NOLA: Day One

I crossed a certain catastrophic birthday threshold the other day and to ease the sting the Mad Marchioness took me for a 5 day debauche in the heart of Crescent City. The Mad Marchioness: I think I'll keep her.

I've admired New Orleans from afar for well over half my life. I've researched it obsessively. I find everything about it significant or fascinating or both. Historically, the most cosmopolitan city in the American south. The birthplace of jazz. The home of voodoo. A port city; frequented by pirates. The unique mash-up of French, Spanish, English, African and Native American cultures. The world famous cuisine. The enormous reverence for history, which has resulted in widescale preservation of architecture, language, and tradition. Even the local flora and fauna, geography and climate (regional aspects I'm not automatically interested in) are EXTREMELY fascinating.

But especially...jazz. The soul of a nation is expressed through its music. By common consensus, America's music is jazz and its many offshoots. Which makes New Orleans the literal heart of American culture. You either get that or you don't. Nothing -- not the Iraq War, not the ignoring of the warning signals of 9-11, nor the financial crisis of 2008 (and those are a LOT) -- inspires more contempt in me for our 43rd President than his cavalier response to the drowning of New Orleans on his watch. It's as though (and does this surprise anyone?) he missed the entire POINT of the nation of which he was supposed to be chief executive. You either feel IN YOUR BONES a sense of ownership, of pride in what New Orleans has given to American culture...or it is alien to you, you are detached from it and don't particularly care if the town -- if America's soul -- lives or dies. And Bush's main observation seemed to be that New Orleans was a "party town" and that he looked forward to rebuilding Senator Trent Lott's house. (Lott was a Mississippi senator at the time). It's one thing to be ineffective at saving the city. But not to CARE? About New Orleans? That's unforgivable. At that point I write you off, not just as a President, but as an American and as a human being.

So. This has been a pilgrimage to a place I've cared deeply about in the abstract for most of my life. And it exceeded my expectations. While we were there, waiters, tour guides, gallery owners etc, would say "So you're from New York? I guess this [i.e. NOLA], isn't so much, huh?" Au contraire. We were there for the culture -- real culture -- and New Orleans is abidingly rich in that....at a time when New York's culture withers, atrophies and seems to be taking its marching orders from some industrial park in New Jersey. We were enthralled by NOLA, and don't be too surprised if some day we choose to go back and stay there permanently.

Now: I meant to blog daily while I was there, but I couldn't get my new computer to work in the hotel, and besides I was having too much fun. So what I've decided to do is BACKDATE my daily blogs and post them today in six separate day-by-day chunks.  About a quarter of the pictures were taken by the Marchioness. Here goes nothing!

Thursday, November 5

Upon boarding the plane we saw two elderly, turbaned African American women in the first class section, laying out rows of playing cards on their dinner trays and gazing at them in a fashion most oracular. Thus before we even left LaGuardia I felt we'd already arrived at our destination. Unfortunately though we were seated in coach, where the only voodoo is an attempt to hypnotize you into thinking a bag containing four peanuts is a "snack".

Hey! You! Get Offa My Cloud!

On the ride from Louis Armstrong airport to our hotel in the French Quarter the taxi driver kept gabbing to a friend on a cell phone in Creole French  -- a second wave transitional cushion.

For our first few days there the weather was steamy and close. I went around in shorts almost the entire time. Here's where we stayed:

Look cozy? Well, two doors down from our hotel there was this:

We didn't get around to poking our heads in until near the end of our trip. Initially gung-ho, we backed off when we got closer and saw that it was just a shabby storefront with a gallery full of gory photos, charging two to three times what all the legit museums were charging. Besides, we get all the gore we need in New York. So it was on to....

Bourbon Street was just a block from our hotel (and just about everything we cared about was within walking distance). The street is legendary of course (that's why we took this picture) but there's no way to ever explain it to anyone. "Carnivalesque" is the first word that comes to mind, in both senses of the word. You turn the corner, and you are on a sort of extremely long midway, a strip of eateries, bars, night clubs and sex shows, all housed in these historical old buildings. August, 200-year-old establishments share space with places like "Larry Flynt's Barely Legal Club". It is as though you mashed together Times Square with Colonial Williamsburg.

Working the crowd (sometimes fleecing them) are a zillion entertaining buskers: magicians, three card monte operators, shell games, stilt walkers, musicians (of course!), and to my delight and concern: several African American kids tap dancing for coins. "Delight" of course because so many of the vaudevillians I've written about started out in just this fashion, dancing for change on street corners. Now here I am witnessing it with my own eyes. It was very gratifying. Why then the "concern"? Because, constantly lurking in the shadows was their obvious Tap Dance Taskmaster. Father? Cousin? Older brother? It was hard not to read coercion and exploitation into the situation but I may be way, horribly off base, and if that offends anyone I apologize in advance. But the grown-up looked like he was scowling and the kids looked like they didn't DARE stop dancing. Anyway, I really wanted to snap pictures of the kids and possibly even interview them (even the mean one) for the blog. But I put it off until the last night, and wouldn't you know, just as I approached with my camera, they scampered off. I turned around, and there was a stern looking city cop. They're obviously breaking some city ordinance with their dancing. I'd like to know more. Is it a family tradition? An entrepreneurial brainstorm?

Interestingly, there is far less jazz in the Bourbon Street establishments than one would assume. A couple of nearby places like the famous Preservation Hall feature it, and there is lots of it being played in the streets, but mostly what you get in the Bourbon Street clubs are DJs and cheesy pop cover bands doing songs by Bob Seger or Jimmy Buffet. We later learned that most of the real jazz clubs are on Frenchman Street nowadays. But like I said there was a copious amount of great music being played by street musicians so we didn't feel short changed.

It was also interesting to watch the mix of people wandering around the French Quarter. First of all, open containers are the rule of the day, day or night. People are walking the streets with drinks in their hands before breakfast. (Not us! Honest!) But the types of people, ranging from "Beautiful People" in expensive threads...to the ugliest of Ugly Americans. During our time there it was not usual to go into a really classy restaurant with tuxedoed waiters....waiting on entire families who were dressed like four-year-olds, in pajamas and track suits and sweatshirts with the names of sports teams on them.

Patron: "Y'all have Fried Twinkies?"

Waiter: Mais, non, monsieur.

At any rate, I came to this experience PREPARED. I'd already mapped out everything I wanted to see and now that we were on Bourbon Street, I wasted no time. For example, I flew here immediately:

It's not there anymore of course. Here's what it used to look like:

The French Opera House was where Adah Isaacs Menken made her theatrical debut. It was part of my research for Horse Play.  Not to pay immediate respect would be a gross omission.

And then there is this legendary place, also on Bourbon Street:

For years I had their iconic poster hanging in my house (given to me by a friend who visited the place shortly after it opened in 1988).

So I wanted to get a glimpse. They didn't allow photographs inside (not for the reason you might expect but rather, I suspect because it's a bit shabby. There are many voodoo establishments in the city, and we'll share our impressions of them subsequently. They were all more impressive than this one, though it's the best known). In case you didn't know, Marie Laveau (1794-1881) and her daughter Marie Laveau II (1827-1895) were New Orleans' Voodoo Queens. But the store is just named after them, not affiliated with their legacy in any way.

Having just got to town and not yet properly oriented, we then ate gumbo at a completely random Cajun place called Le Bayou.  The chow was okay but I was more impressed by the gator over the bar:

I like a joint with a gator over the bar.

Then we went back and had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar, and listened to the hilariously bad hotel band.