New Orleans, Part III: The Red Door February 24, 2009

In celebration of Mardi Gras, I though I’d write a series of  posts about New Orleans, the only city I ever married.

In New Orleans, many things are optional. Shoes, for instance. After finally moving to New Orleans, I went barefoot much of the time, my feet merrily slapping against the gritty concrete of her sun-warmed sidewalks. I eschewed any barrier between myself and New Orleans, I balked at sliding even the flimsiest rubber flip flop between us. I wanted to touch her with my skin, to paint the bottoms of my feet with her soot, like the hennaed soles of a Hindu bride. And no one raised an eyebrow at the black smudges curling up over the tops of my feet and crawling up my ankles like wisps of smoke.  The city is a woman with lavish charms, but she is not a lady; she has loosened her corset for life, she sits in a doorway with her skirts pulled up around her knees, fanning at her great, dewy bosoms, taking heavy drags from a cigarette. When you walk by with a sack of groceries, she smiles, and like the front porch denizens in my Mid-City neighborhood, she boldly asks you for the first beer from the sweating six-pack in your hand. She never demands, but she laughs at you if you say no. The city makes allowances for many things, but stinginess, taking yourself too seriously- these are traits she cannot abide. It’s a small but liberating price to pay for the many things she allows her allegiants to forego:  Outerwear, adulthood, self control, regular hours, bus fare. There were, of course, places that required shoes.

But not the Red Door. The Red Door Lounge on Carrollton was a perfect microcosm, a New Orleans petri dish in which everything wonderfully dank and dark and indulgent about the city was cultivated.

Home Sweet Home

For a neighborhood bar to be perfect, many criteria must be met: 1.) It must be close to home, so I can walk. Nothing better than a sunset and a buzz. In a car, you’re too busy trying to squeeze yourself out of your parallel parking job without ripping the bumper off the car parked behind you to notice the jewel-toned New Orleans sunsets. And then you also have to try and avoid running over the miscellaneous people and bicycles that might be laying suspended between the sidewalk and the street. A good neighborhood bar needs to actually be in the neighborhood: Close enough so that I can dash home and change my clothes if I spill my screwdriver on myself, and be back on the barstool before the bartender stabs a new straw into my replacement beverage. 2.) There must never be a dress code. A good neighborhood bar is like an extension of your living room or front porch. One should never have to consider the appropriateness of their clothing, or lack thereof. Shoeless girls in nightgowns are always welcome. 3.) A jukebox is absolutely essential. It goes without saying that the songs should be cheap. 4.) The bartender should make drinks stronger than you would ever dream of making them if you were making them yourself. 5.) The bartenders should never be hipster douchebags. A good neighborhood bartender is at least sixty-five, permanently drunk, slightly smelly, and should wear his or her hair in a style from the sixties, with a flat, frizzy patch on the the back of his or her head which they achieved by sleeping on the floor behind the bar when all the regulars have passed out. 6.) The bar should have a pool table in good enough repair to make it worth playing on, but not so fancy that anyone cares if you lean on it, or sit on it, or set your can of PBR on the edge of it. 7.) The bar should be open 24 hours a day. This maximizes the surreal experiences one is likely to have there. And besides, sometimes you want a beer at 7:30 in the morning.8.) It should never be depressing, even if there are certifiably insane people in there, and people spending their entire social security checks on booze. 9.) There are no fancy garnishes. No cocktail umbrellas, the drinks are never, ever served in a coconut. Your drink may or may not come in a clean glass. Only regulars get something fancy (like orange juice in their vodka), and that’s only if they tip good.

The Red Door Lounge  not only succeeded in meeting all nine criteria, it passed with flying colors. Going into the Red Door was like going inside the very heart of New Orleans. It beat slow and languorous, the pulse of dreamless sleep. Inside, the air was heavy and warm, despite the emphysemic wheezings of the ancient, cobwebbed air conditioner. The heat collected in beads behind my knees and in the hollows beneath my arms, pearls of moisture that tickled when they trickled down my skin. To keep cool, I wore floaty nylon nightgowns and sucked the vodka-scented ice at the bottom of my smudged highball glass. The interior walls were hung with crepuscular crimson wallpaper embossed with a pattern of velour swirls; tiny patches of graffiti pocked the corners of the room like inky eczema. Afternoon sunshine oozed onto the heavy wood bar through a small, dingy window at the front of the room. It seeped into the cracks and was lost among the sticky bottles and absorbed by the curling photographs taped to the mirror behind the bar. The door was sometimes propped open to allow fresh oxygen in, but the bright square of  sunshine that spilled onto floor of the entryway could not penetrate the veil of shadow that was excreted by the dark walls, the heavy wood, the countless cigarettes smoldering like incense in chunky plastic ashtrays. In the back of the room, there was a faded green pool table lit by an anemic fluorescent lamp. On the wall beside the bar was a jukebox with song selections by Louis Armstrong, Tina Turner, Led Zepplin, Elvis Presley. The songs were three-for-a-dollar. Two bucks got you enough songs to last through several cocktails.

Afternoons were spent like this: a ride home on the streetcar from the lunch shift in the French Quarter. In my apartment, I would peel off my soggy uniform and stand in front of the air conditioner, waiting for my body temperature to return to normal. Then I would select something comfortable to wear, a colorful second skin. I would put on some beads and call my best friend to see if she was ready for the Red Door. We would meet on the sidewalk somewhere in the neighborhood, fluttering together toward the bar like two be-satined butterflies. The door would be open. The bartender would look up, squinting at the sunshine which framed us, his cheeks dusted with stubble.  We would smile and say hello; he was already reaching into the cooler for the wilted carton of orange juice he’d need to make my screwdrivers. We were regulars, after all.