The Maple Leaf Bar: Dive In

Maple Leaf Bar
8616 Oak Street
New Orleans, LA 70118
Open 3 PM - 4 AM 7 days a week. Live music every night. Some pretty interesting conversation, too, if you get there before the  music gets cranking.

There are venues in New Orleans you just have to see. You’ve gone to New Orleans for the brass bands, the second line marches, the out of the way bars with great music, the out of the way eateries with funny names and great food, the hospitality, the waitresses who call you “ Beau,” a look at the Big Muddy- the Mississippi River, a walk down Bourbon Street with its mix of the gaudy, the commercial, and the few real deal places still standing, the lovely homes of the Garden District, the old wooden clang clang street cars with people’s elbows poking out of the open windows in the heat of the afternoon, and to breathe the air of the Big Easy.

 
Your first few visits probably don’t include the museums, unless you consider any bar or music joint built before 2000 antiquities. You want to see some real dive bars. You know, the funky ones, the ones everyone will ask you about when you return home.
 
They’re up there in ‘shrine’ status, places to be venerated, get plastered in, danced to within inches of your life in, become besotted with great music in, rub elbows with as wide a mix of America as you’ll find at a really good dive in. Which is what Zagat, for god’s sake, lists the Maple Leaf Bar as in its section about New Orleans - not the other stuff, but the ‘top dive’ part.
 
Which is why we searched for 8316 Oak Street on our handy StreetWise map and hauled down St. Charles Avenue to S. Carrollton in search of this mythical place somewhere in the Carrollton District. Two thirty in the afternoon is not an ideal time to visit a dive bar. But if it’s your last full day in New Orleans, you go to just see the place, to bookmark it in your memory, advance scouting for your next trip.
 
It was the usual 86/86 afternoon, 86 degrees F, 86 % humidity. Two steps into the darkened open doorway, the sweet smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke was the first sign that we’d entered dive territory. The second was a firm voice coming from within. “We’re not open till 3:00.”
 
That would be from the bartender, Jeff, slowly organizing for whoever would be sauntering in a half hour later.
 
“Look, we’re from Boston. We can’t come back later. We’ve heard this is one of the best bars in town. Mind if we just take a peek, you know, so we could at least say we’ve seen the place when we get home.”
 
 
A man with the grayish three-day growth and T-shirt piped up. “Sure, come on in.”  A  worn, L shaped mahogany-stained bar that's felt the weight of thousands of elbows comes into focus as our eyes adjust. Ancient overhead fans, ruby red pressed tin walls, cement floor, oh yeah, Tennessee Williams would have been right at home on this side of the Maple Leaf. Hank follows us into the other side, a narrow room painted a glorious bordello scarlet, with a worn wood dance floor and small stage against the street end.
 
 “That’s an image of James Booker lying over the stage there,” Hank says in a tone of voice that suggests I should know the name if I know a damn thing about New Orleans music. I nod.

I find out later Booker's storied career, including a stint in Angola Penitentiary for heroin possession that derailed possibilities for mainstream recognition, blossomed when college students rediscovered him in the 1970s. The eccentric rhythm & blues piano man became a New Orleans fixture in places like Tipitina’s, Snug Harbor, and The Maple Leaf Bar, which opened its doors in 1974.

Even at 2:30 in the afternoon, I can imagine the room jamming with blues, funk, R&B, rock, zydeco, jazz, and jam bands that play there seven nights a week. What I didn't know was that the Leaf hosts poetry readings, birthday parties, weddings, potlucks and the occasional wake. 

On the way out, Hank, who had warmed up amiably as he saw we were true believers, shows us photos that line the wall behind the bar of The Krewe of O.A.K., a neighborhood New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe that starts and ends its parades at the Maple Leaf.

Since 365 days is far too long to wait for Fat Tuesday, the The Krewe of O.A.K. hosts a mini Mid-Summer Mardi Gras at the end of August. A wildly decorated golf cart parked outside a neighborhood saloon is a sure way to find where the paraders have stopped for refreshment. Costumes for the midnight ball at the Maple Leaf are described as, ahhh, unconventional.

Sure enough, there is Hank as Krewe of O.A.K. King in 1989. Looks like he’s having a grand time. Well that he should.

Hank Staples, I discover while writing this story, is the proprietor of the place. And O.A.K. stands for ‘outrageous and kinky.” Like a true New Orleanean, Hank knows how to make the good times roll.

 Below, Hank and Jeff, reflected in window, relax before The Maple Leaf's 3:00 PM opening. It appears to be a badge of honor, worn with a pride rooted in a deep sense of neighborhood, that this stretch of Oak Street hasn't felt the need to change its 1950-ish sense of style.

Photos by Paul Tamburello

Comments

[Chris]

Paul -- Another lovely piece of writing. Thank you for sharing it with me. Your passion for life shines through and inspires.

[Susaan]

This one was well worth waiting for. Made me long for that great smell I remember from my mid-life crisis.

[Lee]

Your stories are so good. Today has been a typical Monday back at work and reading this has been my perk for the day.