NEWS

If you were to join in on one of our Sunday afternoon soirees during football season you would, after fighting through the throng of another NFL team's garishly-attired, uncouth fans in the front portion of the bar, find your senses promptly assaulted by many of the same things your senses might be promptly assaulted by if you were to walk into just about any New Orleans-area bar on a Sunday afternoon in the fall and early winter. You'd see men and women of varied ethnic origin decked out in Saints apparel, eating Zapp's potato chips and home-cooked jambalaya out of plastic bowls served from a large pot resting in a corner, all washed down with cold Abita beer.

Mixed in with the refined elocution of New Orleans' upper class, you'd hear the nuanced variations of the distinct dialect synonymous with South Louisiana, some subtle, some glaring, born in places like the "West bank" of New Orleans and the bayous of lower Terrebonne Parish. Later, during the celebratory post-victory dance parties that at times go well into the night, you'd hear the sounds of a variety of local musicians like Lil' Wayne and Louis Armstrong. And oh, it's also likely that you'd hear the term "Who Dat" bandied around a dozen times or so within minutes of entering the room, but you probably already suspected that.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, Bar None has a distinct gameday "aroma" that's not unfamiliar to the olfactory senses of anyone who's ever visited a den of imbibery housed within the French Quarter. It's the "aroma" of perspiration, unhealthily delicious cuisine, stale booze and unbridled passion, and seeing that the sense of smell is reported to be the most powerful when it comes to evoking visceral emotional connections, we Saints fans tend to find this familiar "aroma" to be particularly soothing.

All told, most of us regulars are of the opinion that aside from being inside of the Superdome itself, there's no place we'd rather watch the Saints play the Vikings for a chance to go to the Super Bowl than at Bar None. It's an almost perfect setting to watch the big game.

Almost.

Why almost, you ask? Well, there's one, ahem, minor problem with Bar None: remember the gathering of another NFL team's garishly-attired, uncouth fans that takes place in the front portion of Bar None I mentioned earlier? Those are fans of the Minnesota Vikings, our opponents in this weekend's NFC championship game.

Yeah.

It's not that we, the fans of both teams, haven't gotten along over the past few years during this period of fan bar co-habitation. There's been a lot of good-natured trash talk exchanged and feathers have been ruffled from time to time, but there haven't been any full-blown brawls, at least to my knowledge, even on the few occasions when the Saints and Vikings have played each other.

Then again, the Saints and Vikings have never played each other with so much at stake.

To service and maintain peace between the two soon-to-be adversarial factions, Bar None manager Cyrus Koosha says that he plans on having a full roster of bartenders and cocktail waitresses working on Sunday, with beefy security personnel stationed between the two rooms.

"All hands will be on deck for this one," he said. "Everyone on staff will be working."

Additionally, the only way to gain entry into Bar None this Sunday will be to pass through a strict nightclub-esque door policy complete with VIP guest list.

"I want to make sure that it's mainly the core group of regulars from both teams in here," said Koosha, adding that he'll be working the door personally because he knows the faces of "the people who are here week in and week out."

When the Saints and Vikings both spent the early part of the 2009 season steamrolling opponents, a playoff showdown seemed inevitable. It's something many of us discussed openly for months as we jointly hoisted glasses to toast the successes of our respective teams throughout the season.

"I can't wait to play you guys in the NFC championship game," was a proclamation repeated often by fans of both teams.

So this past Sunday afternoon, just around the time the Vikings were putting the finishing touches on a thorough dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys in a divisional playoff game, myself and a couple of my Saints fan brethren hiked over to Bar None (We won our divisional playoff game on Saturday) to congratulate the Vikings fans on their victory. Not surprisingly, our discussions quickly turned to the coming week's game and the potential it holds for chaos at the bar. It was then that Ted Castator, the leader of our group and the unofficial "mayor of Bar None," realized that something's got to give and proposed a radical solution to insure such a thing never happens again in the future.

"We should make a bet with them," he said to me over beers. "The fans of the winning team get the bar all to themselves. The losers are banished from Bar None forever and have to find another place to watch all their games."

I ran this idea by Chris Brewer, a 44-year-old from Queens who's been watching Vikings games at Bar None since the late 90s. As the universally acknowledged leader of the Bar None chapter of "Vikings nation," Brewer, who can usually be seen blowing a long, white horn loudly after any big play by the Vikings, expressed reservations about taking the bet.

"Whoa, I don't know about that," he said. "I love this bar and besides, I don't bet on the Vikings."

So as of this writing, a formal acceptance, i.e. a gentlemanly handshake, of our proposed wager has yet to be accepted by the leaders of the Vikings fan contingent. We suspect, however, that serious consideration will be given to it on Sunday once their ears become flooded with the incessant "Who Dat" chants coming from the other side of the bar. Perhaps then, fueled by extreme annoyance and the irrational rush of bravado that boozy sports fandom can often inspire, they'll accept the wager in the minutes leading up to kickoff, thus making Sunday's game even bigger for fans of both teams at the bar.

May the team whose fans want it more win.