22 Signs You Learned to Drink in New Orleans

5. You don’t go out for a night of drinking, you go out for a weekend of drinking. And the weekend starts on Thursday. At lunch.

6. You had a Cooter Brown’s passport before you had a real, state-department issued passport.

7. 90% of the French you speak has to do with the good times and letting them roll.

8. You always knock back a couple drive-thru shooters from the drive-thru daiquiri shop. While driving.

9. You’ve completely missed entire night times, staying in the bar from afternoon until the next morning.

10. Sunny afternoons take you to the levee to drink beer and watch cargo barges navigate the Mississippi.

11. Any time is a good time for $1 wells at Miss Mae’s (open 24 hours).

12. After an all-nighter or two, you usher in Fat Tuesday with a tequila sunrise and a morning of Bloody Marys before a refreshing 18-hour nap.

13. Just about any event is cause for spectating with a cooler of beer — parades, marathons, museum openings, the Audobon zoo, construction sites, first day of school, Wednesday mornings.

14. You know exactly which median you’ll be hanging out on during a Tipitina’s intermission.

15. A quiet night is sipping 8% ABV Andygators in the Maple Leaf’s garden.

16. Crawfish bread and a daiquiri is your go-to Jazz Fest hangover cure.

17. “What’s the word?” “Thunderbird!” “What’s the reason?” “It’s Mardi Gras season!”

18. “Dive bar” isn’t in your vernacular because there are no dive bars when every bar is a dive bar.

19. If spending a night drinking on Bourbon Street, then by god you always start with double-fisting hand grenades from Tropical Isle.

20. Whenever someone invites you to a house party, your first question is, “What’s the costume theme?” When informed it’s not a costume party, you wear one any way. Because every party needs a pirate.

21. Outside New Orleans, you’re appalled when a doorman refuses to let you take your road sodas with you. “But it’s in a plastic cup?” you plead.

22. You can outdrink anyone and everyone you know who didn’t learn to drink in Nola.

This post was originally published on January 20, 2015