Welcome to Beer Heaven

August 1996

Can I buy you a beer, Mr. Cagney?

What are you drinking? I see you've finished that bottle of Harp.

What'll I have? Whatever's in that big bottle the Three Stooges are fighting over. How do you pronounce that, Cors-en-donk?

If you weren't already convinced that New Orleans operates in some parallel universe, an evening at Cooter Brown's sharing a variety of beers with the dead and famous should make you a believer.

Here the upper regions of the wall are covered with sculpted caricatures who have oversized heads and undersized bodies. Each of the figures is famous, each is dead and each is holding a beer. If you haven't sampled too many of the 350-plus beers Cooter Brown's has to offer, you should be able to figure out the connection between the person and the beer.

For instance, Mickey Mantle is holding a Michelob (the "Mick" and the "Mick," get it?). John Wayne is portrayed with a Lone Star beer, W.C. Fields with Pennsylvania-made Rolling Rock, Edward G. Robinson with Italian-brewed Moretti.

The list keeps going. Jimmy Dean has a bottle of Golden Promise, Peter Sellers (dressed at Inspector Clouseau) French Fischer LaBelle. "Sometimes the connection isn't always easy to make," said owner Larry Berestitzky. Judy Garland is drinking Hexen Brau ("Witches Brew'), while George Burns is holding a bottle of Young's St. Nick (with the devil pictured on the label).

There are already 32 such figures on the wall, and artist Scott Conary will deliver another 20 or so at the end of November. Among them will be a second Jerry Garcia -- holding a bottle of Anchor Steam -- to replace the Jerry that fell off the wall.

Berestitzky -- generally known as Larry B. -- has wanted to do something like this since he was a kid growing up in New York City. He used to visit an Italian restaurant where the walls were covered with mirrors decorated with caricatures of famous people.

Conary, who met Larry B. when he was cooking hamburgers at Cooter Brown's, makes the figures from self-drying clay and acrylic paint. He has moved to Atlanta, but continues to work on the collection. Not surprisingly, customers ask Larry B. where the mini-sculptures came from -- although he's never had somebody try to buy one from right off the wall.

Larry B.'s favorites are W.C. Fields and Alfred Hitchcock, bird on shoulder, Rogue's Dead Guy Ale in hand. "Part of it's fun, part of it's business," he said. "You see people pointing up at the wall, saying, 'Who's that?' "

Cooter Brown's, a streetcar ride from the French Quarter (get off where St. Charles turns onto Carrollton), has long been a popular beer destination. It's an unpretentious oyster bar with more than 60 tap handles (40-plus different beers) and 350-plus bottled beers.