Bars, Part 1

Bars, bars, bars. New Orleans is really into bars. There are at least six bars that are within a ten minute walk from our current house, probably more. I don't know the number for sure because in this city they're as noticeable and exciting as fire hydrants.

I've been to most of the bars nearby, and they're ok. Each one caters to a specific taste. The Avenue Pub is your bar if you want to eat a hamburger and drink a fancy beer on tap and feel very cramped while sitting down. There is the Bridge Lounge, which is where you go if you are well-dressed young people who like to spend your copious disposable income on $10 cocktails with fun names that are written in colorful chalk on blackboard menus while engaging in grown-uppy after-hours professional networking time and imagining you're hip because you're hanging out in a bar that allows dogs and makes a big deal out of doing so. If you are actually hip, though, the bar for you is the Saint, which is such a cool bar it doesn't even have windows and has its drink specials written on pieces of paper taped up over the bar, that's how cool it is, and there are usually foreign horror movies playing with the sound turned off, that's how cool it is, and a jukebox filled with albums by bands like The Gun Club for christs sakes, that's how cool it is. But if you are threatened or angered by the Saint's coolness, or if you don't like the feeling of being slowly smothered to death in a dimly lit shoebox, you can always go to the Half Moon, which has plenty of windows and is also not cool in the slightest. You can play skee ball at the Half Moon, so I guess it's for people who play skee ball, but other than that it's confusing to tell who exactly it's for, as everyone there seems somehow slightly uncomfortable and unified only in their blandness; they might be perfectly interesting people outside of the Half Moon, but something about the Half Moon setting draws out the inherent blandness lurking in everyone and smears it into an indistinguishable beige conversational puddle. For those of you who went to Hendrix, the Half Moon is a lot like Hardin Hall. (I have spent a significant amount of time in both places, if that tells you anything.)

And then, four buildings down from the Half Moon, there is Down the Hatch.

Now, because bars are always sort of stupid, I can say a lot of unkind things about each of the aforementioned places. But at the end of the day, the Bridge Lounge, the Saint, and the Half Moon all have redeeming qualities. They all do their job, which is to provide a social atmosphere and plenty of booze and sometimes fatty snacks. But this is not the case with Down the Hatch. Down the Hatch has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

First off, it's called Down the Hatch. The extraordinarily poorly rendered sign they've chosen to hang above their door depicts a revolting, red-faced leprechaun, blackout drunk and bloated with cirrhosis, who is inexplicably pouring a beer onto his scalp. (This picture to the right is the man himself.) The interior is dark, narrow, and boring, composed of brick walls studded with New Orleans kitsch so unremarkable it's invisible; the overall visual effect is that of one of those shitty chain burrito places after business hours. But it's the food that's the important part. The food at Down the Hatch is qualitatively different than other food. When most restaurants cook food it is intended to nourish and sustain you while pleasing your senses, but the kitchen at Down the Hatch believes that the purpose of food is to sicken you with as much years-old fryer grease as can be squeezed into a basket of limp, cold fries. Were there a way to inject an overpriced glass bottle of High Life with a syringe of befouled, cornmeal-speckled vegetable oil, I'm certain Down the Hatch would leap at the chance to do so. The existential bleakness of the ugly setting, the oil soaked bar fare, and the name of the place combine to summon to mind images of haggard sea birds or constrictor snakes distending their mouths to mindlessly gulp down great hunks of filthy meat. Down the Hatch!

Everyone – what’s the worst bar you’ve ever known and why?