The Saturn Bar

The Saturn Bar opened in 1960, when O'Neil Broyard took over a building at the corner of St. Claude Avenue and Clouet Street. What followed was four decades of slow, eccentric world-building: leopard-print booths, a framed taxidermied turtle, murals of planetary scenes painted by his friend Mike Frolich, and a dense accumulation of art, taxidermy, and bric-a-brac that turned the bar into something between a neighborhood hangout and an outsider-art installation.

The Saturn was always more atmosphere than amenity. O'Neil ran the bar his way for four decades, and it remained resolutely itself.

O'Neil Broyard died in 2005 while the bar sat closed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. His family stepped in and reopened the bar, preserving what mattered while opening the previously cramped back room to live music, adding a stage where eclectic local bands and touring acts now play regularly.

Today the Saturn Bar hosts an eclectic calendar of live rock and alternative music and DJ nights. A Bywater landmark, it remains one of the city's most singular rooms.