Oz New Orleans

Oz New Orleans occupies the most famous corner in gay America — Bourbon Street and St Ann, the intersection that marks the beginning of the Lavender Line, the stretch of Bourbon Street between St Ann and Dumaine Streets that has been the acknowledged centre of New Orleans' gay life for decades. The club operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because in New Orleans there is no last call, no closing time, and no particular reason to stop the night before it is finished. This is not merely a marketing claim: Oz's dance floor is genuinely operational at 4am, 7am, and noon on a Sunday, and the crowd at each of those times is having a fully legitimate party. The programming runs themed nights across the week — drag shows, circuit nights, themed parties, and the kind of spontaneous event that occurs when a city operates without closing hours — but the format is consistent: a main dance floor with a DJ playing high-energy music, go-go dancers performing above the crowd, a bar that moves quickly, and an atmosphere of celebration that does not require a special occasion. Oz is on the corner, which means the second-floor balcony looks directly down onto the intersection of Bourbon and St Ann — a vantage point for watching the street life below that is as good as any in the French Quarter. During Southern Decadence, Oz is the command centre of the entire French Quarter; the crowd on the street outside the corner blends with the crowd inside in a way that dissolves the usual boundary between bar and city.