 |
| Our Cinco de Mayo turned out a lot like this little guy: attempting all the right things but coming away with a rather uninspiring final product. |
Holidays which revolve around drinking that fall on Saturdays… They always seem like such a blessing… That is until you wake up at 9am, hung over from Friday, yet unable to fall back asleep because you’re too excited for the day to start. Hung over, sleepy, excitedness. And although these three co-occurring feelings happen to occur on most Saturdays and Sundays for most New Orleanians; they hit you even harder on National Drinking Holidays that fall on Saturdays.
See, last year St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo both fell on Thursdays. Therefore, you didn’t have a 100% justifiable reason to be hung over from Wednesday night happy hour (that reasoning is only 95% justifiable, at most) and there was no reason you should have woken up earlier than your alarm went off due to an intense excitedness (there is nothing to be excited about when you have 8 grueling hours of work ahead of you). And once 5pm rolled around, you could reward yourself for a day filled with sobriety for a night of celebrating filled with sangria.
So, we suppose you could say that last year we fell into a “habit” of how these holidays worked. Because last year we did it all right, and this year we did most of it wrong. And we’re so not taking the blame. We’re blaming the Leap Year.
May 5, 2011
Oddly enough, at 5pm we were still unaware of how we were going to celebrar pretend Mexican Independence Day. Yes, this is very unlike us, but at this time last year, the LOC group wasn’t as cohesive of a unit as the rubber cement we are today. So despite the plethora of, ¿Qué pasa? and ¡Quiero Margaritas! text messages we sent out throughout the día, no one seemed to be craving our same plan of heavy taquito and tequila intake. But we weren’t going to give up easily – we had memorized way too many Spanish drinking chants for that.
Therefore, we decided to begrudgingly put the festivities on hold while we tried to come up with a verdict for the night. In the meantime, one LOCer went for a run down the St. Charles Street car line to do some pre-damage control for the upcoming binge de México. Running in the direction of uptown, she noticed a relatively grande traffic flow going the same way, to the point that she was actually running faster than the coches. As she crossed Louisiana Street it all became very claro, over 500 people had already gotten the fiesta started at Superior Grill and apparently LOC was way behind.
The Superior deal was officially sealed when two separate groups of young hombres were appalled that she was out running and offered her their Coroñas to rehydrate. As the old adage goes: Inform a girl there’s a big party going on at a bar; she’ll be there in a couple of hours. Inform a girl there’s a big party going on at a bar at which she can expect free drinks; shell be there in a couple of minutes.
So shortly thereafter this incident, the whole LOC clan was set to head to Superior Grill. And upon arrival, it appeared as if the entire city of New Orleans was gathered around this Mexican establishment. It was the most intense replication of Mexico City we had ever seen; and we were a little daunted as no one had considered bringing their passport protector. So to the tune of a Nickleback-esque live band, hundreds of people screaming margarita orders at the bartenders, and a large number NOPD on horseback, we participated in this fine celebration of Cinco de Mayo in New Orleans… by quickly cutting the line, ordering five top shelf margaritas and heading to Lucy’s…
The rest of the night was filled with copious amounts of Corona, the riling of Kangaroo Bar’s bartenders by continually turning off the lamps that adorn their bar top while shouting “¡Olé!”, and countless shots consumed to the chant of “arriba! abajo! al centro! adentro!”.
It was a very, very happy fifth day of May in 2011.
May 5, 2012
Oddly enough, at 5pm we were still unaware as to why we thought it was a good idea to each consume two large margaritas, a shot of tequila, two baskets of chips, five bowls of salsa, a gallon of queso dip and fajitas all before 2pm. We were also unaware as to when we were going to be able to get out of bed again and how another single morsel of food and/or drink was going to fit inside our bodies.
Yes, one of our life mottos is “go big or go home”, but sometimes we get confused and take it to the level of “go so big you have to go home”.
But the first step to recovery is acceptance. And we fully accept that we committed a huge disservice to the celebration of Mexico prevailing over the French troops in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. (We overindulged for the winning of the battle, when we should have drawn out the celebration for the entire two-country dispute.) And we’re pretty sure that the second step to recovery is getting back out there and facing your fears. So we took some ibuprofen, an absurd amount of Pepto Bismol and headed out to Delachaise, St. Joes and Le Bon Temps.
We’re sorry Mexico; we’ll do better next year. May 5th, 2013 is going to be one for the books. (It’s on a Sunday!!!)
"Deja que los buenos momentos pasen"
AKA…
“Laissez les bon temps rouler”
- The LOC Mexi-cants
No comments:
Post a Comment