Old Absinthe House

This guide to the Old Absinthe House in New Orleans follows Pierre Cazebonne, a Frenchman from the Pyrenees who took over the bar in 1913 and refused to close when absinthe was banned and Prohibition arrived, disguising the business first as a French restaurant, then as a soda fountain, while federal agents kept catching him pouring liquor underneath. It traces the stand-in owners he put on the license to shield himself and the raid that finally padlocked the doors for a full year in 1926. Look at the marble bar in front of you and ask whether it's really the original.