19.
Some drunkenness and memory loss in New Orleans, Wednesday 20th November 2002
After doing some hard work at the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers' conference in New Orleans, the rather large Elsevier Science contingent (Me,
Lynne Clayton-Honigman, Clare Marl, Anna Cambridge, Femke Markus, Isabelle Kandler,
Leighton Chipperfield, Liz Coombes
and Jessica Rhys-Griffths) decided to reward
ourselves with some well earned bevvies. Wearing our Scirus [it's a
search engine like Google but for scientists]
t-shirts we had a few ales and cocktails to line our stomachs at the Hilton
Hotel's Kabby's Sports Edition and Grille. This has
52 TV screens to keep our American guests happy, and to keep everyone else
happy it has lots of interesting beers, including the local Abita Amber and the
excellent Purple Haze [but not Turbodog] at actually
quite reasonable prices. There is also a decent spread of generic American fizz
about, together with imported Newky browns. Sinking a
swift pair of pints here, we got a taxi to Pat O'Briens
[also had to walk a short way in the pissing rain as the road was blocked by an
ambulance collecting some young lady who had vommed
everywhere], a so-called legendary bar with its flaming fountain.
This is apparently the home of the Hurricane,
a New Orleans cocktail served in big paper cups that uses 4
shots of rum and is actually a bit overrated. And they are $6 each. The
downstairs toilet is rather dungeon like - I was directed there by asking the
bar man 'Where's the can? I need a squirt' so that he could understand me. On
leaving here, we did a spot of shopping for pimps hats and feather boas before
deciding to have some din dins at Desire - An Oyster Bar, which had a splendid
array of bottled ales including Crimson Voodoo Ale and Black Voodoo ale, not
sure of the brewery.
At this point we lost Clare Marl [before
dinner] as she had had too many Hurricanes previously, and after a dinner of some
oysters and other fish too, Femke, Lynne, Liz and
Anna wisely decided to go back to the hotel seeing as it was already midnight.
Me, Leighton, Isabelle and Jess soldiered on however, and went to Ragin' Rooster where we drank faux-Oirish
Killeen ale on a horrible table at the back whilst
watching mulletted natives bopping to some Billy Ray
Cyrus wannabes. One bright spot saving this place from an absolute ratings
panning was a young lady serving test tubes of brightly coloured
shots which I assume were not free. Leaving here and crossing the road we ended
up in Howl at the Moon, a far more civilised
establishment with a piano played by some rather talented gents. Newcastle
Brown and Abita Amber were quaffed. Jess requested American Pie in this place
which was followed by the National Anthem; towards the end of our sejourn Isabelle also decided to go, another wise move in
retrospect.
For some reason we left here and went to
Bourbon Street Blues, which may have been a blues club although I remember
nothing about it apart from having a till receipt. Circumstantial evidence
seems to indicate that this place had poor beer and too many people, so I
assume that we got bored and went to the last port of call, Razzoo*,
where some sort of suit wearing rapper was belting out some stuff accompanied
[perhaps not intentionally] by a girl with a pierced navel and tattoos just
above the arse. I doubt the beer was that good either. Eventually, we left and
after initially going the wrong way, made it back to the hotel at 5am, an 'excellent' preparation for a long plane
journey the following day ...
Unfortunately there are no female ratings
for the pubs en-route because I/we could not be arsed
to do them. However, a page by Lynne Honigmann
containing some unflattering photos is available here,
oh dear.
* there is a chance that I am confusing
these two places - a subsequent inspection before opening time the next day was
inconclusive and jogged no memories. Neither bar was anything
to write home about, and indeed I didn't. Think I'll try a more domestic
setting next time!
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Dan
Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com
Last updated 26th November 2002.