After 10 years without alcohol, Erica Pradie’s sobriety was quickly derailed after walking by a charming and humorous sandwich board outside of The Bourbon Station last Saturday.
For the past decade, Pradie has been sober and has learned to channel her addictive tendencies into various forms of art and exercise. After taking in that witty quip, however, she was shaken to her core.
Written on a small chalkboard was the following cheeky bit: “Alcohol. Because no good story ever started with a salad.”
“Perhaps the chalkboard was right,” says Pradie, of her encounter. “Perhaps this WOULD be the beginning of a good story.” She immediately began weighing whether her job, relationship, and family were worth throwing away over this compellingly simple advertising. The answer was an unequivocal “yes”.
This is not the first time Erica has made her way past the Bourbon Station’s chalkboard sign. Last week she fought off a strong desire to binge drink after reading the chalkboard that then read, “You can’t drink all day…if you don’t start in the morning.” “It was true, after all,” asserts Pradie. “In order to drink all day, you would need to start in the morning. That’s just a solid point.”
She was reminded of a hilarious chalkboard that posed a problem the summer before in Martha’s Vineyard: “A small drinking town with a big fishing problem!” She adds, “It reminded me of myself, minus the town and the fishing.”
As she continued on her walk, she passed another bar called the Levee, which also had a fun chalkboard out front: “If you don’t drink, how will your friends know you love them.” That was confusing for her: “My friends generally want me not to drink,” she says. “Still, it was a sign.”
Considering all of these hastily scrawled, unoriginal, straight-from-Pinterest signs, Pradie made the executive decision to throw away the stability of her life in favor of alcohol, right on the spot.
“Thank you, signs,” she slurs. “You were right all along.”
