Maple Leaf Bar

This guide to the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans starts with a small headstone in the patio behind you, marking a poet named Everette Maddox, who drifted from Alabama into New Orleans, drank too much, lost his teaching job, and slept on benches through stretches of the 1980s. It follows how he became the closest thing this bar ever had to a house saint, starting a Sunday poetry reading in the courtyard in 1979 and running it as master of ceremonies for a decade over cheap beer and cigarette smoke. You'll hear his own line about being able to hear poetry, wash your clothes, and get drunk in this one building, back when a laundromat stood next door. Catch a Sunday reading winding down as the night's band starts warming up out front.