Reggie Bush elects to punch someone in the head rather than dive out of bounds. Pre-Season is indeed an illusion. (Photo stolen from NOLA.com. It won't be the last this year)
Since making a Saturday night kickoff is a bit of a squeeze given Menckles's work schedule, we arrived somewhere midway through the first quarter. I was hoping we could turn this to our advantage in bloody mary wait time but no luck. The line was as long as ever but I was content to slog it out since, as we've noted many times before, the Superdome bloody marys are among the best in the city and... well I just don't feel right getting to my seat without one. So I waited, quietly tolerant of the my obnoxious colleagues in line who felt it necessary to loudly comment on the speed of the service within earshot of the bartenders; absent-mindedly attempting to decipher the moans and cries of the crowd in order to determine what might be happening on the field. When I reached the front of the queue, I cheerfully placed an order I hadn't made in over 7 months. "Two bloody doubles, please" The bartender seemed to think for a second... but then sighed and went to work with the usual assembly. I saw the Zing Zang, the cheap vodka, the olives, the celery, those wonderful beans.... and then... wow those cups are quite a bit smaller than I remember.... maybe I'm imagining things.
I wasn't imagining things. When she placed the two drinks in front of me, I could see they were in white plastic cups that were about half the size of the Mardi Gras thow-sized cups which contained the "double" cocktails in previous years. I was about to ask about this when the bartender set a third cup alongside of them, poured a shot into it, and said, "You have to pour it in." I poured the vodka into one of the little cups, she replaced the shot and I dutifully poured it into the second cup. Before I could ask, she went straight into what was obviously her three hundredth recital of the explanation.
Officially the Superdome doesn't sell double sizes anymore. The servers are only allowed to sell two drinks per customer at a time. Somehow, the employees have decided that they can work around this rule by selling me two extra shots and then just counting those as two separate sales somewhere. Honestly I'm not sure I follow the logic but according to the lady making the drinks, it's all above board as long as I personally add the extra liquor to what is about half the amount of mix that it would have been diluted by under the old rules. Whatever.
All I know is in 2006 I paid $9.00 per double bloody mary. Back then, that seemed pretty outrageous. Saturday night, I paid a total of $28.00 for... whatever the hell those two little drinks were that she sold me. It all goes to show that as soon as you think the NFL is screwing its fans as hard as it possibly can, the bastards find a way to top themselves.
You may be tempted to attribute the new policy on alcohol sales to the NFL's ridiculous "fan code of conduct" but I beg to differ. The code of conduct... while certainly not a nice way to show respect for your paying customers... wasn't to blame for the sharply reduced nacho portions, for example. And anyone who was there can attest to the fact that the rule against "foul and abusive language" wasn't being enforced. When I finally arrived in our section, the very first words r spoke to me were, "Jason David." No Superdome security arrived to escort her from the building so we're certain that even the foulest of words are still being permitted.
No, the Saints and the NFL have somehow managed to raise the bar even higher when it comes to bilking their patrons. Thankfully, since this is pre-season, we still have time to work on our adjustments to the new strategy. Specifically we're thinking about going guerrilla with our gameday liquor. Sunday I invested in a flask and a new pair of cargo pants. We'll keep you updated as this develops.
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