811 Conti St. (French Quarter) 7 days: 10am to 6am or so. Credit cards. 504.299.8496. Just a block off the Bourbon Street madness is this Nascar-themed bar tucked into the first floor of an old apartment house. The confines feel small, but there's actually two bars (a front and back). And sometimes the small kitchen is working with some kind of bar food. The atmosphere is old, wooden and comfy and contains a slice of old-school French Quarter magic, which means a rolling carnival of punks, hipsters, con men, strippers and delivery guys sipping at strong drinks while excellent music pours from the juke box. There's lots of reasons to visit Erin Rose (the Frozen Irish Coffee, the David Mamet scenes at 4am, the tourist having a drunken epiphany) but the most excellent reason is to visit Natasha, a radiant bartender who knows how to enable and manage a night of perfect wildness.
