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02/22/12
You've done Mardi Gras right, so today, on Ash Wednesday, the last thing you want is some report about nightlife. You want snooze alarms, a nice scouring shower and a strong penchant for absolution. You've had enough of drinks and music and socializing.
Great. But how long does such stoic resolve usually last? Can it carry you through Lent? Until St. Patrick’s Day? How about just through one quiet weekend? I didn't think so.
Fortunately for those pulled between borderline exhaustion and the compulsion to participate in the life of their city, there are some calmer, perhaps more contemplative, distractions here and a great one is coming around again this Friday.
That’s when the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) resumes its weekly Where Y’Art...
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02/08/12
Visiting the horse track means partaking in all the pageantry and tradition of the sport of kings – the pre-race paddock parade of magnificent thoroughbreds, the color and flair of race fans dressed up for the day, the bugler’s call at post time, the go-go dancers grooving on elevated platforms wearing hot pants and brandishing jockey whips.
All right, perhaps that last item isn’t so traditional, but it is indeed part of the program when the Fair Grounds Race Course stages its Starlight Racing, a series of evening events that continues this Friday, Feb. 10.
Like other horse tracks around the country, the Fair Grounds is courting a younger clientele these days, and Starlight Racing is part of that bid. The historic track could never really be called a...
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01/25/12
It still feels perfectly normal to walk into the Circle Bar, never mind that it reopened just last weekend after a yearlong hiatus for repairs and renovation. An outpost at the fulcrum of Uptown and downtown, it’s still an alluring, atmospheric watering hole with one of the city’s more eclectic mixes of live music – and, incidentally, it’s still also one of the great spots for that rarefied New Orleans pursuit of streetcar-watching.
But take a seat at the conspicuously larger bar and immediately all the many changes made during that offline time begin to register, and they quickly add up to a big difference. The place still looks like the old Circle Bar, but it feels significantly bigger, a trick pulled off through addition by subtraction.
Walls that...
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01/11/12
I wasn’t around to see the Joy Theatre in its heyday, though I did catch a few movies there during its inglorious slide toward the mothballs of lost New Orleans nostalgia. Watching Spider-Man at the Joy in 2002 was memorable not so much for the film’s superhero thrills, but for the super-sized cups of soda that people in the audience periodically hurled at the battered screen when the villainous Green Goblin appeared, not to mention the gelatinous feel of a floor, its queasy mysteries invisible in the darkened theater but impossible to ignore.
Still, even in such a woebegone state the old place had character, from the marquee stretching around the corner, to the mid-century contours of the interior to, most strikingly, the towering, vertical sign outside that spelled...
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12/28/11
You might still be making plans for New Year’s Eve at this point, but prudent partiers should have more dates on their radar screens for the first few days of 2012. That’s because New Orleans, always football-friendly, is about to turn into a football festival.
The last regular season Saints game will be a home nooner on Jan. 1, just as Michigan and Virginia Tech fans begin pouring into town as their teams compete in the AllState Sugar Bowl on the night of Jan. 3. Less than a week later, downtown streets will be filled with dueling legions adorned in LSU purple and gold or Alabama crimson as these two teams face off in the AllState BCS National Championship game on the night of Jan. 9.
Tickets for these games will be hard to come by, especially the big college...
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12/14/11
When is it officially after hours? In December, in New Orleans, it can come much earlier than normal.
That explains the long-running local ritual of the Friday holiday lunch. This is traditionally a gathering of friends and colleagues, of course, a little time out from the routine to celebrate the holiday season. But with a little advance planning and the collusion of flexible work schedules, it also can lead seamlessly into happy hour and maybe even tumble directly into dinner.
In other words, the New Orleans holiday lunch is an opportunity to turn the afternoon into after hours.
Granted, this is an indulgence, and it’s simply not feasible for people who need to be at their jobs at specific hours. But just because something is impractical doesn’t mean...
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11/30/11
Frenchmen Street is big-time these days, yet part of the charm of this nightlife strip is how small-scale and intimate some of its best clubs remain.
The sad news last week of Coco Robicheaux’s untimely death brought this home in a dramatic way. The hoodoo blues singer has fans around the world and a personal legend bordering on the mythic. And yet there seemed always to be an even shot of running into the guy during any random stroll down Frenchmen Street, especially one that detoured into the Apple Barrel, the hole-in-the-wall bar where he performed frequently and would hang out even more often.
But that’s Frenchmen Street. The three blocks stretching from Esplanade Avenue to Washington Square Park is nightlife central, now dutifully documented in travel...
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11/16/11
The local nonprofit Broad Community Connections wants to see more on Broad Street – more businesses, more renovated properties, more community resources and overall more people. At its annual Brewhaha this weekend, the group is using the appeal of a good New Orleans block party and the resurgent brewing tradition here to bringing all of that together.
Now in its third year, the Brewhaha, scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 19, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., will take over a stretch of Bayou Road just off of Broad. The “brew” in the name is a reference to two types of beverages that are big in New Orleans: beer and coffee.
The group points to the proximity of the old Dixie and Falstaff breweries off Broad Street as a sign of the area’s brewing heritage. And...
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11/02/11
In the long list of great things about New Orleans, one has to be the way that even attractions and activities that sit high on the typical visitor’s checklist can still be so rewarding for locals to experience too. I think that’s because these things have such enduring authenticity, despite their high and frequent use in the tourism trade.
Doing that “tourist in your hometown” thing here can mean learning about Creole history on a house tour, getting covered with powdered sugar at Café du Monde, exploring the building where the Louisiana Purchase was signed and perhaps even (maybe, hopefully) celebrating a Saints win with drinks in a historic courtyard originally built for an 18th century Spanish theater.
Also on that list should be...
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10/19/11
When I was growing up, each October heralded the arrival at some point of the Trick-or-Drinkers. This was a group of adults in my neighborhood who would dress up and carry themselves from house to house, stopping in for a drink in what amounted to a roving, progressive cocktail party.
This was up in Rhode Island, in a tiny, tight-knit town where everyone knew each other and hardly anyone bothered locking their doors. As a little kid it also seemed like nothing ever happened here, but then along would come the Trick-or-Drinkers, these adults all dressed in costumes, acting silly and dropping in unexpectedly from the dark – and always cold – autumn night. In they’d tramp to occupy the living room, the retired professor from down the street now dressed as Dracula,...
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A transplant from his native Rhode Island, Ian McNulty quickly discovered how easy it is to strike up conversations with New Orleans people simply by asking about their favorite clubs and neighborhood joints.
