The Superdome won’t be the only venue in New Orleans ringing with “Yea Alabama” and the rest of the Crimson Tide’s fight songs on Monday. Across town, several hundred Bama fans will pack into The Rusty Nail, a bar in the Warehouse District that prides itself in its drinks, its football culture, and its Tuscaloosa roots.
The bar is famous around the area among Bama fans, majority owner David Brown said. While Alabama memorabilia doesn’t line the bar’s hundred-year-old walls, the cypress wood is painted a deep crimson—the official Crimson Tide crimson, according to the owners.
“We have people driving from Mobile every weekend to watch games at the Rusty Nail,” Brown said.
It’s the bar’s gameday experience that brings the Alabama fans from across New Orleans and the region.
“[On Monday] we will, as always, play the Alabama fight song and cheers during the game and commercials,” the bar’s website reads. “[The Rusty Nail is] the second-best place in NOLA to watch the game.”
Brown, an Alabama alumnus who graduated in 1999, said The Rusty Nail will host a BCS Bama Block party on Sunday, an event for which the Rusty Nail has partnered with several Alabama bars, including Innisfree and Gallette’s.
Tuscaloosa-based band Secondhand Jive will start off the block party’s live music at 4 p.m., leading into New Orleans country band Country Fried at 7 p.m. The Lagniappe Brass Band will follow, starting at 10 p.m. and playing until “whenever,” according to Brown.
On Monday, four extra bars will open up in the venue to accommodate the crowd—Brown said he’s preparing for a thousand people—and each one will serve Yellowhammers using the official Gallette’s recipe. The bar will open at noon and charge a $5 cover.
“We’re also opening our parking lot up, which will feature a 10-foot-tall inflatable projection screen,” he said.
Brown said he can’t predict how many people will come on Monday to watch the Championship, but he’s preparing for around a thousand people.
Brown said he feels like his bar will fill Bama fans’ needs on Monday—as a New Orleans native, he once felt that need himself.
“I grew up here, and we never really had a place to go watch Bama games,” Brown said. “So I thought maybe it’d be a good idea to try to get in touch with a bunch of the alums in town and see if they’d want to meet and watch the games.”
The crowd grew with every game, and now, Brown said he can’t think of another bar outside of the state of Alabama that outdoes The Rusty Nail in Bama fandom.
