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One of my favorite things to do in New Orleans is going to Markey's. I go there a whole lot. Sometimes maybe too much. It is probably the coolest bar I've ever been too or frequented. When I have to go back to Lexington, I wish i could take Markey's with me. There's a whole lot of reasons why, i.e. free pool and the shuffle board. Cheap beer (two dollar high lifes). The Saints games are really fun to go to, even if the Saints aren't doing well, because all kinds of people from the neighborhood are there and sometimes the owner puts out free red beans and rice. People are always playing good music on the jukebox. One night I was in there and the jukebox started with some Hank Williams went on to some Johnny Cash then to the Misfits (I think) and ended up with some ODB. Weird but appealing, Markey's is a tiny tiny place, a hole in the wall, almost run down. But there are five or six brand new flat screen televisions, thirty six inch televisions. This contributes to the Saints games as well. Plus I think now they are serving food regularly. I haven't tried it yet but I bet it's good.

The strongest appeal of Markey's to me is the Cheer's factor. Sometimes you really do want to go where everybody knows your name. And over the span of time that I have been in New Orleans I've met a whole lot of different people there. I know several of the bartenders by name. I kind of have a crush on one of them. Her name is Lisa, but I'm pretty sure she's got a big boyfriend. One of the guys I've seen there a couple of times calls me Kentucky because he doesn't remember my name. I don't remember his either so it doesn't really matter. But I do know I like being refered to as Kentucky. What is interesting about all of this though is the fact that after you become established, i.e. a regular, people readily accept you and talk to you about anything, from where they are from to the nature of exploding trash piles to the regularity of their sexual life. A lot of being considered a regular is recognition by the bartenders. If they know your name or are familiar with you, you win. Immediately other people also recognize you as being a regular. This seems almost synonymous with being considered an equal member of the neighborhood.

Aside from a somewhat general sense of neighborhood acceptance, there is the added value of the stories I hear. I met a Lieutenant Colonel from Atlanta, Georgia, commuting between the base on Poland St. to his home, and his wife, in Atlanta. One of the more interesting, maybe weird is the word, characters I met in Markey's was a thirty seven year old guy named Dave from North Carolina who told me about his occasional interaction with call girls from the yellow pages. He also told me a story about his "crazy" ex-wife who threw a bag of trash on a bonfire they were having back in NC. The trash exploded. It caught one of his friends on fire and scratched up a brand new Grand Am really bad. I liked that story. The call girls are just kind of creepy. I'm interested in the people of the Bywater, especially at Markey's.