Located at 941 Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, just behind the Convent of St. Ursula and its high, stark-white stone walls, sits a small, single-story brick and plaster building with tall, shuttered doors standing open to the sidewalks on two sides. It has an old "soul"...a sense of history exudes from it. Stepping inside, you feel as if, were it not for the cigarette machine, the neon signs above the restrooms and a few small modernizations, you might have passed back to a time when New Orleans was the hub of trade for much of the prosperous South, for, in fact, the new and burgeoning nation...when pirates smuggled their ill-gotten gains through these doors...when slaves accompanied the fashionably dressed rich Creoles alongside elegant carriages rumbling down gas-lit streets. The floor is made of flagstones worn smooth by years of traffic. A wood bar backed with a large mirror occupies one wall, a huge "Who Dat?" New Orleans Saints pennant pinned above, rows of bottles of liquor lining the shelf before the mirror.

To the left a rounded, free-standing stone fireplace, to either side of, it a low step that leads up to an area occupied by round oak tables and chairs. To the right, just past the restroooms, is a tiny stage beside a large black piano. Looking straight through the seating area, you see a pair of tall, open-shuttered doors leading to a small courtyard dotted with black wrought-iron tables. Located a short distance from the garish lights of downtown Bourbon St., it is less visited by tourists than by French Quarter residents and college students from Tulane and Loyola.

Zeke, the bartender, is a thin, youngish man in his late twenties with a long, dirty blonde ponytail, a receding hairline and avaricious brown eyes, a cynical smile perpetually curling the corners of his thin, humorless mouth. He's wearing jeans and a much too-large Saints football jersey, a gold earring in one ear, a diamond stud through his right nostril. Two waitresses, Tiffany and Dawn, one blonde, the other a brunette, languidly serve the customers.

Through the open doors, the faint sounds of zydeco music drifts in from a club up the street, combined with the sounds of traffic and the laughter of a group of local couples walking past on their way to a Dixieland concert at Preservation Hall. The sweet scent of the bougainvillea vines that cover the brick wall of the courtyard blend with the spicy smell of Creole food cooking in nearby restaurants and the pungent smell of alcohol and closely crowded together humanity.

Nearby, the muddy Mississippi silently wends her way toward the Gulf of Mexico,carrying cargo ships, tankers, riverboats, ferries and pleasure seekers up and down her deceptively placid-looking waters; lending a pulsing humidity to the air, giving off the dark, silty smell of mystery and old, old magic. The life-blood of New Orleans, curving around the city like a mother cradling a child, the river touches all phases of the lives of those who have chosen to settle on her banks. Directions mean something different in the Big Easy...there is no north, south, east or west...only upriver and down river, Uptown and Downtown, changing with every bend of the Mississippi...as if the sly harlot that is New Orleans refuses to submit to even the most basic of civilized man's attempts to tame her and conform her to its limitations.

Dixieland...jazz...gumbo...hot, tropical nights, languid, often rainy days...sultry, seductive, flirtatious... New Orleans...