August 19th
Monday morning, we renewed our assault on the French Quarter. We started off with a trip up Decatur to the French Market. There was a huge park a couple of blocks up the street. The park has many mule powered buggies that give you a tour of the French Quarter. Behind the park is a gargantuan church. The church sits on the site of the first Catholic church in Louisiana that was erected in 1718. I'm not sure if this is the original church, but it was being renovated. The right spire had already had the slate roof replaced and they were currently working on the left spire. We walked past Cafe Du Monde with Annita saying "we'll have plenty of time to stop there later." We spent a couple of hours wandering through the hundreds of tables filling the Market. You wouldn't believe all the different types of hot sauces on the market. Everytime we stopped, I searched for "John Boy and Billie Grilling Sauce" to no avail. It's evidently not real popular in the French Quarter. Nita bought some earrings and we both bought some T-shirts. As we were preparing to leave, it began to sprinkle. My dad told me about people not smart enough to come in out of the rain, but I'd never seen it until now. I took several pictures of it raining so that when I got back to western Kansas, I could show people what it looked like. Two days after I arrived home, it poured down an inch of rain. Maybe I should go to New Orleans more often......Hmmmm......Maybe I can get the area farmers to even pay for the trip.
We stopped at one of the many cafe's along the street for brunch. We then wandered the street looking into the trinket shops, and doing occasional shopping. We decided to make our way back to Coyote Ugly to take a look. There was a HUGE black guy at the door saying, "Come on in, we got music playing, and people dancing. They even got me dancing and I can't dance!!!" We stepped into the place to see a long bar with a curve at the closest end with two whole people sitting at the middle of the bar (this was at roughly 2 in the afternoon). There was a long-haired brunette working behind the bar in cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a spaghetti string red top cut low to show off ample cleavage. There was also a redhead (anyone who knows me knows that I have a thing for blue-eyed redheads--some people would call it a fetish) in spandex pants and a sportsbra. She had her hair up in a bun on the back of her head. She was talking to an older woman in a pink dress with long blonde hair. We later found out she was the choreographer for the bartenders, I still don't know if she was the owner or not. We sat down at the little curved end of the bar and began looking around. The brunette came up and asked for our order; Annita ordered Jack on the rocks and I ordered a Bud Light bottle. She told me that they didn't have Bud Light bottles. I was hearing that comment FAR too much for MY liking!!!! I ended up ordering a Miller Lite bottle and looking at the sign on the mirror behind the bar. The choreographer told us that we were in for a treat. They had been working on a new dance and we would be the first people to see it. The two waitresses came over and began pushing all the stuff to the outside of the bar; my camera, my beer, napkins, and Nita's drink. Then the redhead crawled up on the bar and took up a pose on her hands and knees, with the brunette in front of her in the same position. The music began (one of Eminem's songs, I couldn't tell you which) and the erotic bar-crawl started. They swayed and rocked their hips, slowly inching forward. They eventually stood up and did some punching and kicking in time with the music, and continued dancing away from us. When they were about halfway down the bar I turned and smiled at Annita. She looked at me and said, "I'm surprised you weren't taking pictures." My eyes snapped down to my unattended camera. What was I thinking???? I quickly snatched it up and zoomed in as close as it would let me and snapped a couple of pictures. As the song died down, the two had made it to the far end of the bar, and the choreographer, the bouncer, and the four patrons began applauding. They did two more songs while on the bar (jumping down to get drinks for us), one AC/DC song and Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me." I noticed a sticker on the bar mirror: "Blew By U Racing" with some town and Louisiana underneath it. I looked at that for a moment thinking, "Wow, that is really neat. Dad and I need to come up with a neat slogan like that for our race team." Then it dawned on me. I was in Louisiana. "Blue Bayou Racing." I asked for a pen and the bartender brought me a pen and a stack of napkins. I figured I'd lose the napkin so I wrote it on the paper sack that had the Coyote Ugly T-shirt, pilsner glass, and bumper sticker I had purchesed earlier. Annita was amazed at my creativity!!! Shortly after this, three male college students walked in and sat down at the end of the long part of the bar, right before it curved to my seat. After a couple of minutes went by, another bartender came in and the two at the bar were dying to show her the dance. Once again, the bar was cleared directly in front of me. This time, the camera was in my hand when the song started! I was watching the college kids out of the corner of my eye as the girls danced. They never moved......I don't think they even breathed!!! They sat with their hands on their glasses and craned their neck to follow the girls trip down the bar. After the song died down and the applause began to fade, I said, "Hey guys." They all turned towards me. I grabbed a napkin and said, "You might want to wipe a little of that off," as I dabbed the napkin at the corners of my mouth. Everyone in the bar started laughing, even the college kids.
We left Coyote Ugly and began wandering the streets of the French Quarter again. We ended up stopping at the hotel before our dinner date with the Canadians, where I elected to leave my camera. I would later kick myself in the butt for that slip-up. We were sitting at a table in Hooters when Andy and Marilyn walked in. Much to Annita's dismay, Rachel wasn't working that night. I did my best to ease her unbearable pain. We had to change seats because of the condensation off the air conditioning, and in the process lost our waitress. We definitely traded up though, Christy was beautiful!!!! She had the southern "Y'all" accent, and I later noticed that she had her tongue pierced. Once she apologized all over herself for not waiting on us sooner (which wasn't her fault), she began giving us as much of a hard time as we gave her. Andy had remembered the story about Rachel from the night before and kept calling her "sweetie." It was a good time.
Once again, Andy twisted my arm and we went bar hopping. We started with a return trip to Coyote Ugly, where the redhead actually had her hair down. Unfortunately, she was outshone by the blonde in SHORT white shorts with Silly Putty breastages. In other words, she was augmented, I have heard the term "fake breasts" before, but I can tell you honestly.....If I can feel them, they're real. We left there and returned to Bourbon Street, even finding the bar that had allowed me to scare off all the clientele with my lack of musical talent. There was a different band playing that night though. We ended up going up onto the second story balcony and watching the crowds mill by. At some point during the festivities, I ran out of beer. I made my way back into the bar and ordered a Bud Light bottle. I'm not sure if all of the readers understand how the bead thing works at Mardi Gras. If you flash someone your "bodily parts," they're supposed to give you a necklace of beads. The bartender returns with THREE bottles of beer. It was "buy one get two free" night. I turned around and made my way back to the table of plastic cups since the sign leading to the balcony had a huge sign saying "no glass containers." I was able to fit most of two of the bottles into the plastic cup and pounded the last of what wouldn't fit of the second bottle. I figured that if I was caught with a bottle, the worst they could do was take away my birthday, so out onto the balcony I went. I went to hand the third bottle to Annita, and when she turned around, she was wearing a necklace of beads. She kept going on about how cute the guy was that gave her the necklace. Yeah right.....She didn't have to flash anything at him to get the necklace.....Right. The only beads I got during the trip was the ones I bought. Everytime I flashed my "wares," I kept hearing, "You want $5? Put your clothes back on!!!!" Either that or, "That's cute!!!! It looks like a penis, only smaller." NOT good for the ego. We made a date with Andy and Marilyn to meet at Bubba Gump Shrimp the next night at 9:00.
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