Bad Lieutenant 3: Tales of the Cocktail New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant 3: Tales of the Cocktail, New Orleans

Congress allows its Ne’er-do-well night manager a chance to put on a full-scale theater follow-up to the Bad Lieutenant franchise, only without a theater and no affiliation with law enforcement… It’s still set in New Orleans, only this time it’s a cocktail convention. And this time, it’s personal.

I’m sure at this point anyone who drinks has heard of ”Bad Lieutenant.” And why shouldn’t they? Drinking and debauchery are the calling cards of independent film’s answer to Dirty Harry, first portrayed by Hollywood enigma Harvey Keitel and then, most recently, by Nicholas Cage (see: Con Air) in ”Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”.

I’ll spare you the Redbox rental: it’s an awful movie. Nicolas Cage somehow finds a way to overact a character who is so over-the-top to begin with that any move he makes seems plausible. It was only natural, then, that when the Hotel Congress graciously allowed me to join hundreds of my fellow mixologists and operators at the industry’s premier conference in New Orleans that I thought immediately of Nick Cage’s escapades. ”Oh man, that’s gonna be me at the end of July: cavorting around the Vieux Carre with a host of drunken degenerates, sampling world class spirits by day and getting ejected from fine restaurants at night.”

Of course, as I sit here 30,000 feet in the air; approximately 40 minutes from the Big Easy, typing inventory into a spreadsheet, I’m a little less gung-ho. The reality that this is a work trip is setting in much more quickly than I had anticipated. Granted, this might have something to do with me forgoing sleep in order to arrive in time for some important midday seminars. Or maybe it’s that my superiors will be expecting more than just some gin-soaked stories out of this trip. Tales of the Cocktail is the equivalent of March Madness for the cocktailing world. Expert mixologists, bartenders, and spirits gurus from all across the world converge for one magic week to swap techniques, ideas, and business cards–all while experiencing the purported magic of the American Lazarus City: a place that continues to resurrect and reinvent itself, despite the economic and Act-of-God disasters that continue to befall its citizens. New Orleans apparently holds a special place in the hearts of many of its former residents and visitors. Our Cup Cafe General Manager, Steven Dunn, is probably cursing me right now for being back in his beloved city. My only experience with New Orleans is being menaced by a woman with a kitchen knife outside the hotel who happened to be a New Orleans native. Whatever. There are bad seeds everywhere. I posted an update on Facebook saying ”T-minus 12 hours until New Orleans.”. An old college friend responded, ”Hasn’t that city suffered enough?”

My arrival time of 11:35 am means I’ll miss one of the best seminars, ”Systems of the Industry’s Best Operators Revealed.”. But I will be able to catch a seminar on intellectual property rights, followed by ”The Fine Art of Negotiating a Deal.” After that, well, I guess I’ll probably try and catch up with Skybar’s Patrick O’Brien, have a drink at the carousel bar in the Hotel Monteleone, or maybe I’ll go on a hunt for some cool antique cocktail tools. Who knows? In New Orleans, anything is possible.