Bourbon Street for Halloween

So...we did it. Tony and I. We slogged through the crowd along Bourbon Street during Halloween, dodged drunken co-eds, skirted the pools of vomit, enjoyed one of the famous "3 for 1" beer deals, watched a little of the Yankees-Phillies game, and then stopped in at a jazz bar where we were probably the youngest pair in the place. That jazz bar was so cool it pretty much made the evening. (I was going to post a video from it, but the file was too large.)

The French Quarter, known locally as simply The Quarter, is basically a rectangle bordered by Canal Street, North Ramparts, the Esplanade, and the Mississippi River (I named them in a clockwise fashion). The most famous street is Bourbon, mainly because of the parade on Mardi Gras and the drunken booby-flashing that accompanies it. Holy hot-dog on a stick, Batman, you couldn't drag me there on Mardi Gras. Not even sedated and passed out...

Inside The Quarter, off Bourbon and on one of the other streets, it looked like the only establishments were antique stores, high-end galleries, and a handful of eateries. Seriously, antique stores made up the main percentage of places of business. It that little rectangle they had more antique stores than in all of San Luis, which I remember as having a very high percentage of antique stores.

If a watering hole is what you're looking for (read: bar), then pretty much what you need to do is just find Bourbon Street, since there's almost no bars in The Quarter anywhere else, and on Bourbon, everything is either a bar, a crappy Times-Square-like souvenir shop, or a strip-club. During the first trip, before Halloween when Tony and I walked out of The Quarter along Bourbon, we first passed "Larry Flynt's Barely Legal Club." (Larry Flynt, if you don't know, founded Hustler magazine, pushing the boundaries of pornography vs obscenity in the US.) About two blocks down, there was "Larry Flynt's Hustler Club", and two blocks further there was "Larry Flynt's Hollywood Club." Across the street from one of these clubs--directly across the street--was a club who's name escapes my memory, but who had a neon sign in the window that read "1000s of Beautiful Girls & 3 Ugly Ones". Sheesh. Guess you gotta cover everybody.

Here's a few pictures. The first is of Jackson Square, a large green park that borders the River; notice the statue of Jackson on his horse in the foreground, and the Saint Louis Cathedral in the background. The next photo is of one of the rare bars not on Bourbon Street, a cool hole-in-the-wall place named after a pirate. I like the picture because it shows off the density and the romantic stereotype of New Orleans' streets. Then there's a few of the crowd during the festivities.

Like last year's New Year's Adventure--going to the posh club Duvet--this was something that we can say later in life that we did. It wasn't lame or anything, but once you've braved Greenwich Village during Halloween, it having more people and worse weather, and you, generally just trying to get home after a long day of work, the sheer size of the Bourbon Street party isn't quite as mind boggling.

I did, though, enjoy walking the streets with a cup of beer. Just like Europe...