It's New Orleans: Happy Hour

In the Happy Hour annals of "random people who have nothing in common," the day artist Katrina Brees meets Tank and the Bangas stands out to Happy Hour Live Feed Video Director Asher Griffith as the Best Of Happy Hour. 

Where's Karina?

If you ever wondered what happened to Karina Nathan she’s now Kevin Simons. And Karen Regis. And Krystal Sedona. And Chi Chi the lead singer of the Girl Dawgs, who is actually a dog.

Ka...

Still barred from hanging out in bars in New Orleans, in the interests of public health, we continue to revisit standout shows from years gone by. This show, in which Humidor Saves The World Again, is the first Happy Hour after the election of Donald J Trump in 2016.

Even then we knew things were going to go to Hell. If only podcasting was as popular in 2016 as it is today. Maybe somebody in DC would have heard this conversation a...

There's nothing more totally "New Orleans" than poboys, drag queens, and Cowboy Mouth. That's why, till we can go back in bars and hang out, Happy Hour photographer Jill Lafleur picks this show as her favorite from the past few years to revisit.

Drag Queens

Poppy Tooker is New Orleans first lady of food. From her weekly TV appearances on Steppin’ Out to to her weekly radio show and podcast, Poppy is the best known food...

In the annals of “You never know what the hell is going to come up in conversation,” this Happy Hour would have to rank at the top of the list. That's why, till we can go back into bars in new Orleans, Happy Hour producer Graham da Ponte has chosen this as her favorite show of the past 5 years - yes, it's the return of Clit Sit Meditation.

Aidi Kansas (her real name) left behind a career as a pet portrait artist t...

After making Happy Hour for nearly 10 years and meeting with random folks in various bars around New Orleans, this is the very first show where we just turn on the mics, put the Zoom link out on the internet and sit back and see who shows up.

Predictably, we get a bunch of people trying to hack the show down and hijack us with a bunch of porn, but other than a few salacious moments, our Digital producer Andrew “C-Rock”...

Matt Haines went to school to learn to become a classical trombone player with visions of playing trombone in an orchestra. But plans change. Initially Matt started teaching people to play in marching bands, which lead him to Thailand, not necessarily known for its place on the brass band pantheon, and then to new Orleans, the home of the hippest trombone players on the planet. That’s when Matt quit playing trombone. He&rsquo...

Isaac Toups is one of the most talented and celebrated chefs in New Orleans. Isaac was a finalist on the TV show Top Chef and he’s currently a finalist for the prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef South, which is the food equivalent of the Oscars. But before all that, Isaac was a winner of the Tadpole competition in his native Rayne, Louisiana. Rayne bills itself as The Frog Capital of the World (no kidding, look it up...

When you’re in a relationship, sex changes over time. Sometimes it goes from being good to being great. Other times, the fabulous person you fell in love with appears to change completely and turns into a person who is batsh*t crazy and completely unlovable.  

We’re summarizing here, but this is pretty much how Andrew Duhon describes the possibility of the trajectories of love in the modern era. 

The reason ...

Seriously, you have no idea how easy it is to be a best selling author. When you see a book on the best seller list of Amazon, don’t you assume that it must be selling hundreds of thousands? Try 800. Not 800,000, just 800. That’s what both the authors on this Happy Hour tell us.

Dr Chris Yandle gets up around 6AM. By around 7AM he’s jotting down a clever line that he’s dreamed up since 6AM. He puts the clev...

Music is apparently non-essential. So New Orleans musicians have no place to play. Some are doing live streaming from their homes, but others – like drummers and sax players – don’t have the kind of live streaming ability that, say, a singer-songwriter has. And then there’s this interesting factoid – Petco is regarded as essential and is still open. So here’s the obvious solution: Live From Petco...

If you’re trapped at home hating watching the world come to an end, remember the wise words of Sergio from the band Rodo: One person’s dystopia is another person’s utopia.

Sergio and Rodo (the person) play a couple of songs that illustrate this dichotomy, as well as pulling together another pair of polar concepts, ballads and hip hop, into their unique blend of music that Grant apparently branded as Hip Hop Balla...

In our second Happy Hour by Zoom we manage to take advantage of not being able to hang out in a bar and instead talk to people all across the country in a new concept we’re calling Covideo. Yes, that’s in questionable taste, but after all it is Happy Hour.

Mike Rubin is stuck in his second week of isolation in San Francisco. When times are normal Mike has a photography business called Neomodern, in which people walk in...

When we started making podcasts in New Orleans 10 years ago, we encountered a lot of skeptical questions, among them “What happens when you run out of good guests, in 6 weeks?” and “What’s a podcast?” One of the questions we didn’t hear was, “What happens if every bar and restaurant in the city shuts down?” That sure would have been funny, but it’s turning out to be no joke. So,...

So today it's New Orleans Corona Virus: Part 1 - the first day of the New Orleans shut down. Even the It's New Orleans Happy Hour podcast is caught up in the global pandemic, though so far all that's happened to us is we have to move off the stage of the Maple Leaf Bar to make room for Dave Jordan and Flow Tribe after they relocated here when the outdoor Wednesday in the Square concert was shut down by the city. So, instead of thou...

If you've ever rented an apartment, when you've gone to move out, you've almost certainly told the landlord "I want to get my security deposit back." What happens after that is the great unknown. Most often you've probably just given up arguing with the landlord and let the guy keep your money. Because that's what a huge number of us do, there is about $6 BILLION a year in un-returned security deposits.

Marco Nelson is the guy who...

Mardi Gras and Day of the Dead are two very different holidays. But in 2020 Mardi Gras Death is a real thing. It's Ash Wednesday 2020, the day after the deadliest Mardi Gras, possibly of all time.

Julie Couret is a witness to what happened. As a regular TV commentator camera crews sought Julie out right after the event and today, with the benefit of a bit hindsight, Julie gives us a first hand account of riding in the Nyx Parade j...

Jazz singer/songwriter Gabrielle Cavassa broke up with the guy she was dating and when they got together a month later - for that ridiculous "closure" we've heard so much about - he gave her the ammo for a vicious, cutting song about what a kind, loving, genius he'd turned into since they split. He even told her that he'd gotten so smart that he listens to podcasts now.

We realize we're on thin ice here, suggesting only pretentiou...

You probably think you've heard every weird bad disastrous insane mistaken awful relationship story there is. You haven't. Not till you hear comedian hypnotist Flip Orley document his 5 wives and explain the drunken tattoos all over his body with, "My 4th wife was Cajun." Honestly, if you need to be reassured your own relationship is not so bad, or you want to bask in the relief of being in a good relationship, you have got to hear...

It literally doesn't get more real New Orleans than this Happy Hour.

Charlie Gabriel was born in New Orleans in 1932. He started shining shoes and playing music when he was 5. By the time he was 11 he was a professional musician and he's never looked back. He did leave new Orleans for a while. Actually, about 60 years. Hurricane Katrina and Preservation Hall brought him back. Charlie is a national treasure and one of New Orleans' ...