Every bar has its purpose. I have found that hotel bars are best suited to the contemplation of the aftermath of Mardi Gras.

Recently, I spent an hour or so in the Sheraton lobby bar, a nice circular bar in the center of a huge lobby. This is the big high-rise hotel right on Canal Street, Mardi Gras Central.

In the aftermath, I watched as people checked out of the hotel, returning to their lives; I watched some fraternity boys from Boston acting as if Mardi Gras could continue indefinitely through pure alcoholic momentum; I saw a man with huge eyebrows eating dinner at the bar. He seemed to have missed the whole thing. Some people wore beads as they checked out. Somehow, a day later, those beads seemed sad.

There, in that hotel lobby, as in all the hotel lobbies of New Orleans, was a microcosm of the comings and goings of life.

That last sentence seems a bit pretentious, but I’ll leave it. There is some truth to it.

Anyhow, sitting at the bar, drinking Abita, I thought back on Mardi Gras ’07. It was a good one, with only a few drops of rain. My favorite costume this year was a man wearing only a towel. He had patches of shaving cream on his face, a fake blood spot from a shaving cut. He held a razor, and he wandered down Bourbon Street looking lost. His behavior made the costume. He was a man who had been locked out of his hotel room, I guess.

A young woman asked him if it was a costume. It was.

Other nominees for best costume: there was an excellent Andy Warhol in Molly’s Bar; he was wrapped around by a Campbell’s Soup can and had Warhol-white hair. There was an indescribable giant, about ten feet tall, who somehow made it into and out of the small Molly’s men’s room. Honorable mention goes to some sexy bumblebees outside of Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. Before this Mardi Gras, I never expected to use the phrase “sexy bumblebees.”

Back at the Sheraton, back at the easy frame for this blog entry, I drank Abita. When it came time to leave, I found out that these Abita’s were $5.50 each. I think I’ll only hang out at hotel bars once a year.