Bars provide havens from the summer heat

Photo credit: Veronica Dominach

STEVE GARBARINO| SPECIAL TO THE New Orleans ADVOCATE

“Hot weather opens the skull of a city,” wrote New Orleans-born Truman Capote, “exposing its white brain and its heart of nerves.”

Don’t it, though? The Crescent City in the soupy season has been known to bring on brain fever. Tempers flare, foreheads crack like expired pralines and businesses close shop until the school bell rings. Those “out there” look like “walkers”: feverish, half-baked, menacing. 

Road rage, domestic abuse and killer-mime hallucinations ensue. Crime rates keep pace with the soaring mercury. Locals stuck in town hole up and wait it out, allowing the tourists to take over.

Relax, there is respite. August here is when Hell freezes over inside bars and restaurants, the city’s ice palaces, which provide just the chill-pill to meltdown.

 (Warning: side effects may include dizziness.) The city’s makeshift igloos ramp up their air conditioning like no other metropolitan hot pocket. And though, by average, most are set at 73 degrees, that seemingly modest figure invariably feels far more brisk when out on the street it’s frying.

“When you go out to have a drink or eat here in the summer you know to bring a sweater,” said Genevieve Cullen, a bartender at Bud Rip’s Old 9th Ward Bar (est. 1960), which was cited as a cold front by several veteran barkeeps and night crawlers recruited as Advocate cold-front panelists. (None included their own digs as cold front candidates.) On a recent afternoon, Bud Rip’s proved more reasonable than chilly — though its new owners were in the throes of overhauling its AC system.

“If you’ve lived here a while, you know to bring a light wrap to a restaurant or a movie theater,” echoed Susan Spicer, the chef of the French Quarter’s Bayona and Mondo, in Lakeview.

Where to chill?

So what are the ultimate cold fronts for swilling and sustenance, day or night? (We wouldn’t dare to deem any of them THE sole cold rooms.)

Check the temperatures on wall units all you like, but they’re not an entirely reliable gauge. There are mirages at play, deceptive but subliminally effective.

Among the factors aligning to create snowball effects are an interior’s décor (spaces that are industrial, uber-Modern or simply sparse in furnishings exude cool), flooring (tiled or concrete are colder), ceiling height, and direct (or not) natural light exposure. If it’s a mole hole, it will likely be colder.

And there are crannies suggestive of haunted “cold spots” in otherwise comfortable rooms, that deliver shivers up the spine. Case in point: the Columns Hotel, where an AC vent positioned under a certain corner perch at the bar blasts frigid air up dresses and trouser legs.

New Orleans cold fronts, we discovered, invariably include sepulchral dive- and sports bars, sushi-and-steak houses, booze-friendly movie theaters, cigar lounges with their humidors and fat-cat clientele, vegetarian outposts, jacket-required establishments and all those f-f-f-frozen daiquiri factories indigenous to Veterans Highway and Bourbon Street.

“The challenge with daiquiri places is this: Are you cold because you are drinking them or because the bar is cold?” pondered Virginia Saussy, a marketing consultant for the Warehouse District’s Lucy’s Retired Surfer Bar & Restaurant, known for its “Arctic Shelf Pleasers,” such as Tito’s Frozen Lemonade. “Boozer’s dilemma,” she shrugged.

As for perception-versus-reality venues, a case in point is Uptown’s Brothers III Lounge, which is cooled by multiple wall boxes and deemed “butt-freezing” by a quartet of social-coasters on our makeshift team, most with penchants for black-tie and for slumming it.

On a Thursday afternoon at Brothers III, a surly barkeep growled, “I have no idea what the temperature is in here. Maybe 70? But we’re the coolest bar in town, and we got the coldest beer in town.” As evidence that it was “cold all right,” he added, “I may be the only bartender here who wears long pants and a long shirt to work in the summer.”

Not the only one, actually. At Dos Jefes Uptown Cigar Bar on Tchoupitoulas Street, a bartender pointed to the blue jeans he wore to work to keep warm. He explained the wavering mercurial conditions (72 at that moment). “It’s colder now because it’s slow. Once the bodies roll in, though, it’ll ramp up the heat,” he said. And the temperature setting is lowered.

Source of pride

“It actually makes us pretty happy when someone eating at Mondo says, ‘It’s a little chilly in here,’ said Spicer, “because when we first opened four years ago, the AC wasn’t working right and it was hot, hot, hot. But once we added five more tons (of AC capacity) things got a lot better. Maybe we’re overcompensating now, but we do tend to keep thermostats set on 72.”

At the Riverbend’s New Orleans Original Daiquiris, a server reached by telephone placed the average temperature at 72. “We keep the settings in locked boxes to keep customers from turning it down,” she said. But on multiple visits we found the double-meters, encased in plastic, holding steady at 69.

Which is just how Tory McPhail, executive chef of Commander’s Palace, likes it: walk-in frigid. “It’s certainly cold at that daiquiri place,” he said, “but it’s also a cool spot to hang out because it’s more of a broad swath of residents — from judges to junkies — than anywhere I can think of … except maybe Central Lock-Up, which is certainly cold-hearted.”

He and others chose Port of Call in their top three of freeze-outs. “Besides being cold inside, the Monsoons have so much liquor in them that a layer of frost builds up around the outside of the go-cup,” McPhail said. “Cools me just thinking about it.”

Sean Meenan — a New York restaurateur and New Orleans transplant who’s feeling the heat from French Quarter residents over his envisioned Café Habana on Rampart and Esplanade — resides mere blocks from Port of Call. He too calls it “one cool oasis. You leave the outside behind when you enter.”

It isn’t so much the AC setting (72), so much as the positioning of the vents, which blast from all directions, including from above. On an early afternoon visit, a herd of customers wallowed outside the door in the 96-degree heat. When this reporter attempted to shake pepper onto a cheese-cloaked spud, it blew starboard onto a neighbor’s burger.

Back in the 60s

Likewise, beef people Mr. John’s Steak House, the Lower Garden District fixture, made the coldest Top 3. “It’s a f---ing iceberg in there!” said Brian Bockman, a Garden District architect who frequents the St. Charles Avenue restaurant. On an early bird visit, the maitre’d allowed that the temperature was 69 inside.

Restaurateur Robert LeBlanc — whose Lower Garden District whiskey bar Barrel Proof keeps its AC set at 65 when the doors are open to the street — said Mr. John’s was gloves-down the coldest restaurant in town. “I don’t know any colder dining room … or steakhouse. And they’re all pretty cold.”

Alternately, meat-averse Seed on Lower Prytania is “completely freezing too,“ said Bockman, “Probably due to the fact it’s vegan.” A weekday lunch visit found the temperature set at 73, but ceiling fans, concrete floors and a melon color palette in the cucumber-cool room spread the crisp-air love.

Then there’s the dress code-rigid Galatoire’s (owned by Advocate publisher John Georges), also a top ice pick. With its 60 tons of AC on the first floor alone, Galatoire’s keeps the temperature at 68, said president and CEO Melvin Rodrigue. “It’s all about the humidity,” he said.

“When August rolls around, I seek safe — and very cold harbor — at Galatoire’s, where they always keep the icy martinis and cold Sancerre coming,” said Julia Reed, vocal local and author of “But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!”

Reed called it a tie between Galatoire’s and the AMC Elmwood Palace 20 for cold spots, the latter “where a frozen margarita makes even the most mundane summer blockbuster entertaining.”

Tom Sancton, a clarinetist and author who gigs at the Palm Court Jazz Café, Preservation Hall and Snug Harbor, wholly concurred, seeking Arctic air at Elmwood. “None of the jazz clubs I play at really fit the freezing bill,” he said. “A lot of them on Frenchmen Street have open doors.”

Also cold

Yes, we know there are so many untapped cold spots out there that eluded our three-week sledding expedition. Try not to sweat it; lift a frosty mug instead.

Here’s our short list of freeze-factor runners up: the French Quarter’s Fahy’s Irish Pub (on Burgundy), uptown’s Superior Seafood, Grit’s Bar and Clancy’s, the Riverbend’s Cooter Brown’s, the Roosevelt Hotel’s Sazerac Room, Liuzza’s (Mid-City), and, as a whole, Harrah’s Casino … where, of course, cooler heads prevail when the chips are down.

Before AC, New Orleanians adapted

Hurricane Isaac's power trip calls to mind days before air-conditioning

 By John Pope, The Times-Picayune 

Two weeks ago, as hundreds of thousands of people swore, sweated and suffered after Hurricane Isaac knocked out their electricity, two questions kept coming to mind: When will the power come back? And how did our ancestors survive New Orleans' sultry summers without air-conditioning?

EnlargeThe Times-PicayuneOn July 4, 1954, New Orleanians kept cool in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.Living without air conditioning: a historic look gallery (7 photos)

The latter query has answers that involve a combination of features, including lightweight clothing, blocks of ice insulated in sawdust, plenty of cooling baths, primitive means of stirring the air, and architectural features such as transoms, shaded verandas and high ceilings that were designed to keep people as comfortable as possible.

Affluent New Orleanians simply fled the city for second homes in less torrid environments upriver, across Lake Pontchartrain or along the Gulf Coast. For those who stayed behind, schedules were adjusted so that business, shopping and social calls were carried out in the early mornings and late afternoons, when the mercury was slightly lower, with a break around midday for a light lunch and a nap.

After dark, New Orleanians could hop aboard a train nicknamed Smoky Mary to ride to the Lakefront, near the area now occupied by the University of New Orleans, for an outdoor seafood dinner, accompanied by lake-borne breezes. People who didn't -- or couldn't -- spring for a train ride and dinner strolled along the levee in hopes of catching some gentle gusts.

'People perspired a lot'

Despite all these efforts to make life bearable, "it was hot," said Ann Masson, an architectural historian who has conducted extensive research into the way 18th- and 19th-century New Orleanians lived and coped.

In un-air-conditioned times, daily life could be tough. In his 1851 book, "The Manhattaner in New Orleans," A. Oakley Hall wrote that the summertime sun struck the Crescent City "with a power as if the atmosphere was all filled with concave lenses of which New Orleans was the focus."

As a result of the intense, inescapable heat, "people perspired a lot," Masson said. "Everybody perspired, and everybody was kind of damp. They complained, but I think people were accustomed to it."

There was, she said, one aspect of New Orleans life in the pre-air-conditioned age that helped people accept the seasonal heat: They had no experience with the sharp contrast contemporary New Orleanians face when they forsake the comfort of a cool building or car and step into an outdoor environment that seems as infernally hot as a blast furnace.

In other words, regardless of where people went then, it was hot. "The lack of an alternative environment makes people incredibly tolerant," Tulane University geographer Richard Campanella said. "It's a question of relative expectations, I suppose."

Lighting clothing, furnishings

Adjustments to the climate started with lighter clothing: seersucker and white-linen suits for men and hoop skirts for women. In the days before antiperspirants, people who cared about how they smelled used perfume to mask the smell of sweat, and clothes had built-in shields to absorb sweat and keep it from ruining the garments.

"The shields would absorb some of the perspiration, but at 2 o'clock on a July afternoon in New Orleans, what could help you?" Masson said. "When you see antique clothing from the mid-19th century, it is so deteriorated from perspiration that the areas under the sleeves were replaced several times."

Summertime transformations took place throughout the home. Starting in late spring and early summer, heavy curtains came down and were replaced by draperies made of lighter fabrics, such as lace, muslin or a thin cotton fabric known as dimity, Masson said.

Besides being lighter, these less expensive furnishings, which also covered chairs, meant that the showier items weren't exposed to dust or to damage by sun and rain. They also maximized air flow because there was less material to impede cross-ventilation, said Carolyn Bercier, curator of Gallier and Hermann-Grima historic houses in the French Quarter.

Cross-ventilation was key

Cross-ventilation was a key point in house design then, she said. "Houses were designed to have cross-ventilation from front to back, and furniture was placed so you wouldn't block air flow. In the 19th century, you always arranged furniture so you have maximum air flow, whether it looked good or not. If the bed placement looked bizarre, it didn't matter. You wanted the air to move back and forth."

Heavy bedding and thick wool carpets were removed in the warmer months, and straw matting was the floor covering of choice. To protect carpets from insect damage during the summer, Masson said, they were rolled up with items such as tobacco, peppercorns, camphor and bay leaves.

Because windows were opened to let in more air, fancy items such as mirrors, picture frames and chandeliers were draped in muslin to prevent fly specks, Masson said.

At night, people slept under mosquito netting. For most of the 19th century, before scientists showed that the insects transmit malaria and yellow fever, they were regarded merely as annoyances instead of disease vectors. And the insects were pervasive, Masson said, citing an observation by a 19th-century levee stroller who said, "There were so many mosquitoes swarming around the head of one man that it looked like a top hat."

Bathtubs full of ice

Although Dr. John Gorrie of Florida didn't have a cure for yellow fever in 1844, he did patent a machine that circulated chilled air around people with the disease, said Pamela Arceneaux, senior librarian and rare-books curator at The Historic New Orleans Collection's Williams Research Center.

Ice arrived in New Orleans in the early 19th century, and it became immensely popular, Masson said. "At Houmas House, even the bathtubs had ice in them."

The city had an ice-storage facility in 1819, Arceneaux said, but it didn't have a manufacturing plant until 1864, two years after a Union blockade had put a halt to river-borne ice shipments to the city.

By the 19th century, ice cream and sorbets were popular, and hand-cranked ice-cream freezers were available in the 1840s.

In summers, people tried to keep from overheating their homes by cooking as little as possible, generally on Sundays, and living on leftovers for the rest of the week, Masson said. Early iceboxes helped keep the food from spoiling.

Some culinary historians have theorized that one reason for the popularity of spicy seasonings in south Louisiana was that they raised body temperature, thereby increasing natural cooling through perspiration, Arceneaux said.

During antebellum dinners in an affluent home, the heavy air might be stirred by a punkah, a canvas-covered frame suspended from the ceiling that was moved back and forth over the dining-room table by a servant -- or, more likely, a slave -- who stood in a corner and pulled a rope, Ned Hémard wrote in a column for the New Orleans Bar Association's website.

The first ceiling fans

The first wave of electrification occurred in the 1880s, Campanella said, when ceiling fans were installed in shops, restaurants and saloons. Even though they merely moved the hot air around, they drew customers because they were novelties, he said.

A belt-operated system of fans linked by pulleys and belts was on display at the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in 1884 in what is now Audubon Park, Hémard said. After the fair, the system, featuring a lederhosen-clad mannequin named Ludwig turning a crank, was installed at Kolb's Restaurant on St. Charles Avenue.

Starting in the 1920s, Campanella said, theaters started touting systems that cooled summertime moviegoers, generally by using big fans that blew over blocks of ice and spread the cool air into the auditoriums.

After World War II, he said, window air-conditioning units began to appear, and houses were no longer designed with cross-ventilation as a prime asset.

It was, Bercier said, a realization that hit her during the five days her house was without electricity. Without anything to make the air flow through, she said, "you're just sitting in a room with dead air."

It is still common to encounter older people who speak fondly about neighborhood activity in the days before air-conditioning and television drew people indoors, said Campanella, a professor of practice at Tulane's School of Architecture.

But, he said, "I really can't say I've heard people reminisce about the good old days when they were sitting inside an 88-degree house at night."

•••••••

John Pope can be reached at jpope@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3317.

© 2012 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

Mid-summer heat is crushing

This is a crumpled cat.

These are the dog days of summer when you have to ask yourself: Is this really where you want to live? Or maybe you should get a summer cottage on an island in the middle of Lake Superior.

Today, I received an e-mailed weather alert. It said something about 110 degrees. I didn't want to know more, so decided I would hide out most of the day. Even so, my small, window air conditioners are having a tough time keeping up.

I swam in Audubon Park pool Sunday afternoon, but couldn't even dry off in the sun five minutes, the heat was so intense. I'm fair complected with little tolerance for heat. The line at Hansen's Sno-Bliz rounded the block. I haven't eaten a snowball since college, but that day was surely the day to do it.

I drove down to the Quarter later in the afternoon to make a special purchase at an art gallery, thinking I might stroll around and enjoy a cocktail at Napoleon House. But by the time I found my gift and walked around two blocks, I was finished! There was plenty of on-street parking available, going to show most sensible people were sitting in front of their TVs watching the summer Olympics. Let those other, fit folks exude the energy. I'm just going home to wilt.

I swore when I moved back here, I wouldn't complain about the summers. But when you live in NOLA, around this time, you start visualizing the waters in the Gulf heating up. I read that the temperature of the water just needs to rise a half point for a hurricane to form. But it takes a lot of heat for a big body of water like that to rise just one degree. I think we're going to do it, despite almost daily torrential rains.

So, it is a good time to catch up on reading or cleaning out drawers and file cabinets. Or, like Mojo, take one long, relaxing nap. Whatever you do, don't go outside! Not without an umbrella, at least, rain or shine. And not till after sundown.