I am now in day two of my visit to New Orleans.

You’ll notice I don’t say that I’m at Tales of the Cocktail. There’s a couple of reasons for that.

1. It hasn’t officially started yet. Wednesday.
2. I’m not going to anything Tales-related that involves paying money.

You might wonder about that. I’ll be honest, and I’ll paraphrase someone else: like a lot of other people, I come to NOLA and to “Tales” despite Tales.

The single biggest reason why I’m here is because so many other folks are here at this time. Otherwise, I’d pick a cooler, less crowded time of year. I love visiting New Orleans, and would keep it in my rotation no matter what. But July? Only because folks from all over the world are here.

And they’re because of Tales. Don’t get me wrong; it’s become quite the event.

But it’s still the same event – and it’s getting old, already, for me.

Sessions are large events with little to no interaction, a couple of mass-produced cocktails, and while many of the presenters are entertaining, you can catch the info elsewhere. Alternatively, some are so skewed towards a specific product or brand as to be useless.

Tasting rooms are often over crowded, and I won’t get into other issues that cropped up this year involving badging for them.

Most events are completely slammed/packed. Good for ticket sales, I guess, but not necessarily for having fun.

And then there are the two most germane things to me, personally.

First off: ambush marketing. That’s the accusation that went on last year about any event that wasn’t specifically “allowed” by Tales of the Cocktail (read: paid TotC money).

So if you have friends over, and they work for a specific company, and they buy you drinks – ambush marketing.

You want to show off your stuff and invite folks to a party – and you haven’t paid up – ambush marketing.

Fuck that. Seriously. I’ve been to conferences and conventions of all sorts – beer and liquor related, video games, other gaming types, not to mention tons of ones for work, from completely technical related to government sponsored. No one else does that.

Can you imagine going to the LISA conference, which is for systems administrators, and having your company told “if you do any event outside of LISA in this city at the same time, we’ll ban you”? Or if you were at E3, which is video games, and told that if you didn’t clear your video game demos outside of the show with E3, they’d ban you?

No, you don’t do that.

Second: I don’t care for how media has been managed this year, especially the transition from last year’s style of handling bloggers to this year’s. I’m not mad at the bloggers involved, but instead how Tales handled it.

Especially with the relative dearth of press passes this year. Folks want to come here and give publicity – but I refuse to pay money to do it. So you’ll find me blogging about where I’ve been and things like that, but not about a Tales event. Sorry folks.

That being said – quick hits from day one:

Marigny Brassiere – Hit there to watch the World Cup. A “hot mess po’ boy” with fried chicken, ham, and blue cheese was fantastic.

Then it was off for boiled shrimps, headcheese from Cochon Butcher, etc. Yummy.

d.b.a. – This place will show up repeatedly. Good beer selection, great music. Going again tonight. Still, last night I realized that $9 for a hefeweizen just might mean it tastes like most other hefeweizens.

CURE - I always love going there Sunday nights ’cause it’s quieter. Some fun drinks there, and just a relaxing cool joint.

Twelve Mile Limit – if I lived down here I’d be there every night or two. What a fantastic place – kind of a “dive bar” ambiance with a cocktail program that costs, typically, the same as the most expensive beer on draft ($6 – yes, you read that right). Pool table, juke box, good cheap beer, man I liked it a lot. And the beef barbecue was pretty darn tasty.

Tonique - Didn’t hit it last time but did check it out last night. Had fun there, want to visit again. I’ve had questions as how it compares to CURE – it’s definitely a very different place. I only had two drinks there, and one was made by a bartender from CURE, so we’ll see how it is next time!

Today I’ve already been a few places, but we’ll catch up on that later.