Johnny White's Sports Bar: The Tiny Joint that Never Closed―Until It Did

by Marita Woywod Crandle

Johnny White's Sports Bar was a French Quarter institution. Often called "the locals' living room," Johnny White's was the only twenty-four-hour bar on Bourbon Street and attracted a colorful cast of regulars, local characters and tourists looking for a good time. Memorable French Quarter personalities like Ruthie the Duck Girl and Perri the Hobo frequented the bar in their rounds. During Hurricane Katrina, the bar remained a refuge to those who'd stayed in the city, despite authorities ordering the bar to close at gunpoint. When the bar's lease was finally up in 2012, patrons mourned its loss with a full jazz funeral procession. Marita Woywod Crandle offers an insider's look at the gritty, unique and often hilarious world of this beloved and much-missed French Quarter icon.

144 pages, Paperback

Published December 10, 2018

Reviews

[Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

My husband encouraged me to borrow this book that he received for Christmas and he was right: it’s a fun read and brings New Orleans to life.

The author does exactly what she sets out to do with this book. This is not formal literature but that’s okay. She wants to share her memories of working at the bar and she wants to make the people and place become real again. She does this in a very conversational style.

We own a condo in New Orleans and can relate to the culture and social interactions that the author describes. We favor neighborhood places like Johnny White’s and we rarely go to the tourist trap places. It’s such a charming city with unusual personalities and the author shows you great examples of this.

I read this for the 2024 ATY Challenge: a book with fewer than 2024 ratings on Goodreads

[Dan Downing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the decades I have accrued many memories of NOLA and vicinity: musicians, dances, historical sites, books both fictional and not, bars and restaurants, scenes of devastation and even virtual memories, if one can call movies and TV shows (Treme) by such a term. By chance, I missed out on visiting 'Johnny's Sports Bar', but I am pretty sure my wife dropped in on the author's shop.

What we have here is a memoir about a small downscale bar that was an occasional home to several of the French Quarter's more outre residents, some of whom we have noticed on our visits. Ms. Crandle gives us a handful of stories about the goings-on at Johnny's (familiarly known as J.W.'s, but I am not on that cozy a basis). The anecdotes have a certain New Orlean's flavor to them, a hard taste to define. I suppose one might find more humor in them if one were graced by a couple of beers, but that is something I have to tax my memory to dredge up. I'll let it go by saying I found no knee-slappers but much to amuse.

With vaccines aboard and more coming and a return to a 'normal' of sorts a reasonable-sounding goal, perhaps our hope to return to NOLA will be concretized this year. Will there be a Treme Fall Festival? Will we cross paths with John Boutte again? Will the major Festivals' move to September and October work? Is "Rock and Bowl" open? "Elizabeth's"? "Mulate's"? "Checkpoint Charlie's? "Johnny White's Sports Bar" closed before the plague but I am sure City Park and NOMA and Octavia Books and Faulkner House Books will be open. After all, it is New Orleans. And we can stroll past the corner of Orleans and Bourbon and give a nod to the specter of a bar that never closed, even if it is gone.

Recommended (at least to NOLA fans or wantabes)