YOLO NOLA

Last weekend, I went to New Orleans for a bachelor party.  For everyone's protection, I'm not going to identify the bachelor or anyone else who went on the trip, and to the extent I refer to anyone, it will be "one guy."  Not that anything bad happened, but it's just common courtesy.

As several of us boarded the plane in Chicago, some woman (who, it was later revealed, was traveling to New Orleans for her 30th birthday) exclaimed "YOLO NOLA!" several times to her friends.  We all shook our heads, not only because it was terrible, but because we knew we were never going to get it out of our heads and we would be shouting it in jest the whole weekend.

I haven't been to New Orleans since I was a toddler, so I assume this trip was different.  Then again, I don't really remember that trip either, so I can't confirm anything.  New Orleans, if you haven't been, is a fun town.  For the more serious, you can go there and run a marathon (or at least a half), which some people (none of us, mind you) apparently did Sunday morning.  For those with nothing to do (like us), it can turn every day into a marathon of booze.  Each day, I had one of those moments where I looked at the time, and it was only somewhere between 6 and 8, but it felt like it was after midnight.  That was usually the point where I went to the nearest pizza or hot dog stand to allow my body to function (or at least not completely shut down) for the next 9-11 hours.  There is also a casino within walking distance of the French Quarter, so that was good and bad.

I thoroughly enjoyed walking up and down Bourbon Street and just stopping at a bar that looked good, and then having the option to drink my beer while walking down the street if I wanted to go somewhere else.  The ambiance of the French Quarter is unlike anywhere else in the States –- a unique combination of history, music, arts, architecture, great food, and people willing to show their privates to strangers for a strand of plastic beads worth ten cents.

Here are some highlights that I remember or was told about:

• My favorite bar that we went to was Lafitte's, which is kind of on the east end of the main drag of Bourbon Street.  It's thought to be the oldest building in the U.S. that is used as a bar, and there is no electric lighting inside the bar, other than in the bathrooms.  Everything else is lit by candles.  You actually feel like you're drinking in the 18th Century.  We went there both Friday and Saturday afternoon for a few Abita Ambers and/or Coors Lights.  I highly recommend this to anyone.
  
• Two guys sang karaoke at Cat's Meow.  One of them was talking to an older couple at the bar about how he would like to have sexual relations with the female MC.  They were her parents.
• One guy got in late Friday night, failed to meet up with any of us Friday night (due in large part to the fact that the only guys he knew were too impaired to respond to his text messages) but apparently found good times.  He didn't meet up with us until about 3 or 4 Saturday afternoon, hung out for maybe 30-45 minutes, and then had to go back to the hotel because he was so hungover.  He never made it back out.  He left Sunday morning.  He was either the MVP or the LVP of the bachelor party.  Only he knows for sure.
• Shot girls at bars on Bourbon Street are fairly aggressive.  They walk around with test tube shots and basically hound everyone into buying shots, especially when they know it's a bachelor party, since everyone is always willing to buy the bachelor a shot.  They then let you take test tube shots out of their cleavage, or sometimes put a test tube shot backwards in their mouth and then you have to drink out of the other end, or sometimes they put a test tube shot backwards in your fly and then they take the shot while simulating fellatio.  It's classy, if nothing else.  One guy nearly got a concussion from how hard the shot girl at the Famous Door hit him in the head with her gigantic rack.  "Put your face as closed to them as you can without touching them," she said.  Then, as a guy was a few inches away and in the middle of asking "is this close eno--," SMACK.  In the words of N.W.A., "with a right, left, right, left, you're toothless."  Actually, this happened to three or four guys.  
• Another shot girl was touting her bosom and asked one guy to "touch [her] boobs."  Before he could answer, she grabbed his hand, put it on her boobs, and asked "what do you think?"  He replied, "They're really . . . sticky."  She didn't bother us after that.
• I found Pat O'Brien's to be kind of a grift on drunken men, or at least the patio was.  We went to the patio (which was a pretty cool spot to hang out) Friday night for a round of Hurricanes, and every waiter was trying to get us to buy rounds of shots for tables full of women.  After a couple rounds, we got wise to their game and headed elsewhere.
  
• However, the front bar at Pat O'Brien's is more like a regular bar, without the constant pressure to spend $50 on strangers who don't want to have sex with you or any of your friends.  We went there Saturday for a few drinks, and Gil Hicks was spotted standing by the bar.  Presumably, he was about to embark on a first date, in which, first he'd take the suitorette shopping to stores she wants to shop in, and then they'd do a little lunch, probably at the Cheese Haus, followed by some golfing. And then at night, they'd take in an opera, probably Die Fledermaus, and then he'd follow it up with a drive to a secluded beach where he'd pop on the radio and they could slow-dance till the sun came up.  Or maybe he's the kind of guy who has to beg for sex.  I should know.  We can smell our own.
  
• Saturday afternoon, a few of us went to a place called the Gumbo Shop for some food.  I had the combo platter, which was jambalaya, shrimp Creole, and crawfish etouffee, with an alligator sausage appetizer.  Now I understand how Antoine Domino came to be known as Fats.
• After gorging on Cajun food, we were walking down Bourbon Street when a fire truck siren started to wail and get closer and closer.  I kid you not, this fire truck was going 50 mph when it flew past us before getting some air as it went over a bump.  Bourbon Street isn't exactly wide, and there are a lot of people who don't really pay attention to the boundary between street and sidewalk, even when the street isn't closed to traffic, so I'm amazed no one got hit.
• After avoiding death at the hands of first responders, we met up with others at a bar on Bourbon Street they chose because it had plenty of room on the balcony.  You know it's a gay bar when you go in the bathroom and there is a two-foot-tall trough along one wall, while the remainder of all four walls is mirrored.  Nowhere to hide your dong.  Not that there's anything wrong with it.
• Saturday night, we went to a bar on Bourbon Street that was called My Bar.  The name is bad, but the atmosphere was nice.  We went out on the balcony and did some people watching, which is particularly fun at night when Bourbon is closed to traffic.
  
  
• One guy put his ear to a dancer's butt cheek while she was on stage and declared, "I can hear the ocean."
• One guy almost got his pocket picked when, in front of a drug store, a woman approached him, asked him if he wanted "to party," grabbed his junk with one hand, and tried to slip her other hand into his front pocket.  He recoiled, and her hand revealed a receipt from his pocket.  She then acted surprised and got weird(er), offering to buy him a soft drink from inside the store, whereupon she pulled out a giant roll of cash from her own pocket.
• One guy died with a needle in his arm.  Idiot.
• We watched the Hoosiers dismantle #10 Michigan at a sports bar called Huck Finn's, where we dined on po boys.  That win would have been especially nice if the Hoosiers hadn't lost to Nebraska and Northwestern in the previous two weeks.
• We watched the Super Bowl at a cigar bar on Canal Street called Don Leoncio, which turned out to be perfect because it was not crowded, and we could smoke cigars and drink whiskey while sitting on plush leather couches and watching the worst Super Bowl in recent memory.
• Sunday night, we walked into one of the walk-up "Jester" bars on Bourbon Street to get a drink, and this hammered and apparently mentally unstable woman in her late 20s was telling the late teens/early '20s bartender how much she wanted to bang him.  She stood on a stool, bent over, pointed her ass at the bartender, pulled up her dress to reveal a thong, and started smacking her own ass.  It was a risky move, but would it pay off?  Not so much.  The bartender then kicked her and her friend out –- and us, too, because he thought we were with her.  So now I can say I've been kicked out of a bar in New Orleans.
• One guy was nice enough to buy full muffulettas from Central Grocery for a bunch of us to keep in our hotel rooms for our gorging convenience.  Another guy decided it would be a good idea to eat half of a muffuletta (a half is equal to about two regular-sized sandwiches) at about 5:30 a.m. Monday morning after returning from an unsuccessful trip to the casino.  Muffalettas are delicious, but eating that much ham, salami, and mortadella right before bed is not recommended.  He did not sleep well, although he did not need to eat again until about 6:30 p.m.

YOLO NOLA!