A city that is built for fun, The Big Easy is home to the around-the-clock cocktail party. Where else can you remove a drink from one bar and take it across the street to the next one? Legendary music and food intertwine with the drinking environment that has produced some of America's great joints.

Jimani Lounge and Restaurant
There is a spot in the French Quarter that you won’t find on any tourist map. No hotel concierge recommendation brings people here. This place is on the corner of Chartres and Iberville - north of the river and just south of the Acme Oyster Bar next to a couple of disgusting looking strip joints - in a rather seedy side of the Quarter. But despite an entrance that without knowledge seems most uninviting, the Jimani provides a can’t-miss slice of the New Orleans drinking scene.

Keuffer's Bar
I usually don’t like places with cheap beer prices. That’s not to say that I like to pay inflated prices. It’s just that happy hours generally bring in unhappy people looking for a bargain. But there is a modest little bar in the French Quarter that has all of the bar essentials and just happens to have great beer prices without discounting the fun.

Carousel Lounge
New Orleans can be a dizzying place. Then imagine the irony that the first place I always visit upon arriving in the French Quarter is a place that literally gives me the spins.

Port of Call
When we were in college, a group of us would drive down to Phoenix from the Bay Area every year for spring training baseball games. Being college student poor, we would stay in a dive hotel near hooker row in downtown Phoenix called the Kon Tiki. “A slice of Waikiki right in the heart of Phoenix” the matchbooks and cocktail napkins proudly stated. What does that have to do with a bar on the fringe of the French Quarter? Enter the Port of Call and one finds “a slice of Waikiki right in the heart of New Orleans.”

Chuck's Bar
Chuck’s Bar seems to be known as a lot of things: a sports bar, “Your Home Town Bar,” and “The Last Neighborhood Bar in the Central Business District.” Open 24 hours, I have found the place to be friendly in a “watch your back” kind of way.

Pascal's Manale
The best oysters in the French Quarter are not in the French Quarter. They are in the Garden District, and if you desire oysters it is worth taking the street car named Desire.