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.
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