I usually don’t like places with cheap beer prices. That’s not to say that I like to pay inflated prices. It’s just that happy hours generally bring in unhappy people looking for a bargain. But there is a modest little bar in the French Quarter that has all of the bar essentials and just happens to have great beer prices without discounting the fun.

For years, a group of us associated with the beer business traveled to New Orleans for Jazzfest. We would bring significant others, or in my case sometimes just others, for a weekend of great food, outstanding music and lots of drink. We would party like we were soon going to the electric chair.

As folks scattered from the Fairgrounds to tarot readings, shopping, off track betting or more drinking, we felt the need to find a central meeting place prior to our group dinners. A late afternoon place. Keuffer’s Bar, at the corner of Chartres and Toulouse, became the spot.

The featured prices on Rolling Rock longnecks and the Labatt “Big Blue” cans at Keuffer’s got our immediate attention and drew us inside. Once there, you find a quaint brick shell of a building housing a jukebox, pinball machine, pool table, about 20 beers, full bar and a couple of video poker machines. A few tables front the three sided bar, and the bartenders (almost always female in my visits) are friendly and become part of the fun.

The bar is open air, so it never seems to get too hot or too cold inside despite New Orleans’ temperamental climate. The jukebox is loaded with great hits, and a couple of televisions are placed serendipitously in the corners as if no one really seems to care.

And that’s OK. Carefree is a good descriptor of the comfortable and affordable Keuffer’s. You sense that it is run just the way they like it. – D.M.

POST KATRINA: Unfortunately, the little corner bar didn’t make it. A “For Lease” sign hangs where the crest once proudly reigned.