Within the bar’s red interior, which seems custom-made for a Christmas party, The First and Last Stop Bar & Lounge will strike up the D.J. at 5 p.m. tonight and spend the night playing old-school holiday music and serving up the traditional Tuesday-night Big Mouth burgers, fixed with sauteed onions on the side, along with the sought-after $3 house onion rings.
Though it will be a light-hearted night, many heavy decisions lie ahead.
First of all, much remains to be determined about the bar, which was sold by its longtime owners on October 1, leaving bar owner-operator Carol Cushenberry with deep uncertainties about her future at the cozy 7th Ward bar that she has rented for a quarter-century. The bar has also been a homebase for Black Masking Indians in the neighborhood for at least 75 years.
Carol Cushenberry received a letter this week from her new landlord, Daniel Sellers, telling her that if she didn’t get up-to-date on her rent, he would be heading to First City Court on Tuesday morning to officially file for an eviction. Because court dates are typically set at least a few weeks out, it’s unlikely that there will even be a hearing before Christmas. For Cushenberry, at issue is the Sellers’ insurance requirements and rent amounts, which stayed the same despite Sellers taking control of the building’s two apartments, which she used to manage and receive revenue from. “I’m not opposed to paying rent,” she said. “But if I pay those high rents, it will feel like he’s stealing from me.”
Because Sellers had told her to leave and had behaved, she alleges, in a way that made her not want to be on the premises at night, the bar was not open during November. She had even listed all of the bar’s furnishings on Facebook Marketplace and was preparing to move out – until there was a groundswell of public support and a fundraiser, headed by trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and by Indians from the Monogram Hunters, last Tuesday, Dec. 2.
The event raised money that helped keep the bar in Cushenberry’s hands. And the public support convinced her that she might be able to keep her beloved bar, she said.
So this week’s letter from Sellers was welcome. And unlike some of the communications between Sellers and Cushenberry, the tenant he inherited, it was not mean-spirited in tone. “I want to apologize for any issues I may have caused during your time at the bar,” he wrote. “I also want to acknowledge and respect the many years you have put into operating the bar.”
The two of them also had a civil phone conversation. Before they talked, she told him by text that she believed he owed her an apology. That he delivered, by text.
But theirs is still a fragile relationship. She doesn’t know if the two of them can get along. What she does know is that the community supports keeping the bar open.
“Ms. Carol, I love you with all my heart, baby,” said Big Chief Tyrone “Pie” Stevenson, who called Ruffins “a true culture bearer” for playing all night in the First and Last Stop’s stage area, where musicians were lit by the screens of video-poker machines and where patrons walked through the band to use the restrooms at the back of the bar.
Stevenson has been coming to Indian practice at the bar since he was age 11 and sewing a suit for the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, led to Big Chief Tootie Montana.
“We never gonna move y’all, we’re here,” he said, as he started chanting to the shake of tambourines. “Say, Pauger and Marais, that’s where I roam,” he sang. “Some call it hell, I call it home.”
