Snake n Jake's Christmas Lounge

I just found a little smelly tealight on the shelf of this apartment I've been living in for nine days. It's the first I've seen of a candle in ages. I had forgotten all about candles. Denmark was all about candles. The whole country, all day, all night, everywhere, in the street, at least a hundred in every home, restaurants, my favourite dive bar and nightspot in Copenhagen: Kulkafeen (get there while you can, it's changing hands soon!) was lit ENTIRELY with candles.

Reminds me of Snake n Jake's Christmas Lounge up on Oak Street in Nola. Just down the road from the Maple Leaf, though you'd only know if you had been told about it. It was a little shed of a place lit only with Christmas tree lights, and was by a long way, the most fundamentally hip bar I have ever been in. I shudder to think of Snake n Jake's fate since the waters came. The last time I was in Snake n Jake's was an afternoon one August. Outside it was sweltering, hot, humid. Inside, a/c kept its clients cool, it was utterly dark but for the fairy lights, and two enormous greyhounds wrestled each other silently on the floor.

Snake n Jake's was a kind of a typical Nola place, in that it was open all the time. It wasn't 24 hours like a lot of the other St. Charles bars, but they basically stayed open until the last drinker stumbled out the door into hot sweltering daylight, grabbing a couple of hours shuteye, before opening again for the first thirsty customer of the day banging on the door again.

I was brought there one night by a wild drunken chef I met while having a quiet beer in the Avenue bar, across the street from the flophouse on Prytania street where I was staying. A quiet beer, I thought, I'll write for a couple of hours and go home. Yeah. But this is New Orleans. Instead I met a wild drunken chef who whisked me off to the St. Charles Tavern, where he challenged me to a game of darts (at that time I was as passionate about darts as I currently am about iPod).

There was to be a challenge. If the wild chef won our game of 301, then he got to lick my armpit. If I won, it was something inane like a beer. Nothing I could think of could beat his bounty. I hit a couple of twenties, he hit the wall, what can I say. I got the beer, he hit the street.

But he was fun, and as much a gentleman as a wild drunken armpit licking chef could be, which was surprisingly considerable. And I never saw him after that 9am-finishing game of darts. I have a photograph somewhere, he's trying to lick my cheek. Or actually licking my neck, and I'm wincing and laughing at the same time, and trying to hold the camera up and press click.

Anyway, that was how I got to hear about Snake n Jake's Christmas Lounge. He told me about it like it was the Shangri-La, like he was Cassandra about to usher me into the flame of immortal life. On wednesday nights, he says, if you take your top off and dance on the counter, you drink free for the night.

So one tuesday night after the Rebirth Brass Band's regular gig at the Maple Leaf, I met some ex-hippy couple out in the courtyard at the back, and I said

Hey! Lets go to Snake n Jakes! D'ya know it?

Sure!

(said the wife)

I haven't been there in years! Lets go!

And we all piled into her car, she put her go-cup of wine into the cupholder in her driver's seat, and off we roared.

Within about ten minutes of getting to Snake n Jake's, the couple offered to have me come and live at their home. I think I accepted their kind offer in principle, and told them I would call on their sofa, if ever the need arose. Later that night, a friend of the couple's was about to drive me home, when I crossed the street and saw that there was a Luau happening in a garden. So in we went, and joined the party.

Grass skirts, hula garlands, cookout, hawaiian music. White college boy types. One older dude. Ginger, small, crosseyed. I got talking to him. Turns out he was NOPD. He was also very taken with the fact that I was Irish. His guard went down a little.

You from Ireland? he asked me. You got bad people in Irelan', like we got here? BAD people you know? BLACK people? Like we got here?

He had the ring of someone who knows he can fuck someone up and get away with it, no questions asked.

And out it all came. His stories. I stood there, in a hula garland, getting the gist of this cop's vibe, and said whatever I was there to say, and then I said goodbye, and we left. Something dark was brewing with a group of men further down the street and we got out of there.

Ah, Snake n Jake's.

Or the night I gave my credit card to the bartender and left it there when I left. I think there were two drinks on the tab at the time - big spender, me - and discovered the absence of the card when I got back to Prytania street at 9.30 am. Bollocks, I thought. Classic tourist moment.

I went back there, later that day.
They gave me back the card, had torn up the tab.
Snake n Jake's had honour.

I really have no sense whatsoever of what shape nola is in, these days.
Just can't fathom it.