Football’s biggest bash is back in America’s premier party town.

New Orleans knows how to throw shindigs such as the Super Bowl, something it has done more often than any other city.

Today’s game between the New England Patriots and St. Louis Rams marks the ninth time the Super Bowl has been in The Big Easy. And just about every one of them have been memorable sometimes on the field, sometimes off.

That’s because almost everybody arrives ready to embrace the city’s easy living slogan “laissez les bon temps roullez.”

Super Bowl visitors will “let the good times roll” as they settle in for a week of relaxation. By the time kickoff rolls around, everybody’s had a good time.

And that’s what New Orleans is all about.

Stuff always seems to happen there. For New England, Denver and Minnesota, it’s usually bad stuff. The Patriots, Broncos and Vikings are a combined 0-6 in New Orleans Super Bowls. And it’s a decisive 0-6, each of the losses by double digits.

It’s been particularly bad for the Patriots, who’ve played in two Super Bowls both losses and both in New Orleans.

In 1990, San Francisco put an exclamation point on its dynasty with a 55-10 annihilation of Denver as Joe Montana threw five touchdown passes. Four years earlier, Chicago took apart New England 46-10 in a game so lopsided that even William “Refrigerator” Perry scored a touchdown for the Bears.

That year, quarterback Jim McMahon arrived in New Orleans nursing a sore hip, an injury serious enough for the Bears to import a Japanese acupuncturist to treat it. The needles worked, allowing McMahon enough mobility to bend over during practice and moon a low-flying helicopter

This Super Bowl will have a patriotic flair about it with game balls carrying a silver, blue, and red outline of the United States. It will have to go some, though, to match the emotion of the 1981 game, when the NFL tied a yellow ribbon around the Superdome the morning of the game to mark the release of American hostages in Iran after 444 days in captivity.