News
Recovery on Draught
Posted May 31 2008
New Orleans Then: Finn McCool’s Irish Pub was a touchstone for the Mid-City neighborhood prior to Katrina. A trio of Irish expats opened the place the same year I moved to the neighborhood, taking over what had been a dismal dive and transforming it into one of the most inviting pubs in New Orleans. It took something like eight feet of floodwater after the levees failed and was savagely looted to boot. I took the photo above on Sept. 11, 2005 as I floated slowly toward my house.
See below for New Orleans Now.
New Orleans Now: I started writing “A Season of Night” in my blacked-out house, initially relying on the brief window of my laptop’s battery power to get as many notes down as possible before the computer blinked off. When Finn McCool’s reopened on St. Patrick’s Day 2006, I basically moved my writing office to its newly installed cypress bar and completed the manuscript there after work each night with the bartender and the first few returned neighbors as company. Above, owners and Belfast natives Stephen Patterson (left) and Stevie Collins proclaim their pub’s return. I believe there is no better pint of Guinness in New Orleans than those served by Stephen’s brother Keith Patterson at Finn McCool’s.
Topic: New Orleans Now
