ruby Slipper Café, the place was already packed. The pictures online of the Chicken St. Charles had sold Kirb on the restaurant, and he was thoroughly enamored with the fried chicken bennie when it was in front of him and in his mouth. Mazz also wanted the chicken, but split her order to include a benedict with "slow-cooked, apple-braised pork debris." This is the kind of artery clogging diner food we truly miss and cannot get living in Europe.
We asked the restaurant host if there was a grocery store nearby, and he said several blocks away there was a Rouses, which in his heavy southern drawl sounded like, "Roses." We didn't know what this store was, and asked him what it's like. "I don't know where y'all are from, but it's like a Piggly Wiggly, or Winn Dixie." Our Yankee brains did not understand what any of these words meant.
We made our way into the French Quarter and found it teeming with tourists in green t-shirts with stupid slogans. It smelled like hot trash and old fun and we hated it instantly, so we made our way to Frenchman Street to see if we could find some live music. It was barely a block before we stumbled on a ragtimey quartet and sidled up at the bar for a beer. We took a look at a list of the best dives in the city and saw that just down the street there was a toilet-themed bar called the John (yes, you read that correctly), so we made our way in that direction.
The John was completely empty when we walked in save for the bartender and two guys sitting at the far side of the bar. We pulled up two empty seats in the center and ordered some beers, and before we could even take a sip the guys at the end of the bar started chatting us up. We decided to make some friends and moved down to sit next to them. Huggy Bear and Jonathan were fascinated to find out we live in Germany, and had lots of questions about what it's like there. They informed us this bar had the best, strongest Bloody Marys in town, and before we knew it, two of them had been placed in front of us. They offered us some fried chicken from the market around the corner, and we happily obliged.
Unlike virtually every other bar we'd been in, there was no basketball on the TV in the John, but instead a documentary program about Hurricane Katrina. Huggy Bear and Jonathan hadn't been paying attention to the TVs, but once they noticed what the programming was about the conversation shifted to the storm, and they started telling us about how their lives were still impacted daily by the events 13 years before. How there were still areas of town without power; the omnipresent smell of mold and unearthed death that unceasingly lingered in the air; how they found the skeleton of Huggy Bear's uncle's neighbor years later high up in a tree with his arms and legs wrapped around the trunk. It seemed for native New Orleanians, Katrina was year zero - time was marked before the storm, and after.
Huggy Bear and Jonathan made us honorary members of "the Breakfast Club" and kept the drinks coming. When we attempted to buy some for them they refused, telling us they weren't buying us drinks trying to get any in return. We asked about some of the restaurants we'd seen on lists online and heard about from friends, and they unilaterally shit on each one. There was a Po Boy spot around the corner called Gene's that Runde mentioned was good; Huggy Bear told us his dog would bite us if we ate there. "It used to be good before Katrina," Jonathan lamented, "but now it's too expensive and they don't put enough meat on it." They were adamant that the only way to get a legitimate Po Boy was to go to the hood. "Just ignore the guy getting shot and enjoy your sandwich." The only way to get legitimate Creole food was for someone's mama or auntie to make it for you. They insisted that if we stuck around until the next weekend they'd invite us over for a cookout.
The afternoon with the Breakfast Club came to a close when Vicky the bartender's shift ended, as the new bartender did not care much for Huggy Bear. Huggy, who has 8 kids and swears that at least one is by Vicky, had been accused of being a bit too "Huggy" with some of the bar's female patrons. We thanked our new friends for their exceptional hospitality and stumbled out into the sunshine. Hungry, we went to Gene's despite the warning, and dropped down $14 for a roast beef sandwich. It was covered in gravy and tasted good, but indeed had about half as much meat on it as a $14 sandwich should.
Out on the street we ran into Jonathan in a car with his cousin, and he told us to go to a bar around the corner called Iggys. We saw no reason why we shouldn't. We posted up at the bar and Mazz started playing her favorite game, Boob Touch. Basically, it's just a spot the difference game, but with naked ladies. Mazz was unsurprisingly good at it and placed in the top 3 on her first try. Jonathan never showed up, so we decided to move on.
For dinner we headed to a place called Coop's that Huggy Bear had recommended. Unable to make a single decision of what to get, we ordered the sampler plate. The tiny cup of seafood gumbo was tasty, but the main course consisted of three kinds of cold goop over rice and a single cold chicken drumstick for $15. Whatever the people next to us ordered looked great. Kirb was nonplussed. Outside, for no apparent reason, a high school color guard from Florida was marching down the street.
Frenchman Street was popping off now, filled with revelers spilling out of bars in all directions. Every venue on the block had some kind of live music going on, so we followed our ears into the stylish DBA bar to listen to some jazz. After wandering away from the main drag we found ourselves outside a rock venue, and liked what we heard inside. The sandwich board out front said that the cover was $18, but when we asked the door guy about it he informed us it was now free to go in. On the stage was Snail Mail, a twee indie band neither of us had heard of before but both instantly liked. Kirb was not at all surprised to see an article online a day or two later talking about how they were a buzz band and had just signed to Matador records.
After posting about our afternoon with Huggy Bear and Jonathan on social media, our friend Zwickel helpfully informed us that there was a Second Line Parade going on in the city that afternoon. These parades are a quintessential New Orleans experience, and we were thrilled to have showed up in town when one was happening. Second Line Parades are run by local African-American social clubs, which have been around since the 1800s as a type of community insurance. The clubs help dues-paying members with health care costs, funeral expenses, and financial hardships, as well as organizing social events. The "First Line" in these parades is comprised of the meticulously-clothed club members and a brass band. The "Second Line" is the audience that forms behind them, dancing and drinking for miles through the neighborhoods of the city.
We arrived at the starting point of the parade right as it began to take off down the street, and virtually everyone in the neighborhood was outside drinking and partaking in the revelry. We stopped by a truck selling a wide variety of War Punches, and the proprietor Baby James was pleased when Mazz ordered an especially-potent Hennessy Ice Tea while Kirb went for a fruity peach concoction. Mazz has always been the one who wears the pants in this relationship. Drinks in hand, we joined in the Second Line and soaked in the spectacle.
The parade, led by floats and a DJ blasting music through gigantic speakers, slowly snaked through neighborhoods and out onto main streets for 4 hours, picking up more and more people as it went. Hard-working dudes lugged coolers full of ice and beer through the crowds so you could always have a fresh drink. One guy was dragging a daiquiri machine powered by a small generator. There were people with deep fryers operating out of U-Haul carts. One guy had an entire bar set up on the roof of his pickup truck.
At certain pre-determined intersections the parade would halt, either to pick up members of another club or simply to resupply at a bar. The members of club My Brother's Keeper emerged exuberantly from Gladstone Bar in bright red and yellow garb, starkly contrasting the blue outfits and feathers of the Single Men Social and Pleasure Club. The women on the floats threw out beads, toys, jello shots, and bags full of boozy cocktails. The parade route took us through areas of town we surely wouldn't have wandered through on our own, giving us a glimpse of New Orleans culture that isn't outwardly advertised to tourists. It was, without a doubt, infinitely more interesting and rewarding than anything we would have found on Bourbon Street.
Our quest to understand the Po Boy took us to Cochon Butcher, which turned out to not really be a Po Boy shop as much as an upscale sandwich spot with a diverse array of offerings. Mazz's conference had started up now, and the restaurant was right next to the convention center, so it was a nice and easy place for us to meet up for lunch. Though it wasn't "traditional" New Orleans sandwich fare, and maybe because of that, both the corned beef and Cubano sandwiches we ordered were excellent. Mazz went back to her conference and Kirb decided to spend his afternoon wandering through the French Quarter. On a quiet Monday afternoon, free from the drunken Saint Patrick's Day hordes, he could easily see the timeless charm of the place. Bourbon Street still smelled like hot trash.
Once aimless wandering became tiresome and Kirb started to get sweaty, he made his way to the Quarter's most infamous dive bar, the Chart Room. Eater said of the place, "This dingy spot on the corner of Chartres and Bienville has regulars that date back to the 70s, the days when the French Quarter was a real neighborhood and residents were proud to be called Quarter rats." Sure enough, within minutes of sitting down and ordering a frosty High Life, Kirb was looking at email on his phone when he was tapped on the shoulder by the guy sitting next to him, who pointed to a sticker on the cluttered bar wall that said, "No Cell Phones – Talk to Your Neighbor." This seemed like good advice, so Kirb followed it.
In the following hour Kirb got to know Moon Dog, who had lived in New Orleans for 37 years. The Chart Room was his favorite bar in town because it didn't change – it always was and will always be "a shithole." Kirb mentioned he was from Seattle, and somehow that was how this conversation turned to Hurricane Katrina. Moon Dog worked in a hospital when the storm hit, and was one of the last people evacuated from the city. When he got out, he had nowhere to go, and decided to randomly fly to Seattle, as he'd been there once during the 90s and liked it. He showed up in Seattle with no spare clothes and $40 in his pocket, and went to the Green Tortoise hostel downtown to find a place to stay. They fed him and gave him a room free of charge, and told him to go to the Red Cross, who ended up putting him up in a posh room at the Mariott on 1st Ave for several months. He was given cash and new clothes by the Red Cross, and was taken out nightly by some Moroccan businessmen who had taken a shine to him, buying him anything he wanted to drink. He said the people of Seattle were unendingly kind to him, which made Kirb feel proud of his hometown. During that time Moon Dog was offered a job at Swedish hospital as a Spanish translator, and wonders to this day why he didn't take it.
When he returned to New Orleans a few months later the power was still out and the city was on curfew. He had always loved candles, so his house was already full of them when the storm hit. He remembered his house being the only one on the block with any light at night. Everyone in the neighborhood helped feed each other, gave each other warm beers, and offered places to stay when it was too dark to walk across town after curfew. He remembered how everything was covered in black mold, and how the Latinos working on construction projects could barely open their eyes after 12 hour shifts in the spores. Moon Dog let Kirb know that it was the Spanish, not the French, who originally built New Orleans, and it was Mexicans and Central Americans who rebuilt it. It would infuriate him when he'd see these men who worked unceasingly to dig the city out of its misery sitting hungry on the street, eyes red and barely open, and the white locals would treat them like beggars and vagabonds. Moon Dog would tell them in Spanish they could go to the Red Cross for food, and they would be so grateful to him. He remembered the smell of death that lingered in the air, and said they're still digging bodies out.
He asked Kirb what he thought of New Orleans, and Kirb told him how much he was enjoying himself. He told Moon Dog that his favorite bar was the Club Ms. Maes, and that it had the exact same wooden bar as his favorite old dive in Seattle, the Comet Tavern. He loved Ms. Maes because it reminded him of what the Comet used to be like before it was cleaned and remodeled and all the life was sucked out of it. Moon Dog said he used to drink at Ms. Maes when the original owner, Ms. Mae herself was still alive. He said he used to sit next to her at the bar, and that he was her favorite because he didn't cuss. If Ms. Mae heard you swear at her bar she'd kick you out immediately.
When Mazz finished with her conference for the day, she found Kirb at another dive bar called Chuck's, where he was deep in conversation with a group of locals about food. One of the locals, Joe, was part of the food conversation until it turned to shrimp Po Boys, and then he drunkenly went off on a tangent about the 1994 film Forrest Gump. Mazz was unable to politely escape the lengthy conversation about shrimp and Jenny, waiting far too patiently for the conversation to transition to anything else. Eventually Kirb joined in told a story about trying out for the role of young Forrest when he was a child, but the conversation didn't successfully come to a close until Joe vanished into thin air, leaving behind his work baseball cap. The heated conversation about New Orleans cuisine caused a guy named Glen to come over from the other side of the bar, and after chatting for a while he decided he liked us and let us in on a secret: the Mardi Gras Indians were coming out tonight, and he could tell us when and where they were going to be.
Mardi Gras Indians are a New Orleans tradition that your general Caucasian tourist doesn't get to see. The parade dates, times, and routes are never published in advance, though they meet on certain days every year, such as Saint Joseph's Day, which happened to be this day. The practice of "tribes" from different African-American neighborhoods creating incredibly ornate hand-made costumes goes back over a hundred years, back to a time when rival Indian groups were more akin to gangs and violently settled scores in the streets, though the gatherings now are entirely peaceful. According to the Mardi Gras New Orleans website, "The Mardi Gras Indians named themselves after native Indians to pay them respect for their assistance in escaping the tyranny of slavery. It was often local Indians who accepted slaves into their society when they made a break for freedom. They have never forgotten this support."
Glen told us to be at 2nd and Dryades around 9pm, which would be the central convergence point for tribes that had departed from different points all over the city. We recognized the corner from the Second Line Parade - pretty far off the beaten bath in a neighborhood tourists like us would never know to show up in unless explicitly told. The street was full of hundreds of revelers, with food and drink stands and a handful of extravagantly dressed Indians already making their way through the crowds. Before long, different tribes appeared from different directions, each arriving in differently colored costumes. The "Big Chief" of each tribe had the most extravagant costume, and as new Big Chiefs arrived they would dance battle each other in the street. We ran into Glen and he was happy to see that we had made it, and we thanked him for telling us where to go. Of the hundreds of people on the corner, we were maybe 2 of 20 white people in attendance. The scene was exactly the sort of real, unspoiled New Orleans culture that a tourist has to be invited to, and we were thrilled we got to see it. This is the best-case scenario for why you make friends with locals in dive bars.
Another guy we met at Chuck's named Travis told us that if he had $20 to spend on anything, he'd go Castnet Seafood and get some fried catfish. Kirb looked it up and saw that it was next door to an acclaimed BBQ spot he'd wanted to try out on the edge of town. It was a 45-minute bus ride out there, and with Mazz attending her conference all afternoon, it seemed like a good field trip for Kirb. The bus smelled like weed, and when the first stop after a long stretch on the highway was in front of a Waffle House, Kirb had to fight the urge to not get out and eat there. When he spotted a storefront in a strip mall called "EYONCE" he once again had to stop himself from getting off the bus to investigate. Did the "B" fall off, or was this something else entirely? How could he know unless he got off the bus!?!
Walker's BBQ and Castnet Seafood shared a building right on bank of Lake Pontchartrain on the north end of town. Left with the decision between acclaimed southern BBQ and acclaimed southern seafood, Kirb realized almost instantly that he's going to choose BBQ every time. He asked the server what was good, and she unflinchingly told him to get the ribs, so he ordered two of them with some brisket, collard greens, and coleslaw. The seafood coming out of Castnet, which was also a market where you could buy freshly caught seafood to-go, looked top-notch. The BBQ was perfect and Kirb regretted nothing.
On the bus back into town the route took Kirb close enough to see that there was originally a "B" that had fallen off, or was taken, meaning there was indeed a nail and hair salon in a strip mall outside of New Orleans simply called BEYONCE. He remembered that Huggy Bear had told him Beyoncé's sister Solange was a regular at the John.
Mazz finished with her conference early that day, so we decided to meet up and do a classic New Orleans tourist activity: coffee and beignets at Café Du Monde. The place was slammed, but turnover was quick as the restaurant literally only served coffee and beignets. We each pounded a plate of 3 fried flaky pastries loaded with powdered sugar. They were delicious. It was beautifully sunny and warm outside, and we weren't quite ready to go into a dank bar yet, so we got some tall cans of fruity booze drink from a Voodoo Mart and decided to check out the rooftop balcony of our Airbnb.
The afternoon took an unfortunate turn when we got back to our place, as Mazz was blindsided by the news that her plans for the following week in the Southwest were falling apart. She had to quickly come up with a new plan, and things looked pretty bleak as to whether she would be able to salvage the trip. Shortly thereafter, Kirb received an email that his flight the following day to New York had been cancelled and rescheduled due to a Nor'easter. Assessing the situation and doing damage control for our upcoming trips took well into the evening, when we eventually gave up and decided it was time to go eat some crawfish. We showed up at the Three Legged Dog and tried to order some, and the bartender pointed out on their sign that they serve crawfish 5 nights a week, and Tuesday wasn't one of those nights. It seemed this was just how Tuesday was going to work out. We got some Mickey's grenades with orange juice in to-go cups and set off down the street to another bar on the other side of the French Quarter that supposedly served the tiny crustaceans.
When we arrived at Cosimo's bar there was a folding table in the street out front covered in crawfish boil, and the proprietor loaded each of us up with a styrofoam container. He only charged us $6 a piece because the night was almost over and they'd made a bit too much. We took our hauls into the bar, ordered some $2 beers, and happily picked apart the "mud bugs" and slurped out their savory, spicy innards as we watched a Blazers game. Someone had left another full order of crawfish behind at the bar, so after Kirb finished his he made it through about half of that order as well until he was so full he had to roll himself out of the bar. Tuesday didn't turn out to be so bad after all.
The next afternoon Kirb was packed and virtually out the door to the airport when he received another email informing him that his flight to New York was cancelled again, and he would be stuck in New Orleans for two more days. Mazz was not so pleased about this development. Believe it or not, she was actually in New Orleans to work and had to give her talk at the conference the next day. As a result, Kirb was kicked out of the apartment that night so she could practice. He decided to go find a dark hole to drink in.
The Saint was highly touted as one of the city's best dives, but when Kirb showed up around 5pm he found that they didn't open up for another couple hours, so he made his way into a different dank dive bar a few blocks away. With $2 happy hour well drinks and basketball on the TV, the Half Moon seemed like a perfectly good waypoint. When Lebron had won the basketball game and happy hour was over, he made his way over to the Saint, which was now operational, if sparsely populated.
The few people inside the bar were watching the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country with the sound off and the subtitles on, and Kirb was instantly sucked into the world of the 1980s Oregon cult with them. On the stereo the bartender was playing some killer classic rock Kirb had never heard, which is always a great sign for any bar and bartender in his book. Kirb went over to the jukebox and found it full of exceptional records, with 947 free credits anyone could use. The bartender told him he could put on anything he wanted, but just to let him know so he could switch the sound over from his music. The Captian Beyond record he was playing was so good Kirb didn't want to be the reason it was turned off.
Over the course of the evening Kirb made friends with several people at the Saint, including a young male bartender looking to move to Seattle and a female bartender named Devon. They explained that 80% of the jobs in New Orleans are in the service industry, and places like this are where the servers go when they don't want to deal with tourists anymore. When the male bartender went home with a girl who didn't seem to like him very much, that girl's friend, who looked like Grimes and was carrying a small dog, was now stuck at the bar without a ride. She started hanging out with Kirb and Devon, and asked Devon if she would cut her bangs in a V shape the way Devon wore them. Devon initially resisted, but eventually wore down and got some bar scissors to give the girl a haircut in the bathroom. Kirb tried to tag along but was eventually kicked out of the ladies room by the bartender. Even though this was a shithole dive, there was still a social contract about dudes hanging out in the wrong bathroom, even if all they wanted was to see was some misguided girl get her bangs all fucked up by a drunken stranger.
At some point the owner of the bar showed up with a bunch of unsold Asian sex toys from a vending machine and everyone in the bar opened them up and started playing with them. Devon tried to use a Korean titty pump on Kirb but it didn't really take. Before he knew it, it was 5am and Kirb was very drunk. He abandoned a full whiskey soda on the sidewalk on the way to the St. Charles streetcar, which was thankfully already running. He didn't make it out of the apartment until dinnertime the following day. The Saint was definitely the best dive bar in New Orleans.
Mazz was one of the last people to give a talk at the conference, and when she was finally done being a professional scientist she had a hankering for some oysters and booze. Kirb didn't want either of those things after his previous evening, but he wasn't going to let a body-shattering hangover keep him from participating, so he met Mazz at Felix's in the French Quarter for an early dinner. We got seats at the oyster-shucking counter and reveled in the massive piles of shells the shuckers were amassing. On the recommendation of Runde and Zwickel we ordered a dozen char-grilled oysters, which came dusted in parmesan breadcrumbs and soaking in garlic butter. They were one of the best things either of us ate on the entire trip. The red beans and rice with sausage was also delicious, but those oysters are something we'll think of longingly every time we reflect on our time in New Orleans.
We thought about going back to the Saint for a final hurrah in the Big Easy, but opted instead for laziness and went back to Chuck's, which was only a few blocks from where we were staying. The 80-year old bartender poured one hell of a stiff drink, so much so that it only took two before we called it a night there. Kirb watched Gonzaga lose their basketball game while Mazz once again dominated the Boob Touch machine.
Wanting a late night snack, we checked to see what was nearby and found that we were mere blocks from We Dat's Chicken, and decided there was no possible way we couldn't eat at an establishment called We Dat's Chicken. One of the walls inside was covered with a mural of New Orleans icons, and, fairly certain he knew the answer, Kirb asked for clarification if one painting was Harry Connick, Jr. The guy working the register responded in all sincerity, "Actually, that's Prince. A lot of people don't recognize him." Kirb checked his phone and saw that Harry Connick, Jr. was indeed born in New Orleans, and didn't bother to try and correct him. Further down the wall, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees was depicted as a goblin. The food was not very good.
It wasn't difficult to find fun in New Orleans. The sheer number of excellent watering holes scattered across the city ensured there was always someplace great to hang out, and the inclusive, positive attitude of the locals meant we never drank alone. It's easy to go into a trip like this with high expectations and not have them met, but the Big Easy did not let us down (except for Po Boys, those just aren't a very good sandwich). Though living there would probably be the end of our livers, the cuisine, culture, and people of New Orleans made us want to come back as soon as we have another excuse.