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On Bourbon Street, Fans Are Soaking in It

WASHINGTON POST

I have been here a week now, and I feel qualified to make the following observation: New Orleans is a diverse, multicultural polyglot that owes much of its charm and sophistication to the variety of immigrants who have come to this city on the ever-churning cultural tide of the Mississippi River. New Orleans offers a wealth of architectural, musical and literary styles unique in America.

Oh, and you can party till you drop.

Hoo-wah!

Yes, I believe I’ll have some gumbo and a cajun martini. And waiter, do me a favor -- hold the gumbo.

My only regret this week is that I didn’t sign up for the NFL’s charter bus tour of Kiln, Miss., Brett Favre’s home town. Kiln, Miss., has become a hick town Lourdes, the way Commerce, Okla., was with Mickey Mantle, and French Lick, Ind., was with Larry Bird.

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I’m told if the Packers win the Super Bowl, Wisconsin will relocate its state capital in Kiln. Of course if the Packers lose, the town will be nuked. But hey, that’s show biz.

In fact, you could comfortably move the entire population of Kiln, including the livestock of course, into the cavernous New Orleans Convention Center, where they held the Commissioner’s Party Friday night.

You know all about the Commissioner’s Party, don’t you? It’s the annual bash the NFL throws for every Ford dealer and Budweiser distributor in North America, featuring live bands, hot babes in costumes, 285,000 peeled shrimp, and enough cocktail sauce to coat Rangoon. Since this is a semiformal party, people had to wear white cheeseheads instead of yellow.

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The party is renowned for its excess. Being in New Orleans, this year’s theme was “Bayou Bon Temps,” which is Creole for: Try Not To Get So Drunk That You Throw Up On My Shoes.

Naturally, you’d expect a party here to have cajun and creole food. But in its effort to please all of the people all of the time, the NFL set out a variety of ethnic foods. I am still trying to figure out the justification for the vast array of “German Specialties” at the party. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Let’s go to K-Paul’s. I hear they have superb schnitzel and spatzle.”

This year’s party featured the Gator Grotto, with tubs of live alligators you could touch -- cute, baby alligators, the kind children have been flushing down the toilets for generations. (Little do these alligators know a crueler fate awaits them: This is a gourmet town. Do the words “alligator sausage” mean anything to you?) I saw a variety of folks lift the gators up and kiss them. For my money, the only Gator I would ever kiss is Steve Spurrier, after his team covered in the Sugar Bowl.

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Attending the Commissioner’s Party kept me off the streets for a while. And this is good because there is no longer any room to move on the streets.

The French Quarter is in total pedestrian gridlock as the Geek Factor reaches epic proportion. Bourbon Street is jammed tighter than a size 10 foot in a size 8 shoe. And the sidewalks have been taken over by local child tap dancers who, for some reason, often spin bicycle wheels on their heads.

New Orleans is one of the few cities in the country where you are required to carry a drink through the streets. The problem facing bar owners was that most people only have two hands, and this limited their carrying power.

New Orleans has solved this problem by introducing the “Tooter,” a two-dollar beer in what looks like a enormous plastic test tube that you slip over your head with the aid of a colorful ribbon necklace. By 4 o’clock Saturday afternoon approximately six out of every seven people on the street were drunk as rats.

If you ever tire of drinking, you can take one of the many tours they offer in New Orleans, including Jean Lafitte’s Swamp Tour, Dr. Zombie’s Voodoo Tour, the streetcar tour or the cemetery tour.

Or you can stand still in the lobby of the media hotel and suffocate in the middle of the Geek Swarm. There they are, wearing Mardi Gras beads and Tooters around their necks, craning to get a glimpse of someone they recognize from TV.

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They gawk at the football players who come by to be interviewed. They stand in rapt attention, watching video screens blaring rebroadcasts of old Super Bowls by NFL Films. They mill in the hallways, and around the elevators, and in “Radio Row,” a corridor where the all-sports radio stations chirp like magpies.

I’ve never understood why so many people congregate in the lobby of the media hotel during Super Bowl Week -- unless it’s to get a glimpse of The Post’s Michael Wilbon.

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