Finding my way back to Pal’s
Last night, we took Loca out for an evening stroll and looked for a place to have a draft beer. Since the storm Liuzza’s by the Track has not had draft – the machine hasn’t worked. Three years, you’d think they’d find a way to fix it – we sure miss those icy schooners of Abita. We ended up going to Pal’s – and I must admit I was a little apprehensive as I have boycotted Pal’s since the episode last year when Nia was senselessly murdered there by a deranged migrant worker.
I felt at the time that too many of these “isolated” incidents were happening there because of the owner’s neglect for security, that may have not be needed pre-Katrina, but in the aftermath of the storm, when something harsh and raw and violent had taken hold of some people, attracting miscreants and killers to our chaos, we all needed protection. Nia certainly needed it that night.
So into Pal’s I went, with the trepidation that had colored the last year every time I heard anyone even mention the place. And there at the end of the bar was one of my yoga instructors, and next to us was one of T’s colleagues, and I took a big deep breath and reflected back to my reaction last year – I wanted Pal’s to close down. My friends thought I was nuts. But I was outraged at Nia’s death and outraged that the young, hip, pretty bartenders felt unsafe at night, and outraged that this would happen in our neighborhood, down the street from me, in my city, after all we had been through.
It was good to go in there and break the yoke of past and embrace moving on. Pal’s is really a great hood hangout and we’re actually quite lucky to have a place like it in our neighborhood. They don’t have draft either, btw.