I Got Bourbon Faced on Shit Street

In a car more suited to light grocery shopping or picking the kids up from soccer practice, our friends Conor Creighton and Kendall Waldman are travelling across the bottom half of the USA on a road trip from South Carolina to California. They’ll be trying to swerve the cliches to send us updates on all the cool stuff they come across. The series' name is From Sea to Shining Sea.

Arriving in New Orleans after two weeks of wading through pious Southern towns is exactly like the feeling you get when you stop living with your parents. It's a town full of people drinking, smoking and snorting things; the fat, in various stages of undress; bejewelled freaks, strippers, blasphemers, heretics and soap-dodgers. The town is a dirty mess but, after the millionth uninvited street sermon, fuck were we ever tired of living clean.

The thing about the South that was beginning to grate on us is the one thing they can never separate themselves from – hospitality. Behind the childlike curiosity is a frightened rabbit defending its burrow. About half an inch beneath the smiles is a honed interrogation technique that'll determine your marital status, religious beliefs and assorted perversions while you're still adding up gratuity. Don't get me wrong, it is nice to be asked about yourself but it all feels just a little too much like the older kid making friends because he wants a shot at your sister.

New Orleans is genuine. If they smile it's 'cos they like the look of you and if they spit through the car window its because you shouldn't run reds at pedestrian crossings. Within half an hour of parking we were walking along Burgundy drinking beers in bags, smoking cigarettes and dropping "fuck" into sentences like they were definite articles. Yes we fucking were.

We went to Treme. It's a strip beyond the French Quarter that was originally a housing development built for the black mistresses of wealthy white men. Their children went on to become the musicians who'd make New Orleans famous. We visited a club. Every time I left the table a different horn player would try and get Kendall stoned. The air in New Orleans stinks of crawfish and weed. We ran into a guy called Benny King. Well, Kendall did.

– “Who’s your husband?”

– “He’s not my husband.”

– “Oh, that’s fine,” said Benny King.

He took us to a bar where you got free drinks for life if you'd been the victim of a shooting or a knifing on the premises. Then Benny left us there after taking a drag too many on his joint.

And we went home. New Orleans is dangerous, apparently. We were told not to walk the streets at night. And not to get taxis, because the driver might try and mug you from the front seat, or to walk on Bourbon Street, 'cos they’ll scam every last dollar from your pockets. And whatever you do in New Orleans, you should never, ever answer back to anyone, as last year almost 200 people got murdered in New Orleans for doing just that (they said).

Well, despite all that, the worst we encountered were drunk fratboys on Spring Break who made me drink some dirty Paddy’s Day absinthe with them. I puked a little in my mouth but managed to keep it on the right side of my teeth.

From what we saw, New Orleans was just a big ball of friendliness like all the rest of the South is, it just likes to smoke, drink and swear more.

Follow Conor on Twitter: @conorcreighton

Previously: From Sea to Shining Sea - Treasure Hunting On the Mississippi