The Club Ms. Mae's: A Series of Vignettes
The Ultimate Dive Bar in the Greatest Drinking City, New Orleans.
My love for the bar scene came as an 18 year old, before I was legally allowed to be in them. See, I went to undergrad in New Orleans where drinking is woven into the fabric of life. Fake IDs of the lowest order were regularly accepted across town, not just at the college bars. And after Hurricane Katrina (which hit just before my sophomore year), most places were just happy to have patrons in them, so IDs were an afterthought. The bars that quickly won the hearts of my friends and I were the sweatbox music venues and the dives. And one became the dark, degenerate sun for which our world orbited. It was The Club Ms. Mae’s.
Ms. Mae’s sits on the corner of Magazine and Napoleon, at the border of Uptown and the Garden District. It’s far enough away from Loyola and Tulane that it would never be suffocated by college kids, instead it’s centrally located allowing for easy access for all types of people from several different neighborhoods. It’s a prime locale where crowds from the legendary venues Tipitinas and Le Bon Temps Roule would pregame or post-funk at. It’s a key intersection where several Mardi Gras parades (like Babylon and Druids) begin, where you might see an on-duty police officer pop in for a drink while doing crowd control on the streets (it happened with regularity). It’s the place where former defensive coordinator of the Saints, Rob Ryan, occasionally held court post-win (after my era) buying drinks for all the patrons.
But on your average day, Ms. Mae’s was a place for cheap drinks and easy fun. It’s a basic set up, cash-only, with bar seating and a few tables and chairs. In my era it was windowless and had no A/C. There was a pool table, foosball table, an air hockey table (at some point), a few video poker machines, a jukebox (often playing metal), and of utmost importance, the staple $1 singles and $2 doubles. It attracted all walks of life with the common denominator of tying on a cheap buzz. Black or white, rich or poor, fashionista or scrub, cop or drug dealer, 18 or 89 years old, anyone who wanted to get blotto walked through this bar. And since it’s a 24-hour bar, they did so at all hours. Oh, and back then, you could smoke in there. We did, and so did everyone else. It was a magical time that seemed a lot closer to 1986 than 2006.
You could get lost in drinks, cigarettes, and conversation here; play foosball and pool for hours on end; get sucked into the vortex of Deuces Wild and Polly Poker, where winning $15 or $100 both meant you were drinking free that evening. You were constantly sliding between your friends and strangers, suddenly spending an evening with people you’d never interact with otherwise.
We knew Beckhouse the doorman and bartenders Marc, Frog, and Jason who seemingly never took a night off. We knew their tics, and if it was hour 12 of their shift and the bar was packed, we could reliably get a drink without agitating them further. They were the best breed of bartenders – surly with an occasional smile and wildly efficient. No bullshit, just slinging beers and high balls all night.
We got into plenty of trouble here, but we always played by the important rules – don’t enter top 40 songs on the jukebox, if you win at video poker tip your bartenders, and if you won enough, get drinks for your fellow players too. Don’t set drinks on the pool table or foosball table, don’t smoke without an ashtray. We spent an inordinate amount of time there. I demanded we get drinks there at 6 a.m. before heading to our graduation and went there when I completed my final class. Whether I needed to sulk or celebrate, Ms. Mae’s was always my first choice.
Many nights at Mae’s were just routine fun that all blurs together, but these are some memorable, and sometimes shameful, stories that show the full spectrum of a place that felt like my favorite broken home and a microcosm of the New Orleans I love.
#1
Up until her death in 2012, Ms. Mae (Florance Brigham) would regularly saddle up at the bar during the day with her glass of white wine. She had a seat that was reserved for her, and no one dare sit there if it was daylight. When the sun set, she slunk out, but every real Ms. Mae’s patron had seen her on her throne. She was a woman of small stature with a head of fading orange, permed hair, straight out from under the bonnet dryer. She had a classic grandma look that evoked feelings of smoking cigarettes on a plastic covered couch. She was from another era and had seen too much bullshit to deal with any in her presence at her place of business. You’d sometimes see her talking with a bartender or patron, maybe share a laugh, but normally she was just observing her haven with a glass of wine. She was not friendly nor outright hostile, just a grump. And how drunk she got remained a mystery.
It must have been Carnival season, because the place was poppin’ and we were already deep into a buzz by the early afternoon. My friends and I were standing near the bar sharing some irreverent banter. I was in the middle of telling a story, I assume it was peppered with the underdeveloped, colorful vernacular of a 20 year-old brain – “fuck this, retard that, and asshole the other” – when I felt a hard pinch on my ear. The pinch held firm and from my peripheral vision I could see a wrinkled arm.
I turned towards it to see that I was staring down Ms. Mae. While she continued to twist my ear tighter and towards her, her left finger waved in my face, “I better not hear any more cursing in my bar!” She released my ear as I apologized profusely, which she accepted, before sitting back down with her glass of wine. If I remember correctly, I later got her to crack a smile and even got a gentle clink from her glass.
As a Catholic from the Silent Generation her expectations of decorum around women and elders was engrained so deeply that it seemed to overlook the fact that she ran one of the most notorious degenerate bars in New Orleans. This was by far my most innocent offense at The Club, and yet, this run-in terrified as much as any.
#2
One time a couple of my buddies got kicked out of Ms. Mae’s. This is a pretty hard thing to do being that it’s a 24/7 bar full of delinquents and there’s usually at least a few worse off than you. Plus, the doormen were equally derelict. The most rogue of them all was Beckhouse. His claim to fame was his role as the Cockface Killer in Gorgasm and Attack of the Cockface Killer series (bartender Jason was also the director!). Real horror movies made in New Orleans. Low budget, with over-the-top gore and teetering on the line of softcore porn. But still, real movies that some people watched.
Beckhouse was a tall, imposing motherfucker and was usually one of three things – pissed off and not in the mood, jovial and fucking with you, or sloshed and a possible liability on the job. But in no way do I mean this as slander, he was mostly a teddy bear and a central piece of the Ms. Mae’s experience. Somehow, we became buddies. I think our sloppy drinking endeared us to one another. Or maybe you just can’t afford to not like your regulars, and I was a regular.
Anyway, my friends got the boot over nothing, another case of being over served and showing it. For several minutes they were outside the front door pleading with the doormen to let them back in. It was panic and desperation. This despite it being an unremarkable night. After repeated pleading and continued stonewalling it became clear to the bouncers that my friends were under the impression they were banned from the bar. With a simple, “Guys, just come back tomorrow” the insistence ceased, and my friends walked away satisfied. We likely did come back the next day just to make sure they were welcome.
#3
I took a date to Ms. Mae’s, which sounds weird. But actually, we first met there, so I knew I wasn’t playing with fire by taking a cute girl to a place with no windows, full of chain smokers. But, as I would soon find out, you’re always playing with some kind of fire at The Club. A few drinks in my stomach clenched and bubbled. It startled me but I put it out of mind. That worked for a few minutes, but a stronger rumble echoed through me, and it became clear I was staring down violent diarrhea. I wasn’t at risk of shitting myself right then, but I knew I’d have to make a move for the bathroom in the next few minutes.
At the time, the Ms. Mae’s men’s room was a trough for pissing to the left, while right in front of the bathroom door was a bizarre, single toilet raised a couple feet off the ground like some kind of throne of shame. There was no door to the toilet, you were fully exposed should anyone else be in the bathroom while using it. And if someone opened the bathroom door, well, a good portion of the bar might see you riding the porcelain.
I had been watching the bathroom, and no one was going in or out, so I knew I’d have a window of time in there to myself. I got up from my date and casually said I was going the bathroom. I entered and stared down the toilet. Did I have another option? Is there a lock on the door? I didn’t. There wasn’t. The panic hit. As it goes every time, when you need to relieve yourself and you happen upon a bathroom, whether clean or dirty, functioning or broken, open or locked, your body recognizes relief is finally within reach and concedes the fight. If I were at a 5 alarm panic moments ago, it was now a 10. WE MUST SHIT.
I checked for toilet paper, and to my amazement, there was a fresh roll. I bit my lip, hastily pulled down my pants, squatted above the seatless toilet, and exploded. From where my date and I sat, there was a decent chance that, should the bathroom door open, I’d be able to make eye-contact with her from the toilet.
While the evacuation was quick, the clean-up was an extended effort and pure terror. The only embarrassment greater than being caught taking a shit in a dive is the vulnerability and emasculation of being seen hovering over a foul toilet wiping your ass. I wiped with gusto as sweat poured down my face. Getting my pants back up to my waist before the door to the bathroom had opened felt like some kind of Olympic feat. I walked out as though a mere, casual piss had taken place. My date would never know the horror I experienced for those two minutes while she casually sipped a drink.
#4
It was a brutally hot summer day in New Orleans that was broken by a classic late afternoon southern downpour. Like a knock at the door that’s immediately followed by a battering ram, you have a split second to recognize what’s happening before your trapped in total chaos. A girl who I had a crush on had texted me she’d be at Mae’s that night and there was no way I was missing a chance to hang out with her outside of class. While the storm persisted for hours, we decided we were going out, weather be damned. A thunderstorm doesn’t seem like a big deterrent, but we didn’t have a car, and this was long before Ubers, and taxis were too expensive. Plus, the streetcar line was likely to be out of service or extremely slow.
No problem, we’ll just run to Ms. Mae’s we thought. And that’s what we did. A mile and a half in a torrential storm, through half flooded streets. We flailed through it all in tee shirts and jeans weighed down by gallons of water. We arrived drenched, no raincoats, water squirting from our shoes, and grins on our faces. My crush was there, and I think we exchanged a few pleasantries, and I’m sure she asked about my appearance. And within minutes, she left with her friends.
Oh well. I think we were just excited to be out of the rain and back in our happy place. The one benefit to the bar not having A/C back in those days was that we didn’t freeze in our soaked clothing with the air conditioning blasting. Instead, just a few fans gently pushed around the smokey air. I suppose we drank until our clothes dried. But truth be told, I don’t remember.
#5
Unfortunately, we did have many nights where someone in the crew drove us to Ms. Mae’s, and yes, they drank. One such night I was the driver. It was not a particularly late night at The Club, but drinks were had. After buying our last round we piled in my car. I sat down and placed my mostly full double gin and tonic in my cup holder. There are no open container laws in New Orleans, but you obviously can’t have them in your car while driving.
I started the car and made note to everyone, “I really shouldn’t be driving with this!” It was a flicker of sanity. I picked it up and hurled the contents out the window. But just as quickly as I tossed it, everything had returned in force onto myself, my passengers, and the interior of my car. “Shit!” I yelled.
There was a second of delay before it became clear. I hadn’t yet rolled down my window.
I’d like to say I wasn’t that drunk, this is a very clear memory, but how can I confidently say that after what I just told you?
#6
Some nights you just got that itch. You were bottomless. You didn’t cross the line into darkness despite countless drinks. You were insatiable and energized. Everything felt right. And you weren’t necessarily on coke. It wasn’t uncommon for someone in the group to hit that stride, and one night I hit it hard. We’d been at Mae’s for hours, and it was probably 3 a.m. when the crew started pulling together to get out. I firmly dug in, I was staying. They gave me one last chance to join before they left me alone at the bar.
The thing about the itch is that its eyes are bigger than its stomach, and the bottomless drinks eventually do catch up. I put up a good stand, but by 4:30 a.m. I was done. I wasn’t reckless or even particularly sloppy, I was just drunk tired. And when drunk tired grabs hold, that’s a tired you can’t fight. So, I didn’t. I rested my head right on that dirty bar top to let the recharge begin. And in true Ms. Mae’s fashion, they allowed me to. It was quiet by that point, and since they don’t close, they probably saw leaving me as the easy option. Why bother with the headache of waking me up and forcibly removing me?
I woke up in a blur a few hours later. I checked my pockets for my phone, wallet, and keys, and stumbled my way home. I crashed at home for hours, sleeping away a perfectly good Saturday. When I woke up, I slowly pieced together the night and cleaned up for what remained of the day. It wasn’t until we were looking to go out that night that I realized I’d lost my hat. Surely it was at Ms. Mae’s.
Sure enough, we ended up back at The Club. Beckhouse stopped me as we entered.
“Hey, I need to talk to you about last night.”
Shit, something did go down. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“When you fell asleep at the bar last night? I took your hat off and wore it so no one would steal it.”
“Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you!” A huge relief came over me.
“Yeah, even though it was a fucking Broncos hat. And I hate the Broncos.”
I chuckled. “So where is it?”
“Well, that’s the thing, I put it on and didn’t see you leave. When my shift ended, I stayed at the bar all morning.”
“Yeah…”
“Well, I ended up passing out at the bar. And someone stole it off of me… Sorry man! I tried to help.”
Eventually, we all sleep at Ms. Mae’s.
#7
It was another late night at The Club, and we had outlasted the casual drinkers and most the heavy hitters. I was well over my limit, exacting in my singular focus for God knows what. I had the faint semblance of complete sentences on my tongue, a thought or two left bumping around my head. Someone needed to hear them! My friends and I were at that point where you’re talking at each other, no one is saying anything of importance, and little listening is required. I shuffled over to one of the remaining groups in the bar, a few women in their own conversational stupor.
There’s three-drink bravado where you intend to impress from the liquid courage coursing through you. And there’s beyond reproach bombast. You’re only looking to command attention through the ease of interruption. I was in the latter camp, and I was successful, in that I entered the conversation by way of force. But they did not want to hear me.
I bounced back over to my friends, but that was nothing of interest.
I redirected my energy back to the ladies for one more go. I was again met with indifference and annoyance. I hung around, mindless, wanting to converse, butting in on the conversation, searching for a laugh. But I was not clever. I had no end goal, and they had no reason to let a conversation begin. I gave up, but I was hostile. After all, I had drunk 20 beers and had nothing to show for it.
“Ahh, you’re being a cunt anyways.” I slurred as I decided to leave.
Immediately I was brought to life. Not from what I said, but from the fist that met my left eye. There was a twinge of pain overpowered by a shot of adrenaline and clarity. I’m sober now! The woman I directed the slight towards reflexively clocked me in the face. I backed away, I was only there to instigate. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was, I suppose, my only end goal. And it did end things. The bouncers pushed me outside before there was a chance for escalation, though, I don’t think there was real concern. It was just a very dumb comment met with appropriate disgust.
She was a regular like me. But she was in the industry, a bartender all the Mae’s staff knew. I picked the fight, but she won it. I had to go. But as delinquents themselves, the bouncers were understanding of my wild indiscretion. They assured me I could come back another time, but I had to leave tonight. And now.
The next day I awoke with the guilt of the evening weighing me down. I called a stranger a cunt in public, got punched in public, and was kicked out of my favorite bar. But it was also the shame of disrupting my friends’ night. I was saddled with shame, but my friends assured me it was all just sloppy nothingness. The night was over anyway, they said. Plus, my eye was a little tender to touch but it wasn’t bruised. To me this meant there was no reason to not go out again. Oh, how quickly we forget! We went to a reliable backup, Balcony Bar.
We were a few drinks in upstairs when my friend said, “just so you know, I think the woman you called a cunt is bartending downstairs.” I was again overcome with guilt and shame but also fear. I had a chance to apologize, and while I didn’t really want to right then, I had to do it. I had to confront my own idiocy and try to make good. Another friend verified it was her.
I walked to the quiet downstairs bar where I saw a woman behind the bar. I walked up; she was only vaguely familiar looking. I cleared my throat and said, “Hey, I think you and I had a run-in last night.” She looked perplexed. “I called you a name. I was super wasted, I don’t know why I did it, but I’m sorry.” I was trying to come up with what to say next, if I could do anything to make it right. But before I could put it together her face turned to a sneer, she looked down at the other end of the bar where a few guys were sitting and said, “Hey, this is the guy that called me a cunt last night!”
One of the guys – looking stereotypical Louisiana tough in jeans, boots, and a camo hat – got up and said, “You better get out of here,” as he slowly approached me. He started saying some other menacing shit, but I was already out the front door and down the street. I texted my friends and walked home. Sometimes apologies backfire. On the bright side, my unevolved brain tried to make things right. Plus, I was back at Mae’s within a week’s time.
#8
There are a handful of near consequential stories from my life that don’t make sense and are entirely too out of focus. Not because of drinking like the aforementioned anecdotes. No, some seem to be scrubbed from my memory despite being unbelievable stories. As the gap of time widens, it’s hard for me to know if I tried proactively to wash these memories away, suppressed them long enough that they became murky backwater, or I simply didn’t think about them often enough to fully solidify in the memory bank. In these cases, the concrete set of events don’t fall into a clear order, nor are all the colorful details easily available. There are no easy-to-understand hows or whys. They are a dark smudge on the mind that demand clarity but will forever be obscured by time and failed memory.
There was a short lived era for a buddy and I wherein one routine stood above all. It was post-college, and as adults entering the real world, we had more obligations than before. But they were still minor in the grand scheme of things. I worked at K-Paul’s in the Quarter, he, I can’t recall. Through most of my shifts I’d swear off drinking as I sweat through our all-black-everything uniform – socks, shoes, pants, and a button down long-sleeve shirt. But like clockwork, by 10 p.m. I’d start feeling better, watching the Quarter come to life through the window. The shift usually ended by 11:30 p.m. and I was now itching to go out. If you’ve worked in the service industry you know the wired nervous energy that comes post shift. Even if you’re tired you can’t simply sleep, one must decompress. Usually with drinks.
At the time, my friend lived a few blocks from Mae’s, and once I realized he was ending up there alone on the regular, we fell into a pattern of late night starts at The Club. Lots of video poker and double whiskey cokes were had during these nights. Occasional flirting with women, meeting other friends, tacking on a late night show or food, but mostly just reveling in the aura of Ms. Maes.
One such night went particularly late. We rolled out of Ms. Mae’s just on the cusp of dawn, half-baked, walking the four blocks back to my friend’s apartment. Two men in their 30s stood on the porch of their double shotgun bungalow. They said something to us. It was impossible to ignore, we were the last people up, past the final late night revelers and before the earliest of risers. It was just us and them. I don’t recall if they lured us up with an offer to keep the party going or if they egged us on with threats and confrontation. But we engaged and ended up on their porch, a giant miscalculation on our part. I’ve always suspected that we ran into them at Ms. Maes earlier that night but that’s where the failed memory begins. What I do remember is standing on their porch having some back and forth, tensions rising. There was conversation around them being off-duty cops, us calling bullshit. In what felt like mere seconds, they somehow acquired our IDs. Why in the hell would we volunteer them? Had they shown us bogus NOPD badges?
One went inside, and the other, I remember distinctly, stood on the stairs, acting as a deterrent between us and their gated yard. We were shooting each other looks, we both knew some serious fuckery was taking place and it wasn’t getting better, but the situation moved quickly and the fog from an all-nighter wasn’t clearing fast enough. The other man came back outside; he had something in his hands. They alleged that we were under arrest. I watched as my friend scowled, “What the fuck are you doing?” Before I knew it, his hands were behind his back and cuffed. Then mine were. We were seated next to each other on a bench facing the street, each handcuffed. Real handcuffs. The compact weight and cold, tight pressure of them confirmed the severity of our situation.
There was more talk of us being in trouble. We called bullshit again. But now that we were restrained, our defense was too. They both went back inside, and we were gifted a moment to collect ourselves. The reality of the situation set in further. We spoke quietly, getting on the same page. Had an arrestable offense taken place? Did one of us piss on the street? Could they have seen? Would we really end up in this situation over that? It was all nonsense. With our adrenaline pumping and clarity returning, it felt likely we were caught in some kind of redneck game. Real panic was setting in.
They popped on and off the porch a few times. Our demands to let us go grew more defiant. If you’re cops, then just arrest us and take us in! Our confidence grew as they failed to bring in other police officers and were incapable of giving us an explanation for what we had done. But that was also the underlying fear – if they weren’t cops, what did they want with us? What were they waiting for and what were they going to do? They held all the cards, and our panic was growing. But in parallel, as the minutes passed and the light of day began teasing its way out, the advantage would swing in our favor.
The saga stretched on for more than an hour, but they’d dwindled whatever opportunity they had, and sunrise was here. The next time they stepped out our pleas were more like ultimatums. And just like that the handcuffs were released from our wrists and IDs placed back in our hands. We popped off the porch and through their yard, to the freedom of Constance Street.
They tried intimidation once more as we turned down the street, but we paid no mind, just hustled out of sight. One more brazen move from them could have resulted in a drastically different outcome for us. But instead, we were free.
I could be wrong, but I think we may have gone back to Mae’s for another round to recount, and begin the process of forgetting, what had just taken place.
I always thought these stories were funny, but when you sit with them for a while, putting the words to paper, some of the ha-ha funny looks more like the sadness and the stuff of problem drinkers. Which isn’t wrong, Ms. Mae’s was chock full of that during our heyday (I’m not excluding myself here), but Mae’s was more than just mishaps brought on by binge drinking. Maybe its corny or just sounds like the lame justification of a boozehound, but we had a connection there, a genuine comfort within those walls. Sure, the allure of $2 doubles and $2 High Life’s at any hour kickstarted the love affair, but there was something more.
It was the first place where I was not surrounded by people that looked or sounded like me, yet everyone was welcome. All were free to be themselves. It was an imperfect harmony. If the different populations of New Orleans were all sets of a Venn diagram, then Ms. Mae’s might well be the overlap where all the disparate groups intersect. I didn’t realize this in the moment, or even years after, but Ms. Mae’s was my first Third Place. If you’re unfamiliar, your third place is where you spend your time when not spent at home (first place) and at work (second place). Some people find theirs at the climbing gym or run club, the bookstore or improv class, we found ours here. It didn’t always look and feel like a community, but it was one. I like to think we represented the young, dumb, and privileged college sect better than any other crew ever could.
There’s a famous, perhaps overplayed, Hemingway quote, “Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares, if you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars.” As the vignettes above might suggest, I was not learning a lot in the moment during our countless hours at The Club. However, that idea always rang true within the walls of Ms. Mae’s. What could be understood about New Orleans through the lens of Ms. Mae’s may vary nightly, but you were always guaranteed to walk away with another fleck of lore and appreciation for the city that has allowed this place to persevere. It is forever the ultimate dive bar in the greatest drinking city.
I’m never not missing New Orleans. This was a terrific read. Thank you
This is an amazingly fluid and engaging read, Zach. You'd worry the hell out of me if you were a housemate (I had such a housemate, so I know), but the mood, tone, imagery and flow are magnificent.
The funny thing is, were this writing from the 70s or 80s, nothing you wrote would have bothered anyone. In the 1930s just add a murder mystery and you'd have had a novella. Something has happened in the last thirty years and I think it has taken all of that long to occur.
Any thoughts?