These guys know the score.
There are many ways to drink it every day.. In most parts of the world, this includes brunch, sports, or music festivals. But for New Orleanians…well, we’re known worldwide for drinking before the sun crosses our gardens.
Is your child 8 months and 2 weeks old? Let’s drink all day!
Today is Sunday? Okay, then I’ll drink in the second row. A storm is coming, everyone yelled? Let’s begin!
And if we have a pot and some kind of seafood, we boil and drink!
But like almost everything else we do here, there’s often another level to our daily drinking habits. Because, unlike the rest of the world, New Orleanians know that the secret to staying happy and semi-sane is sometimes sitting on a nice bar stool, tipping a few drinks, and spending the day just to pass the time. Because we understand that this is something we need to spend.
Any good dirtbag knows that drinking isn’t just fun, it’s therapeutic.
Drinking self-care days can take many forms. That might mean decamping locally in the early afternoon and spending the daylight hours hanging out with your favorite bartender or regular girlfriend or two.
There’s the classic “catch up with old friends” drink of the day. Thanks to the city’s addictive nature, anyone who visits this city may be a friend from college, a childhood friend who has moved away, an ex-lover who was once estranged, or is still estranged. There seem to be endless opportunities for reunions. An ex-boyfriend who was once estranged.
A good day’s drink means meeting up with a friend or two, watching a TV show or old movie playing in the background, talking nonsense, laughing, and quietly reminiscing about the family ties that brought you together in the first place. It may also mean double-checking.
A fun day of drinks with a few friends is somehow different from a normal night spent at a bar. Perhaps it’s just that it’s not generally allowed to take time off from work on undesignated holidays. Or even in a dark bar room, the difference in light that occurs when you sit down and drink a beer or three while the sun is still up.
Whatever it is, it always feels good to be with your friends and do nothing but just be in their presence.
The author and his mother.
Then there’s Solo Day Drinks. Puritans might turn their noses up at the idea that it’s okay to go to a bar and sit there with just you, your drink, and the endless possibilities of who or what might come through the door. They’ll say it’s a sign of laziness, or worse, a drinking “problem.” This is a sad way to live life, when you can learn a lot by sitting alone at a bar during the day. Plus, you don’t have to drink to enjoy a well-rounded day of drinking time, so jokes are fine.
For years, I traveled a lot for work, and over time I got into the habit of arriving a day or two early, especially if I’d never been there before. That way I could sit at the bar, spend some time and get to know a new city.
It’s the same here at home.sit by the window harry’s corner French Quarter events are great for the general public as well as for getting to know what’s going on in the neighborhood. You can literally feel the rhythm as the street transforms from a quiet area of locals to a playground of happy and noisy tourists.
from the chair of Budrip’s and Mr. B.J. I could literally see the transformation of Bywater over the past decade and a half. Old-time daytime bartenders like the late, great Bob Smith are being replaced by a younger, hipper generation of barhands, and a daytime clientele once populated by plumbers, electricians and licensed professionals is emerging. Ta. The oddballs have dwindled and been gradually replaced by hipsters, metalheads, and now Airbnb tourists looking for the “real Norlins.”
A day spent alone at a bar is also a great way to clear your mind and fight off nagging demons and self-doubt.
Having a few beers and catching up with visiting friends is a very classic day-long drinking activity.
I love drinking delicious drinks alone during the day.. Sometimes it’s almost meditative, just sitting quietly at a bar, sorting through your thoughts and worries, and letting them go. Other times, we find ourselves celebrating and mourning, listening to the stories of joy and sorrow of strangers. And sometimes I learn something about myself.
Smokehouse Brown, a mustard drinker.
The first time I drank alcohol by myself every day was in my early twenties, probably around the age of one or two. I lived in Missoula, Montana, working and attending college. One afternoon, I was driving home from somewhere and stopped to get gas.
At the beginning of the day, I was deep into a relationship with the woman I was with at the time, and feeling like a true Gen I decided to.
It turned out to be technically a bar, but more importantly, it was a strip club. It was 2pm on a weekday, and there wasn’t much stripping or clubbing going on. Instead, I found three young women sitting at the bar, smoking Marlboro She Light 100s, drinking beers and chatting with an older woman behind the bar.
I froze at the door. I had never actually been to a strip club at this point in my life, at least not that I consciously pinned it down until that day. After an excruciatingly long break, a clearly amused bartender greeted me and explained that the entertainment wouldn’t start for a few hours, but that the bar was open if I wanted a drink.
I sat down, ordered a beer and a shot, and tried my best to look like I belonged there. It didn’t take long for the bartender to pay attention to me. And it didn’t take long for him to volunteer almost certainly too much information about my life, my relationships, and the stupid things I’d done that caused the fight. My girl earlier in the day.
Delicious and refreshing, Shirley Temple is the perfect place to spend the day with non-alcoholic drinks at the bar.
The women patiently listened to me talk about how to get out of the emo hole I had dug for myself. They laughed sympathetically at how earth-shatteringly serious it seemed, at least to me. They had some sympathy and offered some probably mundane but still wise advice to stop taking things so seriously and that if I just got out of my own head, everything would be fine.
Of course they were right. After a few hours of chatting about life, work, and nothing in particular, I realized that whatever youth crisis I was facing, the world as I knew it would end. I returned home feeling much less so.
So, I ended up with the first of a lifelong series of therapy sessions at the bar.
With the world in a near-constant state of turmoil and stress, it’s more important than ever to find space and time to get away from it all: family conflicts, bosses, and the creeping existential threat of fascism. . On a Tuesday afternoon, Barstool is the perfect place to find it.
