RL Reeves Jr Historical Time Capsule: Evelyn’s Place in New Orleans French Quarter
Evelyn’s Place was located at 139 Chartres Street in the French Quarter. The building formerly hosted Stonehenge, a mariner’s bar that held a level of fame in the early 20th century.
25 years ago when I was a regular at the barroom the owner Frank Cimini used to express amazement that I would leave his place for Frenchmen Street, a separate district where I liked to hang out.
When he was a young man in the 50s and 60s the scene on Frenchmen was wild with roustabouts and stevedores crowding onto the street at night. Stabbings were not uncommon. Prostitutes were chockablock and the drugs of the era were freely vended by so called alleymen.
Frank drove an old Indian motorbike with a sidecar and was one of the Quarters most notorious raconteurs.
I spent countless hours in his barroom drinking $1.50 plastic cups of Pabst Blue Ribbon and eating $4 bowls of red beans and rice.
Louis Prima was a mainstay on the jukebox. 10 plays for a dollar was the fee. Frank Cimini was quite the entrepreneur having owned Vieux Carré restaurant before opening Evelyn’s Place.
Back in the 60s Frank would take a break from his restaurant and walk down the street to TV Bar, one of the few places in town that featured television, a technology that many folks did not have access to.
He fell in love with one of the waitresses, Miss Evelyn who had migrated to Louisiana from Tennessee. She wanted her own bar and since Frank was a man of means he helped her open her own joint. Evelyn’s Place was born.
Frank and Evelyn are both gone to the great tavern in the sky and Evelyn’s Place is long-shuttered.