New Orleans: December, 2023

• 120823 The Best Laid Plans
• 120923 Touching Down in the Big Easy
• 121023 GAME DAY!
• 121123 The Quarter, the Market, and the Maple Leaf
• 121223 Congo Square
• 121323 Biking the Parks and Walking the Streets
• 121423 The Art of Change
• 121523 Chickie Bus Tour
• 121623 The Joys of Going Home

120823 The Best Laid Plans

Following a rather successful two-week romp through Belgium and The Netherlands back in 2018, it took about four years before my brother and I started talking about taking another trip somewhere together.  Which called for me to figure out where we should go, how we would get there, where we should stay, and what we would do while we were there.  Alan’s job would be to say “okay” a bunch of times.

And so I started scratching my head and scouring the internet and I finally settled on…Thailand!  I called Al, he said “okay”, and I started planning our route.

(Spoiler: we didn’t go to Thailand.)

I had spent several months in Thailand thirty years earlier so it didn’t take me long to sketch out a fun little tour of the country; a few nights exploring the bright lights of Bangkok, a trek and maybe a raft cruise through the jungle up north, and a healthy stretch of socializing and relaxation on the famous white sandy beaches down south.  

All was going well until I started looking at flights.  One of the key reasons why our trip to Belgium and The Netherlands had been Al’s first time travelling to Europe was because he was reluctant to endure the discomfort of sitting for hours on end in the small seats that one regularly finds at the back of modern airplanes, and he certainly had a point.  At the time our mother was sitting on oodles of travel points and she was kind enough to shell out for a couple of business-class seats for us.  And if he didn’t know it already, Alan quickly discovered that life is pretty good up there in the front of the airplane.  

Unfortunately mom was no longer bleeding airmiles, and a flight to Thailand lasts a heck of a lot longer than a flight to Europe does.  And the tickets are way pricier too.  I knew that the cost of flying had gone up quite a bit in the post-pandemic glut of air travel, but when I priced out what it would cost to fly to Bangkok in business-class I quickly realized that Asia was out.  It was back to the drawing board for me. 

As I struggled to come up with some other destination that my brother and I could visit my mother started asking what I would be doing for Christmas.  Both she and my brother would be spending the holidays at their winter homes in Florida, and would I be flying down to meet them?  Suddenly a pretty solid Plan B formed in my mind, and the more I thought about it the perfecter it got.  To wit:

Sometime in early-to-mid-December I could fly one-way from Newfoundland to New Orleans.  Meanwhile Alan would drive to New Orleans from his place in Florida (in our family a nine-hour drive is nothing).  For a pittance we could stay in one of the hotels that are linked up to our mother’s timeshare network and after a week in NOLA we could simply hop in Al’s car and drive back to New Port Richey together.  M’lady could fly down to Florida to join us and we would all enjoy a pre-Christmas family visit together.  

I mentioned it to Al.  He said “okay”.  Perfect.

So I started digging and whattya know!?!  There was a timeshare available in downtown New Orleans, and it looked pretty good too.  It was at the Jung Hotel, just down from the theatre district and just a few trolley stops away from the French Quarter.  Even better, they had several rooms available so I quickly booked a single for myself and a double for Al.  While I was at it I booked myself a one-way flight to NOLA and another one back to Newfoundland from Tampa.  M’lady booked herself a return ticket so she could meet us in Florida and with travel and accommodations set it was time to start looking into entertainment.

As is my habit, the first thing I did was scour for concerts.  I’m a live music junkie and New Orleans is definitely a live music city.  I was surprised to find nothing worthy of my attention, but there was still time.  I started thinking about other things we could do.

And like a flash it came to me!  I checked the schedule and…yes!!!  The New Orleans Saints had a home game scheduled while we would be there and tickets would be going on sale in just a few days.  I wrote to Al asking if he wanted to go, he wrote back: “okay”.  But then I had another inspiration: Our cousin Kenny was a huge Saints fan.  What if he came too?  Flights from Moncton were pretty good, I checked the timeshare and yep, Ken could even get his own room.  Hey Al, what do you think?

“Okay.”

Perfect.

I don’t know if I was more surprised or disappointed when Ken decided that he wouldn’t be joining us, but I was definitely both of those things.  Ah well, I logged on and scored a nice pair of reasonably-priced upper bowl tickets for the Saints game and kept watching for concert announcements.

Then in September mom shocked us all by getting rushed to the hospital for a scary several weeks.  As is her habit she came out of the ordeal completely unscathed, but her health insurance told her she wouldn’t be covered in the US for the next six months and just like that our trip started coming apart at the seams.

Now that mom wouldn’t be spending Christmas in Florida my brother wouldn’t be either, so there would be no driving between New Port Richey and New Orleans.  We considered cancelling the trip altogether but decided to soldier on.  I booked myself a one-way flight home from New Orleans and started looking for flights to get Al down there and back.  In a lucky turn I found a business class ticket through aeroplan for the same amount of points as a regular class ticket.  I called mom and she had enough points so I booked it for Alan.  Ta-da!

Then the phone rang.  It was Kenny.  “So I hear that Al is going to be flying to New Orleans from Moncton,” he says.

“Yep.”

“So, can I still come with you guys?” he asked me.  Huh?  Well, yeah, of course you can!

I immediately logged onto the travel site and was disappointed to see that there were no more timeshare rooms at the Jung Hotel during our week.  But that’s okay, I had booked Al into a double.  I called him and asked if he would be willing to share his room with Ken.

“Okay.”

Perfect.  That would also save them both a few bucks.  Next I surfed over to Air Canada and found Ken a seat on the same flight that Al would be flying on.  The ticket was almost double the price compared to when I had first asked him to come with us, but Kenny insisted that he be on the same flight as Alan and he agreed on the price so I booked it.  My flight also connected through Montreal so the three of us would be traveling together on the final leg to New Orleans.  Perfect.

The next step was football tickets.  I had bought a decent pair of 600 level tickets for $56+fees apiece but now we needed three tickets seated together.  There were thousands of seats available through the secondary ticket market and after a couple of weeks of constantly monitoring the price and availability I grabbed some at $92+fees each.  The seats weren’t quite as good as the ones I had picked up during the regular onsale but that was fine.  We were in, and now I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.  I listed our extra pair on the secondary market hoping I could sell them for a bit over face value to help defray the higher price we had paid for the three seats.

Now the only problems that remained were my one-way ticket flying home from Tampa, and m’lady’s return flight, neither of which were cancellable.  For this I had a strategy, and one that I considered almost foolproof: If Air Canada cancels or makes pre-changes to an upcoming flight the passengers are free to rebook or to cancel the ticket altogether.  In my experience Air Canada almost always adjusts their flights at least once and lo and behold, a couple of weeks prior to departure m’lady and I both got emails: our Tampa-to-Toronto flight had been moved back by ten minutes.  No major change to be sure, but any change at all was enough to allow us to cancel our flights and get a full refund, so we did.  Perfect.

And then, just when I figured I was home free, I received another message from Air Canada.  Get this: They had delayed my flight from St. John’s to Montreal by three minutes.  Yes, three minutes.  No big deal, you say?  Well, sit right back and hear my tale:

Originally my flight to Halifax would have left me with sixty-one minutes to change planes.  With this new three-minute delay I would now only have fifty-eight minutes to change planes.  Halifax is a pretty small airport and there’s no question that I could still quite easily make my connection but unfortunately Air Canada’s computer system disagreed.  The system would not issue tickets for a Halifax layover that was any less than sixty minutes.  Computers being computers, it went ahead and e-sent me a new itinerary.  Now, rather than meeting Kenny and Alan in Montreal and having all of us arriving in New Orleans together at 11am, the Air Canada computer had routed me through Toronto and then again through Dallas – mm-hmm, Dallas – where I would be waiting all day for a flight to New Orleans that wouldn’t have me arrive until 7pm.  

(I told you Air Canada always switches their flights.)

This was totally unacceptable.  The whole idea was for me to act as tour guide for my less-travelled relatives, and getting them from the airport to the hotel on Day One was a major part of that.  There was no way I could have those guys arrive in Crescent City a full eight hours ahead of me.  

When I got the Air Canada rep on the phone I was told that the only way they could guarantee me a seat on Al and Ken’s Montreal-to-New Orleans flight was if they rebooked me to fly into Montreal the night before.  I reluctantly agreed and reserved myself a room in a budget hotel near the airport.

And so it was that after a busy week of finalizing details* and putting up Christmas lights and setting up the tree and packing my bag and hugging m’lady (who had returned from a three-week absence just two days earlier), I was more than ready to get on the road to New Orleans.  Though not ready enough that I was excited to travel to Montreal a whole day early, but it was what it were and off I went.

My direct flight (with no movies) landed in Montreal at 8pm.  I found a payphone and called the hotel about their free shuttle.  “Our driver will meet you at Door 8.  He’ll be there in five minutes.”  That surprised me.  When I’d reserved the hotel online the booking website had offered me a deal on a prepaid airport taxi.  The deal was $40 for a cab fare they claimed would normally cost $75 or more (fortunately the hotel I booked offered a free shuttle).  With this in mind I assumed that my airport hotel was actually a fair distance from the airport.  Not so!  Sure enough, within five minutes the van showed up, I hopped in and less than a kilometre later – I’m talking immediately after leaving the airport property – we were at the front door of the hotel.  I would have been pretty miffed if I had prepaid $40 for such a short ride, that’s for sure.

So there I sat in my semi-shabby one-star wood-panelled room at the Auberge de L’Airport with a 5am wake-up call scheduled and one, single mini airplane bottle of whisky that I had brought with me for exactly that moment.  I mixed it with a $2 Coke that I grabbed from a machine in the hotel lobby and enjoyed my drink whilst listening to the great John Lennon, who was shot to death outside his apartment building in New York City exactly forty-three years earlier.

All he’d been saying was give peace a chance [sigh].

It would’ve been nice to take advantage of being in Montreal to do, well, something but after some digging around I had found nothing very interesting going on.  I might have been tempted to go out in search of whatever random entertainment wonders I could stumble across but the hotel was pretty far from the downtown core, and did I mention the 5am wakeup call?  Instead I decided to just stay in my little box and consider the evening the calm before the coming storm.

And I’m talking real calm.  The TV set wasn’t even working.  

*When I called the timeshare people to confirm our two hotel rooms the guy almost gave me a heart attack.  He told me that he couldn’t find any reservations for us and after a torturously long search he came back on the line and concluded that my only recourse was to call the hotel itself.  “Maybe someone there can help you.”  I could almost hear him shrug his shoulders with indifference.  

When the lady at the Jung Hotel answered the phone my heart was already racing.  I quickly rattled off all my worries in a panicked string of breathless blather.  “Mr. Todd?” she said, trying to interrupt me.  ”Mr. Todd?  It’s okay, Mr. Todd…calm down…”  Finally I stopped blubbering and let the lady speak.  “You can just take it easy now, Mr. Todd,” she assured me, “I have both of your reservations right here.”  My chest caved in with relief.

“Everything is just fine now Mr. Todd, and we’re looking forward to seein’ y’all down here tomorrow afternoon,” she added, instantly reminding me of the charming southern friendliness that we were about to be immersed in.  “You just relax and have yourself a nice flight, we’ll see you when you get here.”

And just like that, I was ready to start getting excited!

120923 Touching Down in the Big Easy

With nothing to do and nowhere to explore I had turned in by 10pm, so I was deeply asleep when the guys staying in the room next to mine brought the party home at 2:30am.  I managed to get back to sleep once they quieted down but they woke me up again at 3:30.  Ah well, at least somebody was taking advantage of their overnighter in Montreal.  When the guys finally packed it in for the night it was too late for me: by this time I was all the way awake and I would be staying that way.  

I laid in the small bed staring up into the darkness until ten minutes before my 5am wakeup call came.  I got up, brushed my teeth, put on yesterday’s clothes, answered the call, grabbed my bag and went straight down to the lobby.  Just a few minutes later I, along with two others, climbed into the hotel van and shuttled to the airport, which was quite busy even at the ungodly hour of 5:30am.

When I entered the terminal I zigged when I should have zagged and ended up walking the length of the building before turning back and finally finding the security line I was supposed to be in.  Then I cruised customs in a flash and made my way straight to gate C86 where I found…nobody.  

Well, not nobody.  There were lots of people there, but no Kenny and no Alan.  I took a seat facing the long hallway so I’d see them coming and tried to concentrate on my crossword puzzle.  I was pretty hungry, but with only a Starbucks within easy reach of my seat I decided to suffer it out until we got to New Orleans.  

We were scheduled to land at 11am, so we would have a lot of time to kill before we checked in to the hotel.  I intended to lobby for us to take the bus from the airport.  A taxi would cost at least $60 – probably more – and when I checked online I discovered that the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) now offered an airport express bus that ended its route just two blocks from our hotel.

Now, where were those guys?

During my frantic panicked phone calls to the hotel the day before the lady that calmed me down had confirmed that if our rooms were ready when we arrived we would be welcome to check in early, and if they weren’t ready yet then the hotel would be happy to hold our bags for us until they were.  I decided to keep that part quiet until the three of us were on the bus. 

And still I waited.  Their flight should have landed more than an hour before and there was no sign of them.  Luckily our New Orleans connection was delayed (if only slightly); our flight’s scheduled boarding time had already whizzed by.  Ten minutes later I could stand it no longer; I approached one of the ladies at the gate.

I explained that I was supposed to be meeting a couple of family members who were flying in from Moncton, adding that due to recent knee surgery my brother had requested wheelchair assistance upon arrival in Montreal, but they hadn’t arrived and could she find out if they had actually landed yet?  She click-click-clicked on her computer and confirmed that yes, Alan and Kenny had indeed arrived in Montreal and were presumably on their way to gate C86, but of course they had customs to clear and security to go through so she couldn’t say how long it would take for them to get to the gate.  

Whew!  They were on the ground and currently being escorted to the gate.  What a relief!  “That’s fantastic!” I gushed.  “So the plane won’t be leaving without them?”  I thought that I was being rhetorical but perhaps not:  “Well…” she started ominously, “…that’s not my call.”  Oh, great.  There went the pit of my stomach.

With my confidence level reset once again to “faltering” I returned to my seat and gave up entirely on trying to concentrate on the crossword puzzle.  Instead I kept my eyes riveted on the steady surge of travellers that came down that hallway. 

I glanced at the clock and noted that if our flight had been on schedule our gate would have been closing in just ten minutes, but fortunately our plane hadn’t even started boarding yet.  I’ve been frustrated in the past to discover that if you arrive even a minute after the gate closes they will not allow you onto the plane, no matter how reasonable (or angry) you get.  

And still there was no sign of them.

An extra twist in the plot was my inexplicable inability to get online as I sat there.  The airport wifi was loading up just fine but it would only give me a blank screen.  I couldn’t see a box where I could click to agree to their terms, hence no internet for me, which meant that there was no opportunity for me to connect with Alan through Messenger.  I wondered if the first thing out of his mouth would be, “Maybe you should get a cell phone.”

But then, how would that have helped, really?  Knowing is only half the battle.

In an effort to kill time I kept busy typing all of these paragraphs on my computer, hoping against hope that I’d look up between sentences and see them coming down the hall.  And then, just as the announcement came to start boarding our flight I saw two somewhat familiar-looking guys walking down the hallway.  Was it wishful thinking or…there was no wheelchair and they didn’t seem to be rushing…but…Aha!  Yes!  It was them!  

“How’s it going?!?!?!” I exclaimed when they arrived at my seat.

“Good.”

“Good.”  They sat down on the bench beside me.

It was a reunion for the ages.  I still get goosebumps.

I was glad to see that Al had forgone the wheelchair escort.  I was worried that his new knee was going to hobble him considerably during our romp through New Orleans and I was pleased that he was looking rather mobile.  

“I was thinking that rather than taking a taxi to our hotel once we land in New Orleans maybe we should take the bus instead,” I started, ready to list my rationale.

“Okay.”

“Sounds good.”  

That was easy.  Too easy, so I listed off my rationale anyway.  “Y’see, we’ll have lots of time to kill before we can check in and the bus will be a nice little ride into the city, I always take the bus from the airport.  It will drop us super-close to our hotel and we’ll save enough money on the cab to buy ourselves lunch, at least…”

“Okay.”

“Sure.”

The plane ended up leaving about a half hour late.  Alan boarded first and looked very comfortable up there in Business Class when Ken and I walked past him on our way to our proletarian seats in the back.  Just like my flight from St. John’s the night before there were no video screens on the plane, but it occurred to me that the flight offered a selection of movies that I could watch on my computer.  I got a solid forty minutes into the Barbie movie before my computer ran out of power.  Ah well.

Of course we landed late – at 11:35 instead of 11am – but no matter; the moment we walked out of the terminal our bus pulled up.  Like, immediately, as if we had ordered it.  I’d arrived armed with several rolls of American coins so I had each of our fares ready, just $1.25 each.  I paid mostly in nickels.

And just like I’d promised, it was a nice ride through the city.  The bus mostly stuck to the highway so the ride was fast but it got more interesting once we got onto the streets in the city centre.

“Hey look, there’s the Superdome!”  

Also just like I’d promised it was a quick, easy walk to the Jung Hotel from the final bus stop, despite having to drag our carry-ons behind us.  We were halfway there when Al turned around on a dime and without a word started walking back from the way we came.  What the?!?  He backtracked half a block and picked up his windbreaker, which unbeknownst to any of us had somehow fallen onto the sidewalk when we’d crossed the street.

Exactly an hour after our plane had landed we stepped into the Jung Hotel, and I was impressed the moment we entered the lobby.  I had stayed in quite a few New Orleans timeshare properties and let me tell you, the level of accommodations can vary to the extreme.  But at the Jung Hotel the marble floors, the ultra-high ceilings, the uniformed doormen posted at their podium between the large double doors…all of it pointed towards quality.  And as I approached the check-in desk I found all of this classic upscale hospitality personified in the beaming, welcoming smile of the very same woman who had allayed my reservation fears a day earlier.  I recognized her charm right away.

Though it was barely 12:30 the friendly lady managed to find two rooms up on the 7th floor that were ready, so we checked in right away.  I went up to my room, dropped my bags and walked exactly one hundred steps (yes, I counted them) to Kenny and Alan’s room.  Their room was essentially the mirror image of mine, both with large bathrooms and small but functional kitchens, although my room featured a larger sitting area as it only had one bed.

By 1pm the three of us were out on the sidewalk, soaking up the unseasonably warm 25+ degree weather as we walked down Canal Street towards the world-famous French Quarter.  Though we took a stroll down the first half of Bourbon Street and I managed to point out a couple of my favourite New Orleans landmarks, our main focus was finding a place to eat.  

I led our trio almost all the way to the end of the Quarter and turned us up Chartres Street.  I had once spent a week on this block at an old hotel called The Quarter House and there was a good, reasonably priced 24-hour restaurant just a couple of doors down.  Now, what was that place called?  No matter, I figured I’d recognize it when I saw it (and I was correct). 

However, before I saw it I saw Jimani, a completely different restaurant that was also a few doors down from the Quarter House, but in the opposite direction.  This was unfortunate because Jimani was of much lesser quality than the place I was intending to take the guys to.  However, I was looking for a restaurant that I recognized but couldn’t remember the name of and Jimani fit the bill perfectly, so my brain assumed that we were at the right place.

As soon as we sat ourselves down and started looking at the menu I was pretty sure that we were actually in the wrong place, but they had food and an energetic bartender and I was hungry and eager for a drink so it was plenty good enough for me.  I said nothing to the other guys about the mistake and ordered my inaugural drink.

And while the food wasn’t anything special this is New Orleans, so Kenny ordered himself his first-ever roast beef po’ boy sandwich and I ordered a cheeseburger with peanut butter on it.  Alan had recently started a new diet so he ate a few of my fries and had a glass of water and that was it.  The food wasn’t going to win any awards, but we needed something in our bellies (at least Kenny and I did), and it felt good to sit down somewhere in the French Quarter and just be there.

(When we left the restaurant I noticed a sign for Daisy Dukes just up the street.  Oh right, that was the good, reasonably-priced 24-hour place that I had been looking for.  And like I said earlier, I recognized it the moment I saw it.  Too bad I didn’t see it before I saw Jimani.)

After lunch I walked us down to Rouses Market, a small but well-stocked old-timey grocery store on the corner of St. Peter and Royal.  Sure, New Orleans has tons of great restaurants and an amazing variety of food, but our rooms came with kitchens and we’d save a fair pile of money if we made ourselves a meal here and there.  I always stock up at Rouses when I stay in New Orleans.  As an added bonus, the street corner just outside of Rouses’ front door is a popular spot for bands to set up and play for tips, and there was one playing when we got there.  

Kenny and I left Alan outside to watch the band while we went in to scour for snacks.  I grabbed some cold cuts and a bag of onion buns along with a pack of cheese slices, a jar of mayonnaise, and a large bottle of water.  Kenny followed suit, loading exactly the same items into his basket.  I topped up my cart with a few bags of chips, a dozen beer and a 2L bottle of Coke to mix with the 40oz bottle of Jack Daniel’s I’d purchased at duty-free in Montreal that morning.

Back out on the street we stood with Al and watched the band for a song or two.  There was a drummer, a bass player, a guy playing an upright piano that was jacked up onto a four-wheeled dolly, and a girl who split her time between a xylophone and a trombone.  They were quite good – especially when that girl picked up the trombone; she was awesome – and they were loud.  New Orleans bands are always loud.  I guess it comes from playing outside in the streets all the time.  

We decided to head back to the hotel and settle in.  By the time we’d walked up to Canal Street Alan’s knee was starting to hold him back so I sat him and Kenny down on the corner and dashed off to buy some transit passes.

When I was planning this vacation I had looked into week-long transit passes that would give us unlimited access to busses, ferries and most importantly the streetcars for the duration of our trip, and it looked like it was a pretty good idea for the three of us.  Plus I liked that the transit passes were called “Jazzy Passes”.  Frugal that I am, it killed me that we couldn’t buy our Jazzy Passes at the airport that morning before we’d paid the bus fare to get into the city, but the New Orleans Rapid Transit Authority website told me that the tickets could only be purchased from three locations: 1) the RTA office, which was a half-dozen blocks from our hotel, 2) through an automated machine that was on the corner of Canal Street and Bourbon Street, and 3) at a Walgreens drugstore that was suspiciously close to that automated machine at the corner of Canal and Bourbon.

Well, it turns out that there was no longer an RTA Jazzy Pass machine on the corner of Canal and Bourbon, and the Walgreens on the nearby corner was completely sold out of passes.  But wait…there was another Walgreens directly across the street, which placed it technically on the same corner!  (Walgreens are everywhere in the US.  You’d think they were Tim Horton’s or something.)  

I crossed over and whattya know, it further turns out that all the Walgreens locations in New Orleans sell Jazzy Passes, and while this one was also out of seven-day passes they did have three-day passes priced at just $8 each (a seven-day Jazzy Pass is an even better deal at $15).  I bought a trio of three-day passes and ran back to where Alan and Kenny were waiting with our groceries.

Just a minute or two later one of the city’s famous streetcars pulled around the corner.  We got on and scanned our shiny-new Jazzy Passes, riding a half-dozen stops back to the Jung Hotel.  I grabbed a beer from my room and Ken and I went up to check out the rooftop pool while Alan laid down to rest his knee.  

Though the weather was nice it was still a little too chilly for any actual swimming.  The hotel had a nice area up there though.  The pool was surrounded by a big party patio rife with lounge chairs and tiki bars, but at this particular moment it was all but completely barren.  Aside from the two of us there were only two other people up there.  We sat down on a pair of deckchairs, I finished off my beer, and five minutes later we were back downstairs heading to our respective rooms.  And there went the entirety of our pool experience for the week.

When 5pm rolled around the three of us went out together to find someplace to eat supper.  We didn’t know where we were heading so we didn’t bother with the streetcar, opting instead to meander slowly down Canal Street and see what we could find near-ish the hotel.  We passed a Chinese restaurant and a café and kept walking.  The Jung was just a block or two from the city’s small Theatre District so we soon walked by the ornately grand Saenger Theatre and a movie house-turned-concert venue directly across the street called the Joy Theatre.

“I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart…” Kenny sang as we passed it.  It was an old Sunday school rhyme that I only knew from an episode of The Simpsons, but I think for Kenny it was more ingrained.  “Down in my heart!  Down in my heart!”  

I thought it was pretty funny.

We didn’t end up going too far, opting for a seafood place called Snappers on the nearest edge of the Quarter.  Al ordered a bowl of gumbo for his first meal of the day while I went for one of my NOLA favourites: red beans and rice.  Kenny ordered a New Orleans Sampler Trio that came with small cups of both the gumbo and the red beans and rice, plus some crawfish étouffée.  It was all pretty good too.

After supper we walked up and down Bourbon Street, which was already quite lively even though it was only about 6:30pm.  But aside from a couple of walking beers that I bought at a sidewalk stand there would be no Bourbon Street partying for us.  Taking into account our ridiculously early flights as well as losing an hour because of the time zone the day had gotten awfully long in a hurry, so we were soon on our way back to the hotel.  

We weren’t quite used to the streetcar stops yet so we accidentally got off a block too soon.  That put us walking back through the Theatre District and Ken sang his little song once again.  “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart!  Down in my heart!”

“Down in my heart!” I jumped in, joining him.  I still thought it was pretty funny.  This would change.

So there we were, back at our hotel and in for the night at 7pm on a Saturday in New Orleans.  Spot the party animals, huh?  I dragged my bottle of Jack Daniel’s to their room and put a dent in it while we half-watched one of the newer 007 movies on their television.  Al was under the covers by 8pm and sawing logs soon after.  Me and my buddy Jack bid Ken goodnight around 9pm and went back to my room.

I know we sound super-lame, but there was that jet-lag that I mentioned earlier, plus the time zone shift, and we had a big day coming and and and…Oh, what am I saying?  We’re old and yes, we’re lame.  So be it.

121023 GAME DAY!

I woke up, oh I don’t know, around 4:15 or so?  When I finally dared to glance at the clock it was 4:45am.  I spent the next seventy-five minutes trying unsuccessfully to get back to sleep before giving up at 6am.  I climbed out of bed, went down to the exercise room for a half-hour, came back to the room and had a shower, and then I unpacked my suitcase.  By 7:30 I was down in the hotel coffeeshop twiddling my thumbs and wondering if it was too early to knock on Kenny and Alan’s door.

I won’t say that the NFL game between the Saints and the Carolina Panthers was the reason why we were in New Orleans, but it was probably about 90% of the reason why Kenny had joined us (visiting Johnny’s Po-Boys in the French Quarter would account for the other 10%).  

Kenny has three tattoos on his body.  He started with the logo for the LA Kings to commemorate their 2012 Stanley Cup win, and he soon followed it up with the logo for the Kansas City Royals as well as the logo for – you guessed it – the New Orleans Saints, which is inked big and bold on the back of his calf.  He’s not into soccer or cricket or anything so I suspect those three tattoos will be it for him.  So yeah, Ken is a pretty big Saints fan.

Strange that a sports-minded kid from Moncton would grow up with favourite teams from such far-flung places as Los Angeles, Kansas City, and New Orleans.  I asked Kenny how he came to be a fan of three seemingly-random teams and strangely, it all sprouted from a board game he and his friends used to play back when they were ten or eleven years old.  The game required each player to select a hockey team and Kenny just happened to pick the Kings.  He and his friends played the game so much that they started keeping track of their results and turned it into an entire season.  Then they played the same game – except this time it was focussed on baseball – and Ken picked the Royals.  Finally they turned the game into a season of football too, with young Kenny randomly picking the Saints as his team.

And now here we were in New Orleans and the game was just a couple of hours away.

Kenny had never been to a live NFL game before (neither had Alan; this would be my second) and of course he had never been inside the gargantuan Caesars Superdome before either.  He wanted to go inside plenty early so we could walk around the stadium and get some lunch from one of the food kiosks inside and Alan and I were both in full agreement. 

By the time I finished my second coffee I figured the guys would definitely be awake so I went upstairs.  Not only was I right, they had clearly been up for some time, both of them sitting on their beds watching CNN, dressed and ready to go.  I went to my room and made a couple of ham and cheese onion bun sandwiches for a quick breakfast and grabbed four frosty hi-test IPA beers from my fridge.  It was probably around 9:30 or so when we left our hotel for the extremely short walk to the massive venue (I’m talking 900m or so…our hotel was so close that I still had three beers left when we got there).

There is a large courtyard outside of the Superdome called Champions Square and it is cordoned off on game days for the official Saints pre-game tailgate party.  As a matter of fact, to get into Champions Square on game day one must get their ticket scanned, and once you’re in the courtyard you’re in the game; there are no ticket-takers at the entrances to the actual stadium itself.  

Champions Square has a big stage on one end that is flanked by rows of food stands offering a myriad of choices.  There were a whole lot of beer and liquor stands too.  One might expect that this meant that there was a myriad of drink options available in Champions Square but alas, every one of the beer stands offered up the same mediocre choices: seven barely-different king cans of watered-down big-name beer brands with nary a tasty IPA in sight.  All of the liquor stands were likewise offering up the same narrow choice of a handful of outrageously-priced adult sippy-drinks.

If, however, one predicted that the presence of all those bars meant that no outside alcohol would be allowed into Champions Square (not even frosty hi-test IPA beers), well, you would be right about that.  And since there was little fun to be had on the sidewalk just outside the huge party that was brewing in Champions Square, I shrugged and drank my three remaining beers with an expediency that would put a failing college student to shame.  I mean I’m in my mid-fifties and I pounded those beers like a parched gerbil sucking on a water tube.

But then, I’m a semi-professional.

With all of our contraband safely hidden away inside my swelling belly, we got our tickets scanned and walked through the gate.  We gravitated towards the stage and joined a somewhat sparse crowd that was lackadaisically watching a fairly good band up there.  Every couple of songs a gaggle of jumping, smiling young people would run out from the wings pulling along a t-shirt machine gun cannon that they pointed directly at us.  Oh how I jumped and dove for those t-shirts, my beer belly nearly foaming over with every leap.  I was having a pretty good time but one near-miss had me half-landing on a girl who was standing behind me and by the looks of her you’d think I’d severed her leg.  I apologized (twice) but it did no good so I shrugged (once) and turned my attention back to the t-shirt Tommy-gun.  I was hoping to get a shirt for Kenny but alas, when we finally walked away we walked away empty-handed.

We explored the grounds and sat ourselves down on a stone staircase at the foot of a statue of former Saints owner Tom Benson.  “I’ve seen this statue on TV a bunch of times,” Kenny said, clearly thrilled to be taking it all in.  I was disappointed that it wasn’t warm enough for him to be wearing shorts so he could show off his Saints tattoo; I’m sure the hi-fives would have rained down on him.  (Heck, maybe someone would’ve bought him a beer, which he no doubt would have handed off to me.)    

But like I say, he seemed really happy to be sitting on those steps basking in the experience.  I, in turn, was relishing in his exhilaration.

Soon enough we decided to go inside so after a quick cruise past the smattering of booths, installations, and statues that were on the upper mezzanine level we picked one of the wide-open entrances and walked right into the stadium.

Our first view inside the Superdome was from just behind the priciest tickets in the room – the 100 levels – and we stopped for a quick peek.  This would be the closest by far that we would get to the field all afternoon, and while we gaped at the beehive of activity that was already starting up on the huge playing field, the overhang from the seats above the section kept us from appreciating the sheer vastness of the enormous dome.     

While Kenny posed in front of a Saints logo I grabbed myself a quick walking beer from one of the many conveniently-place beer vendors and on we went, exploring several levels of concrete corridors throughout the enormous building.  Before long we found the end of the long, lucrative line of people queued up to get inside the huge merchandise shop and joined it.

The line moved pretty quickly and man, when we got inside we found the place packed!  The Saints store was a big room with a huge range of products for sale and we looked at every single thing in there.  There must have been at least twenty different jersey designs with prices going as high as $300+ each.  Kenny picked out a really cool one priced at $140 and I bought a $14 pint glass for m’lady.  Such was the extent of our purchases.

How Kenny kept himself from buying every damn thing in the store is beyond me.  Okay, not really; you stick an NFL™ logo on something and it gets pretty bloody expensive in a hurry.  But they sure had a lot of cool stuff in there, especially for a Saints fan like Ken.

With our new merch in our hands, up up up we went, escalator after escalator until we finally reached the 600 level.  Before we got to our seats Al and Ken stopped at a nondescript food kiosk where they both picked up a burger and fries to go.  I decided to continue with my diet of sloshy barley sandwiches and got nothing.

When we emerged from the tunnel into section 616 we were finally smacked with the enormity of the space we were in.  The Superdome holds 125 million cubic feet of air (wiki says “square feet” but it must be cubic feet, right?); I mean it is a big room.  It looks like you could park the USS Enterprise inside it and not even touch the walls.  We took our seats in the thirteenth row and wondered at the spectacle before us. 

The place is really quite staggering.  It was made from 20,000 tons of steel, with 9,000 tons of air conditioning to cool the inside and 400,000 square feet of aluminum panels on the outside, along with 26,000 LED lights.  It is more than a kilometre to walk around the place.  And most conspicuous of all, the dome’s two high-definition bigscreens that hang over each end zone are the longest display boards in the NFL, each one measuring in at 37’ x 351’.

That’s right: the bigscreens are each just nine feet shorter than an entire football field.

273 feet above the field hangs the largest fixed dome roof in the world, a suspended ceiling with a total area of just under ten acres.  Yeah, the roof itself is almost ten acres big.  For Saints games the venue can seat over seventy-three thousand people, so if the entire population of Moncton walked through the door almost everybody would be able to sit down, and the ones left standing would have plenty of elbow room.

Our early entry meant that not many of the seats were taken when we sat down, and the stands only grew to be about two-thirds full by the time the Saints came marching onto the field amid blazing fireworks during the pregame show.  

When the home team kicked the ball to the Carolina Panthers to start the game Ken had already finished his food and Alan had given me all but the first two bites of his burger, claiming it just wasn’t agreeing with him.  By the time the Saints opened the scoring with a touchdown at the top of the second quarter I was several beers in and we were all riding high on what was shaping up to be a rather one-sided game that was slanted our way.  

By halftime the score was 14-3 for the Saints.  During the break we were treated to a nifty performance featuring two full marching bands playing simultaneously and when the game resumed it stayed tilted towards the Saints.  Ken spent much of the second half talking to the guy seated to his right, a local who gambled on sports for a living and who had been one of the many people unfurling an enormous American flag on the field during the pregame show (his wife volunteers for something or other).  The dude hit his over/under during the fourth quarter and hi-fives were exchanged all-around.

Carolina kept things somewhat interesting with a third-quarter drive all the way to the Saints’ one yard line, although the home team kept them to just a field goal (which marked the only points scored by either team in the quarter).  But really, the game was never truly in doubt as the Saints handed the last-place Panthers their sixth loss in a row with a final score of 28-6.

But just because the game wasn’t very exciting doesn’t mean I wasn’t excited.  I leapt out of my seat with every touchdown, even the last one that didn’t really matter.  There were several memorable moments throughout the game too, starting with a first-quarter field goal miss by the Saints from only twenty yards out (it wasn’t even close) and a blocked punt that the Saints defence picked up and ran back for the second touchdown of the game.  The Panthers missed a field goal too, one that would have put them within five points in the fourth quarter.

So it was almost an exciting game.  But no matter, the three of us had a ball.

After the game we walked with the crowd headed towards Canal Street until we reached our hotel.  I went to my room to grab my Jack Daniel’s and Coke and raced over to Al and Ken’s room, where we tuned into the sports channel and watched more football, including (especially) highlights from the game we had just attended, which was pretty darn cool.

When suppertime came we made the easy decision to play it safe and grab some takeout from the nearest Popeye’s.  Sure, it’s fast food, but it’s Louisiana fast food in Louisiana*, so there’s gotta be a hint of authenticity in there somewhere.  Regardless, we walked to a Popeye’s location on Canal Street in the Quarter.  We each ordered a sack of takeout, hopped a streetcar back to the hotel and returned to Al and Ken’s room, where we tore into our chicken and the final round of Sunday night NFL games with equal vigour.  

After dinner Kenny called home and we overheard him describing his day at the game using words such as “awesome” and “perfect” and phrases like “couldn’t have been any better”.  Mission: accomplished.

I was back in my room crawling into bed by 10pm, which was pretty admirable considering I had been awake since about 4am.  Plus there was that still-fresh ninety-minute time zone change.  And all the Jack Daniel’s I drank I suppose.  Oh, and all the beerses too.

That’s it though: There will be no more blaming the time zone change.

(I mentioned earlier that Kenny’s delayed decision to come to New Orleans led us to having an extra pair of tickets to the game.  Well, not only did we not sell them [an added expense that the three of us shared equally], it turns out that we could have picked up any number of tickets to the game for well under face value had we simply waited until we got to New Orleans.  

Ah well, now we know for next time.)

*In addition to having Popeye’s Louisiana chicken in Louisiana, I’ve had beef stroganoff in the Stroganoff Castle, Pad Thai in Thailand, key lime pie in the Florida Keys, French onion soup in France, Swedish meatballs in Sweden, I’ve eaten at St. Hubert’s in Saint-Hubert, Quebec and I’ve stayed at the Hampton Inn in Hampton, Virginia.

It’s kind of a hobby.

121123 The Quarter, the Market, and the Maple Leaf

Though I’d gone to bed pretty early, waking up at 4am again was still pretty ridiculous.  This time I managed to lay there until considerably after 6am.  When I did finally get out of bed I pulled back the curtains and was surprised to see that the sun was already up.  I went down to the exercise room then back to the room for a shower, and I was relaxing downstairs in the Daily Grind coffeeshop shortly after they opened for business at seven o’clock.  

Once again I paid for my $4.13 coffee entirely in change, a by-product of my coin collecting hobby.  Y’see, every once in a while I withdraw a whack of coin rolls from my bank and I sift through them looking for old silver and other rarities.  I don’t come across much of either but I do collect a heck of a lot of American coinage along the way, money that in theory is worth 40% more than the Canadian currency I had exchanged for it.  But since Canadian banks don’t accept US coins at US currency rates I make a habit of bringing the coins with me whenever I travel to the States.  As a result I’m forever paying for things in change when I’m in the US.  But I got used to that back when I was in university, when I used to go busking outside of my local liquor store every afternoon.  In those days I used coins to pay for everything.

(The proliferation of self-checkout machines has made all of this much easier, and significantly less embarrassing.  Nowadays I can shamelessly spend five minutes pumping nickels and pennies into one of the self-service machines at a Walgreens to pay for my snacks and mix.)

So there I sat, sipping my morning java and typing on my computer, but mostly I was wondering what the three of us were going to do with ourselves for the day.  It was nice and sunny out and my computer told me that there was 0% chance of rain, though with a forecast high of just eleven degrees it was going to be a far cry from the beautiful weather that we met when we had arrived in New Orleans.  Regardless, it looked like it might be a good day to just wander around our area and see what we could see.

When enough time had passed that I knew I wouldn’t be waking anyone up I went upstairs and knocked on Ken and Al’s door.  I was right, and before long we were out on the sidewalk seeing what we could see.  

Which started with a pair of fighter jets roaring overhead as we waited for the streetcar, obviously on exercises from the nearby Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base.  We would see jets flying over the city several more times throughout the morning, and every time I stopped and gaped.  They are such incredible, monstrous machines.

The streetcar came and we rode it a half-dozen stops to the eastern edge of the French Quarter.  We wanted to zig when the streetcar zagged so we disembarked and walked up North Peters Street past the big statue of Jean-Baptiste Bienville.  Kid brother of the dastardly French explorer/conqueror Pierre d’Iberville (who laid siege to almost the entirety of Newfoundland’s Avalon peninsula in the late 1600’s, including the town where I currently live), it was Pierre’s younger sibling Jean-Baptiste who, as colonial administrator of French Louisiana, first proposed this particular bend in the Mississippi River as a good place to build a capital city.  He ultimately founded New Orleans in the spring of 1718 and contracted an engineer to design what is now known as the French Quarter.  New Orleans did indeed become the capital of French Louisiana in 1723 and Bienville (who was born in Montreal) has been heralded as “the Father of New Orleans” ever since.

After we passed the monument North Peters merged and become Decatur Street, along which we continued just past Jackson Square to Cafe du Monde, where we checked off the first item from Kenny’s lengthy culinary wish list with three orders of the cafe’s world-famous beignets.

Cafe du Monde is unquestionably one of NOLA’s best-known institutions, and no wonder.  The open-air coffeeshop has been serving their signature fresh-from-the-oven doughnuts covered in mounds of icing sugar from this very spot since 1862.   (And when I say they put mounds of icing sugar of the beignets, I mean they put mounds of icing sugar on them.  Like, piles.)  In my experience there is almost always a lineup to be seated at Cafe du Monde but not this time; we walked right in and found an empty table bordering the lively sidewalk.

Did I mention that the doughnuts came with lots of icing sugar on top?  You would hardly believe it.  If they put a sprinkle on each doughnut I swear they put a cup or more; like, no kidding.  Honestly, ounce-by-ounce the sugar probably outweighed the doughnuts by a ratio of 4:1.  Just typing the words “Cafe du Monde” makes me feel like I still have sticky icing sugar cascading all down the front of my shirt.  Looking from table to table you’d think we were at the world’s most outrageous cocaine party.

And did I also mention that the sidewalk straddling our table was lively?  Well, would you believe that you wouldn’t believe it?  Of course there was the regular hustle and bustle you’d expect to see on one of the busiest tourist sidewalks in one of the biggest tourist destination in the United States, including human statues, fortune tellers, elaborate horse-drawn hansom cabs and local artists hanging their work just across the street on the fence that surrounds Jackson Square.  But in addition to all this there was also a full-on Dixieland jazz band setting up directly beside where we we were sitting, with a couple of drummers and trombone players, a sousaphone player, a clarinetist and a girl playing the banjo.  The moment our coffees and icing sugar (err…“beignets”) landed on the table the band started bleating out fun, sidewalk-dancing versions of songs like Maple Leaf Rag and When the Saints Go Marching In.  And all of it not six feet from our table.

And that was just breakfast.

After we brushed the sugar from our clothes we continued up Decatur to the French Market and meandered the curio stalls for an hour.  Kenny was the only one of us who bought something, picking out a carved wooden box to give to his wife.  

Veering back towards the Quarter we stopped into a Pepper Palace hot sauce shop and sampled a few of the hundreds of products they had on offer.  They had a display boasting “the world’s hottest horseradish” which is kept under lock and key (though sampling it no longer requires the signing of a waiver).  I tried some and my eyeballs nearly fell out. 

“Can I legally cross the border with this stuff,” I gasped, barely able to speak.

“Oh, we ship to Canada all the time.  We even have flat rates,” said the proprietor, jerking his thumb towards a sign that outlined their shipping details.

I tell you, I came this close to putting together an order to be sent home, but the image of fifteen-plus still-unopened bottles of hot sauce waiting in my pantry back home convinced me to resist, which is a decision I regret to this day.  Next time I’m going to ask them how much of the horseradish would constitute a lifetime supply and I’ll buy double that amount.  My gawd that was some good horseradish!

With tears welling in my eyes I led Al and Kenny back outside to continue our romp through the French Quarter.  We sat on a bench overlooking the Mississippi River and watched several mighty boats float by while a few more fighter jets roared overhead.  We went down Royal Street and toured through a few of the antique shops with their enormous $30,000 chandeliers and impossibly cool antique gaming tables, including clever folding poker tables and a beautiful teak foosball table with carved monkeys in place of the little soccer players.  

It turns out that Alan is a chronic plaque-reader (as am I), so the French Quarter kept him busy.  There are several plaques memorializing sites related to the slave trade, there’s one dedicated to ornithologist and painter John James Audubon and another that explains the origin of the word “Dixie” (taken from a French $10 bill, dix being the French word for “ten”), there’s a marker for the first-ever apartment building in America and one on the wall of the building that Tennessee Williams lived in when he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire.

Oh the plaques!  I almost got a toothache.

As we strolled, Kenny pointed out how nice the weather was, and he was right.  Though the temperature hovered at a cool 12-14 degrees it was so sunny with nary a speck of wind that we had to agree with him.  In our jeans and light jackets we were neither sweating nor shivering.  It was perfect.

I mentioned earlier that Ken had arrived in New Orleans with a culinary wish list.  Being a bit of a “foodie” Ken enjoys watching TV shows about food, and he always has.  When I was a kid I remember Kenny watching the Canadian cooking show Wok With Yan every day after school.  Nowadays there are a million shows that follow their hosts from restaurant to restaurant in different cities all over the continent, and of course with cajun and creole food culture being what it is in New Orleans these television shows end up filming in Crescent City quite a lot.  

Near the very top of Kenny’s list was a diner called Johnny’s Po-Boys that he saw featured on one of these programs.  One of several eateries in New Orleans that claim to be the originator of the po-boy sandwich, Johnny’s is on St. Louis Street right in the Quarter so that’s where we headed for lunch but alas, when we found the tiny hole-in-the-wall it was closed.  Turns out they are only open Thursdays-through-Sundays so we took a rain check and promised ourselves we’d go back.  

To keep the history going we had lunch at Original Pierre Maspero’s instead, a bar/restaurant at the corner of Chartres and St. Louis that was once a slave trading house.  Iron rings for holding slave chains remain embedded in the thick wooden beams overhead, while the wooden floors underfoot are darkened with centuries of blood, sweat and beers.    

It was 1:30pm when we sat down so it was a pretty late lunch.  Alan stuck with a light menu and ordered French onion soup (appropriate enough in the French Quarter I suppose).  Stinging from the shuttered doors at Johnny’s, Ken ordered himself a shrimp po-boy, while I went for a muffuletta.  I was stuffed to the gills when we finished, despite offering a quarter of my sandwich to Kenny so he could try the olive-heavy NOLA staple.  I’m not sure he liked it very much, but I sure did.  I enjoyed my muffuletta almost as much as I enjoyed the tall, frosty beer that I washed it down with.     

After lunch we decided to go back to the hotel for a rest, so we walked back up to Canal Street and caught a streetcar.  Along the way Ken and I jumped off and ran back to a sports apparel shop that he had noticed the day before.  In addition to wanting to check out their selection of Saints gear, Kenny was eager to find out if the jersey he’d bought at Sunday’s game was priced differently outside of the stadium.  And of course it was; he soon discovered the same jersey on the wall for $17 less than he paid for it.  He also found a nice reversible Saints jacket marked down 25% that I really thought he should buy.  “Think about it Ken, how many hours at work does it take for you to make $127?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, returning the coat to the sale rack.  He had completely misread my point, but then again, I have no idea how much he makes in an hour.  “Ah well,” I thought as we walked out the door empty-handed.  “There’s still time.”

Spoiler alert: he never bought it.

On our way to the Jung it was inevitable that we would once again be walking by the Joy Theatre, which meant that it was inevitable that Kenny was going to pipe in with his “I got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart…” song.  He sang it every time we walked past that theatre, and we walked by the theatre so often that the little ditty had already gone from “pretty funny” to “pretty annoying”.  But by now that was obviously the point.

Back at the hotel we retreated to our respective corners and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon.  As the clock neared 6pm we agreed that none of us were hungry enough for a proper meal so we made do with homemade ham and cheese onion buns before heading out to my favourite live music spot in all of New Orleans, the Maple Leaf Bar.

To get to the Maple Leaf meant taking the streetcar in earnest, but the journey was an attraction in itself.  It required taking one of the antique green cars along St. Charles Street – the oldest continuous streetcar route in the world – almost to the very end of the line, affording a splendid view of the many grandiose plantation-style homes that line both sides of the wide boulevard along the way.  It’s a stunning ride and one that every visitor to New Orleans should experience.

Unfortunately we had somehow managed to find ourselves on the slowest, oldest, and noisiest streetcar in the city, which detracted somewhat from the experience.  Plus it had already started to get dark outside, which hampered the view somewhat.  Still, it was pretty awesome seeing those beautiful old St. Charles Street houses all gussied up with holiday decorations and Christmas lights.

We got off at Oak Street and walked two blocks to the bar, where we had our tickets scanned (my treat) around twenty minutes past seven o’clock.  Luckily the 7pm show didn’t actually start until 8pm, so in addition to not being late I was on my second Dark ’n Stormy by the time George Porter Jr. hit the stage.

Since the mid-’60’s George Porter Jr. has been the bass player in one of America’s original funk groups, The Meters (later The Funky Meters).  He’s a fantastic musician who plays fantastic music and I go see him whenever I can.  Which is usually at the Maple Leaf Bar, where he almost always holds down the regular Monday night slot.

And though George seems happy for a regular opportunity to play on a three-foot stage in a two-room bar in front of a dozen hippies for a $15 cover charge rest assured: the man is a legend.  I have seen him play throughout North America and the Caribbean on a number of big stages and for some pretty hefty ticket prices too.  I’ve watched him share the stage with the likes of Dr. John and Bruce Springsteen and seen him play with guys like John Scofield, Charlie Hunter, and Art Neville but like I say, most of all I’ve seen him on a Monday night at the Maple Leaf Bar.  I make a point of going every time I’m in town.

Curiously, the very first time I was in the Maple Leaf (back when George was only charging $10 at the door) I was waiting to order my inaugural drink when I heard the guy next to me order a Dark ’n Stormy.  “What’s a Dark ’n Stormy?” I asked the barkeep when she got to me.  “It’s dark rum and ginger beer with a slice of lime,” she replied.

“Sounds good to me.”  I stuck with them the entire evening and to this day I’ve ordered nothing but Dark ’n Stormy’s anytime I’ve been to the Maple Leaf Bar. (Likewise, I’ve never had a Dark ’n Stormy anywhere but at the Maple Leaf Bar.  I’m big on traditions.)

When the show began it started as a trio, with George flanked by his keyboard player on one side and his drummer on the other.  The drummer was Terrence Houston, whom I had seen playing with Porter at the Maple Leaf before.  He floored me then and he was great again at this show, with George handing him solo after solo for the whole set.

After the first two songs the three were joined by a really good guitarist who alternated between a beautiful Gibson ES335 hollowbody and a nice boutique Suhr (you never see people playing Suhrs).  My gosh it was such a good show.  As many times as I’ve seen him I still can’t get over just how good of a bass player George Porter Jr. is.  He is quite simply one of the greatest funk players on Earth, and there we were gawking at him from just ten feet away.  Well, except my brother.  Shortly after the show began Al retreated to other room and sat out the show on a barstool, though he could certainly hear the music just fine from there and he could watch the musicians on a closed-circuit television screen that hung behind the bar too so in a way he didn’t miss anything.  In a way.  

But who am I to talk?  I spent a fair chunk of the set gabbing with strangers out back on the bar’s small patio, social butterfly that I am (especially at jammy-type live shows; these are my people).  I always like spending time meeting people out on the Maple Leaf patio and I met a couple of cool folks this time too.  

Back inside I chatted briefly with Al and ordered another D&S before rejoining Kenny in the main room for the end of the set.  After the last note had been played I thanked the musicians for a great show and then Kenny and I sidled up beside Alan at the bar.  The doorman offered us a half-price deal if we wanted to stick around for the band’s ten o’clock show, but there would be none of that for us.  If I was traveling alone I would’ve pulled out my wallet in a heartbeat (even though it used to be just $10 for both sets), but I didn’t even bother asking the guys.

“No thanks my man, we’ll be heading out after I finish this drink.”

The streetcar on the way back was the complete opposite of the one we had ridden to the bar.  I assumed it was new but I later found out that each one of the forty-six streetcars that runs on the St. Charles line is at least a hundred years old.  But this one must have had some upgrades; the thing was an absolute bullet.  It was fast, it was smooth, and best of all it was quiet.  As an added bonus, for the first three-quarters of the trip we didn’t hit a single red light and we only stopped once to pick up passengers.  The ride home took fifteen minutes.  Getting to the bar had taken forty-five.

Back in their room I poured myself a nightcap and watched football highlights with Kenny while Alan dozed off in bed, but I didn’t last very long.  I called it a night and slumped off to my own room when I caught myself starting to fall asleep around 11pm. 

Fair enough though, it had been a pretty long day.  

121223 Congo Square

Despite a prolonged bout of tossing and turning I managed to stay in bed until 7am.  So after exercising and showering I didn’t get downstairs to the coffeeshop until after eight o’clock.  When I paid for my coffee with $4.13 that I had pre-counted in nickels and dimes I added an apology, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m paying with coins again.”  

The girl replied to the contrary.  “No, this is great!  We’re really short on change lately, pennies and dimes especially.”  Then she said the magic words: “I’d take rolls of coins off your hands if you had them!”

She was kidding of course.  What tourist would have rolls of coinage upstairs in their luggage?

“Hang on,” I said, nearly breathless with excitement.  “I’ll be right back…”

Well, that’s not entirely true.  In truth I sat there for another forty-five minutes sipping my coffee, surfing the internet, and trying to maintain my cool.  When I felt enough time had gone by to not appear overly anxious I went up to my room and retrieved about $30 worth of rolled pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.  I rushed back downstairs and traded them all for real-live folding money.  I can’t tell you how excited I was to dump all of my change at once*!

Once again the weather was chilly, sunny, and quite pleasant when we set out for our morning romp down Canal Street (“I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy…”).  Our first stop was a small beignet place called Cafe Beignet.  Though not a famous landmark like Cafe du Monde, the place was still quite busy (as it always seems to be) but we lucked out and scored a table that was just being vacated.  

A few minutes before we scored the table we had been waiting in line to place our order when one of the employees squeezed behind his busy coworkers and started unfolding a ladder.  There was a signboard hanging on the back wall above the coffee machines and the young man was clearly tasked with changing it from the morning menu to the lunch menu.  I’m sure he does this every day (twice, probably) but it sure looked to me like this was his first time ever attempting the feat.

The kid climbed to the top of the ladder, stood on his tiptoes and stretched far…far…ever so much farther trying to reach the sign with a maneuver that appeared so completely gravity-defying that I was 100% convinced that he (and the sign, and the ladder, and everything) was going to teeter into the cisterns of bubbling water and hot coffee and the whole lot would then fall into the two cashiers who would both be thrust forward into and through the glass countertop sending cookies, pastries, and shards of glass flying like powdered shrapnel into the long line of waiting customers, of which we were a part.  

And I’m telling you, I was 100% sure on this happening.  How could it not?  I mean, even a basic knowledge of physics would tell you that this guy was going down any second.  And still he stretched further, reaching…reaching…and reaching some more.  I huddled behind the person in front of me and used them for cover as I scanned the line; surely someone would be recording this on their phone.

Yet somehow it never happened.  The guy managed to change the sign and descend from his perch of terror completely unharmed.  Impossible!  I can’t tell you if I wasn’t undisappointed or not.

As we sipped hot drinks and munched beignets Kenny said he’d like to check out the casino, which seemed a bit odd considering that he doesn’t gamble.  I had been to the New Orleans casino a couple of times before (with a running score of Harrah’s: 0, me: $400) and I knew it to be unremarkable in a Vegas sightseeing sense, but he still wanted to see it so we went.  It was just a block or two away after all, and it is housed inside the most prominent building on that edge of the French Quarter.

We sauntered through the almost-empty casino floor until we found a smattering of tables in the back.  Al started playing blackjack at a table with a $25 minimum (the lowest available) and though I really didn’t feel much like playing, after five minutes I sat down and joined him.  

I played three hands and won them all – including a split on a pair of aces – which put me $100 ahead.  Good enough for me; I stood up and cashed out, happy to notch my lifetime score against the casino up to $500-to-nothing.  By the time I got back from the cashier Al had stood up too; he was ahead $250.  Not bad for ten minutes at the tables, but that’s gamblin’.

Before we’d left the hotel that morning Alan had pre-booked us all scooter rentals for the next day.  Kenny and I were each supposed to give him $50 for our share but as we walked out of the casino Alan announced that it was now his treat; he would be paying for the scooters with his winnings.  Three cheers for Alan!

We found ourselves at a loss for something concrete to do so with a collective shrug of the shoulders we simply whipped out our transit passes and hopped on the streetcar for a nice daytime ride up pretty St. Charles Avenue.  

We rode the streetcar to the bend in the river where St. Charles becomes Carrollton Avenue, just a few stops shy of where you get off for the Maple Leaf Bar.  There’s a deli there at the bend in the road, Ken went inside and bought a few things.  By the time he was done another streetcar was coming the other way so we hopped on and rode right back down St. Charles, gaping through the windows once again at the amazing homes that we could barely make out during our evening rides along the same route the previous night.

When we got back up to Canal Street Alan continued on to the hotel while Ken and I jumped off the streetcar and went to Rouses Market to stock up on more buns and cold cuts (and mix).  Back in our rooms we made ourselves sandwiches for lunch and collectively put our feet up for a nice relaxing lounge.  

By mid-afternoon I detected that lounging around was threatening to overtake the day so I decided to set out for a stroll through Congo Square, something I make a point of doing every time I visit New Orleans.  I explained to Alan and Kenny where I was going and why, and I was quite surprised (and also quite pleased) that they both wanted to join me.

Oddly enough, back in the 18th century French and Spanish colonial era Africans enslaved in Louisiana were given Sundays off and the slaves spent their weekly reprieves gathering together to socialize, which allowed them the rare opportunity to speak their native languages with one another and play their own traditional music, both activities that were otherwise banned.

These congregations of slaves began to unnerve the white citizens so in 1817 the mayor of New Orleans passed a decree restricting the weekly gatherings to one particular location: a patch of land on the outskirts of the French Quarter.  The area soon became known as Congo Square.

Nobody knows precisely where Congo Square began and ended, but it was certainly located somewhere within what is now Louis Armstrong Park, which borders the western edge of the French Quarter along North Rampart Street just a kilometre from our hotel.  On our way to the park we stopped to read the historical panels that decorate the outside of the wonderfully ornate Saenger Theatre, which dates back to 1927.

The 4,000-seat theatre took three years to build at a cost of $2.5 million in 1927 dollars, which as we stood there reading the panels was the equivalent to about $45 million.  They did it up right too.  The inside of the venue was designed to suggest an old Italian courtyard, with wholly unnecessary Roman statues lining the upper tier of the vast room and a ceiling outfitted with hundreds of lights that sparkle like a starry night.  I’ve been inside the theatre a few times and the place is absolutely beautiful.  

When it first opened a 65¢ ticket got you the best seat in the house for an evening’s entertainment, which included a silent movie, a live-action play, and a performance featuring the Saenger Grand Orchestra.  They obviously did pretty well; just two years after it opened Julian Saenger sold the place to Paramount for ten million bucks.  Good investment for Julian; not so much for Paramount.  

As the years went by the venue was converted into two smaller theatres.  Television had taken hold of America and like most movie palaces the Saenger went into decline.  In 1978 it was sold to an investor for just a million dollars.  That guy sunk a few million more into it and in 1980 the reinvigorated theatre reopened with a gala performance hosted by no less than Johnny Carson.  Heck, this is where Styx recorded their live album Caught in the Act.

Then Hurricane Katrina came and the Saenger, like much of the great city of New Orleans, was hit with extreme flooding.  The water line rose a foot above stage level, with the basement, the orchestra pit, and much of the floor-level seating area completely submerged.  Of course everyone has heard about the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina but gaping at oversized pictures of the damage as we stood on a sidewalk that had been several feet underwater made it easier to appreciate just how devastating Katrina was.  

But just like the rest of this incredible city, the Saenger Theatre dug in their heels and rebuilt.  They are a resilient bunch, these New Orleanians**.

Continuing past the theatre we soon arrived at the edge of Louis Armstrong Park.  The spot where we entered is the corner of the park that is attributed to being Congo Square.  We immediately came to a plaque saying so, one of two markers in the park that are dedicated to the area’s African history.

“I get that this is where the slaves gathered every Sunday, but why is it such a big deal to you?” my brother asked me.

“Because,” I began, “Congo Square is the birthplace of popular music.”  I paused for effect, which didn’t seem to work.  “To me and to music lovers worldwide, this is hallowed ground.”

“How is that?”

I was glad he asked.  “This was one of the only places in North America where slaves were legally allowed to congregate, and every Sunday this place was alive with music,” I explained.  “And this was African music.  It was totally different from the music that was going on in North America at the time.  It was very rhythmic – it was dance music – and it used a very particular scale, which we call the pentatonic minor mode.

“When they were working on the plantations,” I continued, “the slaves weren’t allowed to sing or play their own music.  It was actually against the law, if you can believe that.  But here in Congo Square they were allowed to make their own traditional tribal music, and like I say, their music was entirely unlike anything the white people were used to hearing.”

All of this is actually a central theme in the Blues In The Schools performance that my buddy Doug and I present to thousands of K-6 kids in schools in and around Ottawa every February, so I have the speech pretty much down.

“Even back then New Orleans was a hotbed of music.  The white musicians that were busy gigging throughout the French Quarter started to take notice of the music that was being played in Congo Square every weekend, and eventually those tribal beats and that unique African scale started to seep into the three-chord music that was favoured in the drinking parlours and brothels.

“This resulted in music with a driving rhythm and a tonality that superimposed a minor scale over the parallel major key.  In layman’s terms: this was the creation of The Blues, and it spread like a smouldering wildfire.

“This new blues sound was so prevalent that it soon branched off in one direction to become jazz and in another to become country music.  And then – to quote the great Muddy Waters – “The blues had a baby and they called it Rock & Roll”, though I’d argue that rock and the blues are more like siblings.  Twins even, though probably fraternal.  

“And rock and roll begat soul, which begat funk, which begat hard rock, which begat heavy metal, which begat grunge, which begat hip-hop, which begat rap, which begat techno, which begat whatever will be next along the line and everything that I forgot to mention along the way.  

“As a matter of fact,” I concluded, “the only music that wasn’t influenced by the weekly gatherings here in Congo Square are the styles that already existed before the Congo Square meetings began.  Namely, Western ‘classical’ styles of music as well as a myriad of traditional folk styles and traditions.

“And so,” okay, now I was concluding, “because I am both a musician and a music lover, this…[I swept my arms at the small, mostly nondescript park]…is hallowed ground to me.

“In short: this is my Mecca.”  And it is.

There.  This time I really was finished.  By now we’d migrated to the other Congo Square monument, a larger-than-life high-relief bronze casting by Adewalk Adenle called The Spirit of Congo Square.  It depicts slaves singing, dancing, and playing music with drums and a banjo.  (Although the banjo tends to stir up connotations of pure Americana, the instrument’s origins can indeed be traced back to the African continent.)  As Alan and Kenny read the attached panel I turned away, bowed my head and observed a moment of reverential silence.  It is the very least I can offer.

The rest of Louis Armstrong Park park is given over to greenspace that fronts the Mahalia Jackson Theater, including a manmade canal that is spanned by a number of picturesque wooden footbridges.  There is, of course, a statue of Louis Armstrong and another of gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, but the most engaging is a statue dedicated to the New Orleans jazz pioneer that inspired a young Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden.  Buddy died in 1931 without having recorded a note, but legend tells us that he was not only one of the greatest early jazz trumpeters, but that he was also the loudest.  The sculptor had captured this essence by giving his bronze Buddy Bolden three heads and four trumpets.  It gives Buddy a distinct Beasts of the Apocalypse vibe, but in a good way.  

Leaving the park through the main entrance, we crossed North Rampart Street to Dumaine Street which we followed straight through the heart of the French Quarter.  We weren’t in a rush but we didn’t dally either, with our ultimate destination being Mother’s Restaurant on the corner of Poydras and Tchoupitoulas, another one of my NOLA mainstays.

Mother’s has been serving up hearty New Orleans vittles cafeteria-style since 1938.  The walls inside are covered with 8”x10” glossies signed by appreciative customers like Toby Keith and Steve Martin and the menu is covered with mouth-watering New Orleans staples like jambalaya and crawfish étouffée.  We walked up to the cash register and perused the menu and whattya know, all three of us ordered the same thing: the baked ham dinner.  Mother’s is well-known, and they are mostly known for their baked ham.  We took a seat at one of many empty tables and waited for our food to be delivered on plastic trays.  Mother’s ain’t fancy, but it’s good.

Ken ordered his ham cooked regular, with turnip greens, cabbage, and was it potato salad on the side?  Al and I both ordered our ham cooked “black”.  He got his with green beans, fries, and potato salad on the side while I selected green beans, turnip greens, and red beans and rice for my sides (given the option I always find myself ordering red beans and rice).  

Now, was it the greatest food in the world?  No.  But it was among the goodest food in the world, and I can promise you that the three of us were filled to the gills when we waddled out of the place.  We were so full (and weary from our ramble through the Quarter) that when we got back to the hotel after dinner and flopped in front of Al and Ken’s television set we couldn’t even muster the energy to change the channel for the rest of the evening.

It was all I could do to keep getting up to pour myself another Jack and Coke, but I somehow managed.

*After the trip I was back home unpacking my suitcase when I found a roll of dimes that I had missed.  I was mortified.  I won’t say that the shock and disappointment almost killed me, but the shock and disappointment almost killed me.  All the more reason to go back to New Orleans I suppose.

**I much prefer the term “New Orleaners” but I looked it up, and the correct term is “New Orleanians”.  Those New Orleaners seemed to have done a lot of things right, but if you ask me they got that one wrong.

121323 Biking the Parks and Walking the Streets

As tuckered as I was the night before I still woke up well before 5am.  It took me a good ninety minutes to force myself back to sleep but I did, finally drifting off and staying that way until 9:45am.  Gym>shower>coffee in the lobby and I was knocking on Kenny and Alan’s door by eleven o’clock.  

Our day had a plan and we soon set it in motion.  We hopped a streetcar to the casino and started on foot towards the bike rental shop.  I was pretty sure that we were headed to the same place that I had rented from before so I refused to back down when Al’s phone-y GPS direction voice tried to take us the wrong way.  Unbeknownst to us the GPS was set to “drive” mode, and because of all the one-way streets it was trying to lead us around all four sides of the block.  The three of us were, however, set to “walk” mode, and when I convinced our party to give up on the GPS instructions we quickly discovered that our destination was just a few doors down from where we had been standing.

The friendly guy in the bike shop set us up with e-bikes and helmets and had us on our way in a jiffy.  The bikes were very similar to a ’70’-era moped, something all three of us had experience with.  We started down Magazine Street and quickly got a feel for them.  They were intuitive and really easy to ride, and they were slick too!  It was at least five minutes before I realized that the electric motor kicked in automatically every time I used the pedals.  And here I’d thought that it was just my own big strong leg muscles from all those mornings on the exercise bike!  I figured out how to adjust the amount of automatic power-assist and I notched things back a bit so I could feel like I was getting at least a little bit of exercise.

When we paused at the side of the road to regroup the first words out of Alan’s mouth were “I’m buying one of these next summer,” so clearly he was enjoying it too.  As for Ken, he used our little break to make an admission: “This is the first time I’ve ridden a bike since I was fourteen years old.”  If he was any indication then it’s true that you never forget how.

I suggested a quick itinerary and we set off with me leading the way.  I took us on a side street that was almost completely free of traffic and we coasted along nice and easy to Lafayette Cemetery No. 1.

Now I may have a more-than-pedestrian interest in gravesites and cemeteries, but in NOLA it’s not just me: visiting one of New Orleans’ several cemeteries is probably the number one tourist attraction in the city, and with good reason too.  New Orleans cemeteries aren’t your garden-variety graveyards with oval headstones topping 4’ x 6’ patches of manicured lawn.  No sir.  New Orleans was built on swampy quicksand so burying the dearly departed is all but impossible.  Instead, corpses are interred in tightly-packed tombs and crypts that are very much above ground.  

The monuments can get quite elaborate as well, and no wonder.  New Orleans has always gone out of its way to celebrate the dead, having embraced voodoo since the city was first established and observing the Day of the Dead on November 1st for as long as anyone can remember.  It’s no surprise that they do graveyards well.

But Ken and Al would mostly have to take my word for it because when we arrived at Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 we found the iron gates on all four sides of the graveyard locked up tight.  I was shocked, and more than a little disappointed.  I had never seen the cemetery closed before.  I was quite sure that they shuttered them at night but I’d visited this very same cemetery many times before and never had I seen the gates chained up during the daytime. 

Chained as they were, we could easily see rows and rows of elaborate crypts through the gate’s iron bars, so at least Kenny and Alan were afforded a good taste of what we were missing.

Moving on, I detoured us down Napoleon Avenue to Tipitina’s so I could run an errand.  Ostensibly founded by fans of legendary New Orleans musician Professor Longhair in order to give him a venue to regularly play in, the bar is currently owned by NOLA’s premier jamband Galactic.  Tipitina’s is a great music venue but unfortunately none of the acts that were playing there during our time in town interested me in the slightest.  However, while I was checking out their show listings online I had noticed a t-shirt that I wanted to get m’lady for Christmas.  Although the bar wasn’t open during daylight hours their ticket booth was, so I’d called the day before and was told that yes, I could buy t-shirts and other merchandise from the guy selling tickets and they were right, and so I did.  Errand #1: complete.

Errand #2 took me (and Alan and Kenny) on a two-store search for Slap Ya Mama cajun seasoning, which I ultimately found in a small neighbourhood grocer for a fraction of what they sell the stuff for in the souvenir shops.  Stuffing the two 500g bottles into my e-bike’s storage pocket, I steered us over to St. Charles Street so we could gape at the amazing mansions in between ducking around all the traffic.  We soon decided the calmer roads outweighed the pretty plantation-style houses so headed back to the side streets.

When we got to the university district we turned off the road altogether and rode through Audubon Park.  We circled the entire 350-acre greenspace – the park is really quite huge – stopping along the way to sit on a bench and watch birds wallowing in a lake, just like old men do.  We took it slow riding past the zoo hoping for a glimpse of a giraffe or two poking their heads over the fence.  We didn’t see any but we stopped at the zoo entrance to fill our water bottles and use the public washroom.  Just like old men do.  

Next we headed east until we found a path that took us along the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.  Again with the old man act, we commandeered a couple of park benches on the banks of the levee and sat there watching the barges float by.  During our break Ken could hardly sit down, his butt was hurting so much from his bicycle seat.  Alan and I both had a different style of seat, and Al and Ken agreed to trade bikes for the remainder of the ride.  

We had hardly left the levee when we were stopped by a slow-moving train as it slowly click-clacked along the winding shores of the mighty Mississippi, the train in a slow-motion race against the barges floating downriver to the city’s busy shipyards.  That train was so long and slow that it kept us waiting for a full five minutes or more.

But once we got going we got going.  Those e-bikes were so fast we found ourselves back at the rental place a full half-hour early (even after detouring once more past Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, only to find it still closed).  But that was fine; the e-bike rental had been super-fun but you have to know when to stop.  We had reached the pinnacle of our enjoyment in them; any longer and it would’ve started feeling like an ordeal.  Just ask Kenny’s butt.  Plus it was high time that we had dinner.

But where to eat?

Just kidding!  The bike shop was right around the corner from Mother’s Restaurant, and even though we’d gone there the night before (or was it because we’d gone there the night before?) we’d liked the food so much we were all happy to go there again.  

(I’ve had trips to NOLA where I ate nearly all my meals at Mother’s.)  

With apologies to the rest of the menu, I repeated my order from the day before with no regrets whatsoever: the baked ham dinner cooked black with red beans and rice, green beans, and turnip greens on the side.  My gawd their ham is delicious.  Al had the gumbo and Ken ordered fried chicken even though he was warned that the chicken takes a half-hour ‘cuz they cook it fresh.  When his food came I asked which was better, Mother’s fried chicken or the stuff we got at Popeye’s?  He claimed that it was a tough call.  And while that seems insane on the face of it, I’ve got to admit that Popeye’s serves pretty good fried chicken.  

But I suppose I’ll never really know how good Mother’s fried chicken is because when I’m there I always order the ham.

On our way back to the hotel Alan stopped for a slice of pizza, which surprised and encouraged me.  He had been on a rather extreme diet since we’d arrived – a crazy notion while visiting such a unique culinary city as New Orleans – and he had surely been taking in significantly less calories than he had been expending.  He always went for small portions and generally only had a few bites of what he got, finishing his meals so rarely that I joked I was going to stop ordering meals altogether and subsist solely on his leftovers instead.  But I guess a busy day e-riding around town had depleted his energy stores sufficiently to warrant a slice of dessert pizza, and I was glad to see it.  Losing weight is one thing, but a guy’s gotta eat.

The three of us were back in their room and in our usual spots by 5:30: Kenny sitting up on his bed, Alan lying down in his, and me in a chair by the window nursing a Jack & Coke.  I told them unequivocally that I wasn’t going to hang out in their room all night watching TV while the greatest city in North America vibrated just outside our door.  “I think I’ll go to Frenchmen Street,” I said, dangling a carrot and hoping for a bite.

And still the television flickered on.

“Frenchmen Street is on the other side of the French Quarter,” I continued, not at all encouraged.  “It’s sort of like Bourbon Street for locals, except that Bourbon Street is a bunch of beerhalls that have music and Frenchmen Street is a bunch of music halls that have beer.”

Next on “Forensic Files”: a vicious killer attacks a young mother in her own home, but despite meticulous washing of the crime scene…

“Frenchmen Street is where you’ll find the best live music in the city,” I said as I rose out of my chair to pour another drink.

“Well I’m done for the night,” Al said from under the covers.  

“Yeah, I think I’m out too,” added Ken.

“Well, I’ll stick around for an hour or two,” I said, settling back into my chair and putting away my carrot.  “Maybe you’ll change your minds by then.”

But the murderer had been sloppy, and he had left his DNA all over the victim’s bedroom…

Every time I tried to muster myself to leave I re-weighed the fun I would probably have barhopping up and down Frenchmen Street versus the rare privilege I was enjoying of hanging out with my brother and my cousin, even if we were just sitting around doing nothing.  And every time I pondered I poured myself another drink.  This loop continued for hours.

It was past ten o’clock when I tiptoed out of their room and stumbled back to mine.  There was still plenty of time to get out and enjoy Frenchmen Street – and I almost went too – but I was too drunk to walk that far, and the online transit schedule said that getting there would take a streetcar/bus combo of a half-hour or more each way.  

But damned if I was just going to go to bed, so I grabbed my coat and walked myself towards the Quarter.  “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart…”  Great, now I’m doing it..  A few blocks later I turned up Bourbon Street and lingered outside the bars listening for a good band.  

I didn’t hear much that interested me but I really felt like I should go in somewhere for a drink.  I heard a band playing Sweet Child o’ Mine so I went inside but the bar only served crappy beer.  I stuck around until the end of the guitar solo and kept walking.

A little farther on I heard a guitar player soloing over Little Wing from the back of a tiny hallway-shaped hole-in-the-wall called Swig and Swine that opened right onto the street.  I stepped in and sat at the long, empty bar that lined the left side of the room.  They had Purple Haze IPA on tap and with one of Jimi Hendrix’s greatest songs floating in the air I thought it a fitting order.  I got the first jolt when the bartender charged me a whopping $13+ for the beer (though it did come in a big cup).  The second jolt came a minute later when the song ended and the guitar player said “Thank-you, goodnight” before the trio quickly started packing up.  

And here I was with a big expensive beer sitting in front of my barstool!  

Moments later a different trio of musicians wheeled a trolley of gear into the bar and started setting up.  Crazy that a tiny bar with no cover charge has one band ending and another one starting at 11pm on a Wednesday night, but I had once heard from a local guitarist that New Orleans was nicknamed “The Big Easy” because it was the easiest city in America for a musician to make a living.  The guy told me that he was often booked to play five or six gigs a day, although I had a suspicion that the only money the bands at the Swig and Swine were taking home was whatever came out of the nearly empty tip jar that was being bandied about.

I gave the newly-arrived band a once-over and figured it was going to take them at least seven or eight minutes to set up.  That was more time than I had beer.  The guys didn’t look like they were going to be worth another $13+ risk, so I grabbed what remained in my big plastic mug and sauntered back out onto the sidewalk.

As a man walking by himself along Bourbon Street at 11pm on a not-so-busy weeknight I was a magnet.  There are two or three strip bars on Bourbon, and though the guys standing outside trying to lure customers through the door all singled me out as I rushed by averting my eyes, it was the prostitutes that proved to be truly annoying.  Three of them approached me during my four-block walk back to Canal Street.  One of them even came at me at a run.  

“Where you going, honey?!?”  

“No.”  Head down, keep moving.

“C’mon now, I just asked where you were going.”  Now she was following me.  

“I’m going home.”  Don’t even look up, just keep walking.

“Take me with you?”  

“No.”  

The last one – the one who literally ran across the street the moment she saw me on the opposite sidewalk – was super-annoying.  She positioned herself in front of me so I had to stop.

“You know you don’t want to be alone tonight…”  

I felt like a topless girl walking through a Harley Davidson convention.  It was gross and I’ve got to admit, a little bit intimidating.  With her “overseers” surely just steps away I certainly didn’t think it would’ve been safe to physically force my way past this girl so I was left to deke back-and-forth while she deked right with me, a cocky smile on her annoying little face the whole time.  

“Look lady, I only have like maybe two bucks on me, probably not even that.”

“I bet you have money back in your hotel room,” she replied.

“Are you kidding?  Look at me,” I exclaimed, gesturing to my ratty, unfashionable, and somewhat dishevelled self.  “Unless you got something on your menu for eighteen dollars you’re barking up the wrong tree.

“Listen,” I pleaded, “I paid for my coffee this morning with pocket change!”

The girl looked me up and down and, finally convinced that I was indeed too poor to afford her affections, she gave me a sneer and slunk back across the street, her eyes already scanning the crowd for her next lover-victim.

A block later I reached Canal Street and finished my beer just as a streetcar came.  I hopped on, flashed my transit pass, and was in my room lying in bed (alone!) by 11:30pm.

121423 The Art of Change

Directly across from our hotel was the Tulane University Medical School building and Al had been going to their cafeteria every morning for a cheap breakfast.  He and Ken mentioned that they would be there when the place opened at 7am so I assumed they would be back when I was done with my morning exercises and shower, but they weren’t.  Turns out they had slept in and when I came a-knockin’ I had just missed them.  Ah well, downstairs I went for my morning constitution at The Daily Grind Coffee Shop in the hotel lobby.

When I ordered my coffee the girl at the counter thanked me for unloading all of my US coinage on her a few days earlier.  “It was really exciting getting that change all at once,” she smiled.   

She said that the till was generally low on change so she was always hoping people would pay in nickels and dimes, and for someone to show up with several rolls of coins was a coffeeshop lady’s dream come true.

“I said to my husband over breakfast: ’It finally happened!’”  She seemed genuinely excited.

Once again I find myself playing the role of Prince Charming, selflessly coming to the rescue of another fair maiden in need.

“That’s hilarious,” I replied.  “I emailed m’lady about it too!”

Ah, the things that please me.

After lingering over my coffee I went back upstairs and found Al and Ken.  We decided on a slow start to the day and just hung out in their room until hunger forced our hand.

Johnny’s Po-Boys had been closed when we’d stopped by the ancient French Quarter lunch counter several days earlier, but it was the #1 eatery on Kenny’s New Orleans wish-list so we decided to try again.  It was just shy of noon when we finally emerged from our hotel, squinting in the daylight like three opossum crawling out of their den.  We rode the streetcar to the far end of the French Quarter and walked two blocks to the tiny diner.  It was busy but after placing our orders we managed to score one of the few tables in the joint.

I ordered the roast beef debris po-boy and it was fantastic.  (“Debris” originally referred to the bits of meat that fell off of a roast and into the pan of jus beneath it as a side of beef was being sliced over and over again.  Nowadays “debris” is basically just roast beef that is cooked extra-tender and then crumbled.)  Kenny got himself a shrimp po-boy and declared it the best food of the trip thus far.  Unfortunately Al didn’t agree; he said his bowl of gumbo was the worst of the three bowls he’d had so far.

After lunch Alan stopped into one of the many Asian massage places for a pair of back-to-back twelve-minutes-for-ten-bucks massages.  When Al and I had visited Europe together his back had been bothering him and a half-hour Asian massage had fixed him right up.  The activity of the last five days was starting to do a number on his new knee and he hoped that some physical manipulation would help this time as well.

With a half-hour to kill Kenny suggested we wander around inside the casino again.  this was the second time that he’d suggested the casino as a diversion and once again I couldn’t really understand the attraction – Kenny’s not a gambler – but once again it was fine with me.  Plus the casino was right across the street from the massage place, so it was an easy choice.  

When Al was finished he found us and sat down at a blackjack table.  I wandered off and quickly lost $40 on two spins of roulette before returning and borrowing $50 from Kenny, which I lost in two straight hands at Alan’s blackjack table*.  Al lost too, I don’t know how much but probably $100, maybe $200.  But that’s gamblin’.  

When we hit the sidewalk in front of the casino it didn’t take many shoulder shrugs before somebody suggested taking a streetcar back to the room.  I’d anticipated this and made a unilateral announcement that 2pm was much too early for me to be in for the day and that I was instead going to take the streetcar to the very awesome and completely free sculpture park that sits behind the New Orleans Museum of Art, which itself sits in New Orleans’ very magnificent City Park.  (Not only is City Park magnificent, it’s massive too.  At 1,300 acres it’s about 50% larger than New York’s Central Park.)  

I have long been smitten by statues and I always seek out sculpture parks when I travel.  Iparticularly like the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, which I try to visit every time I come to New Orleans.  I didn’t really expect the other guys to be interested so I was happily surprised when they both quickly insisted that they were coming along.  Great!  And just like that, along came a streetcar marked “City Park”.  We would be riding this one all the way to the end of the line.

For the first time (since the first time), instead of just showing our Jazzy Passes (or merely reaching towards our pocket, which was usually enough to get waved on by the driver) this streetcar operator insisted that we scan our passes through the automated ticket machine, and I will add for the record that he wasn’t overly polite about it.  As a matter of fact, he acted less like a bus driver making a request and more like a drill sergeant barking at new army recruits.  He did it to every single person who boarded his streetcar at the busy stop – which took quite a bit of time – but he did catch a couple of people trying to get on with expired or otherwise bunky passes.  One person paid up his $1.25 for the ride while the other guy pulled his empty pockets inside-out and stepped off the streetcar shaking his head.

Stop after stop the driver remained steadfast, checking everyone who stepped onboard.  “What a jerk,” my brother muttered under his breath.  “There’s no need for that,” Kenny chimed in.  “He aught to be fired,” Al continued, adding, “I’d love to see his face when it happened…”  

To be honest, I was impressed.  Well, ”impressed” isn’t quite the right word but I’ll go with it for now: I was impressed that someone was actually checking tickets and passes.  I had almost felt like a fool for buying them.  All it ever took for a driver to wave me onto his streetcar was the slightest indication that I might have a Jazzy Pass in my pocket somewhere.  Up until this fellah none of the drivers scrutinized my pass close enough to know if it was old, new, antique or fake.  Not one of them.

And you know what?  This guy caught people trying to get onto his streetcar without valid passes at almost every stop along the way, and he called them all out on it too, both loudly and abrasively.

And there sat Kenny and Alan with their arms crossed and shaking their heads.  “What an idiot…”

“Can you imagine…”

I’ll freely admit that there was no need for the guy to be so grumpy about the whole thing but a) I have no idea what sort of day or life this dude was in the middle of having, and b) I would argue that it ain’t his job to be nice.  Sure, most people working in public service tend to be friendly – every other streetcar driver had been – and while that might lead one to expect friendliness (or at the very least a suppression of grumpiness), I really don’t think it’s required for such a position.  And like I say, pound-for-pound this was the only driver I saw who was actually doing his job with regards to the whole ticket thing.

But on to more important things, like another pleasant New Orleans streetcar ride!  This one led past our hotel and into hitherto unknown territory for Ken and Al.  As the streetcar bounced along Canal Street I spotted Chickie Wah Wah, a cleverly-named bar/venue that the three of us had tickets to on the following night.  It was just down the street from our hotel but probably too far to walk, especially for Alan and also especially since there would be a good chance that we’d be standing up the whole night once we got there.  I took note of the nearest streetcar stop.

When we got to the intersection of Canal and North Carrollton Avenue the streetcar turned a hard, screeching right and a half-dozen stops later we were at the end of the line.  We tried to disembark as Capt. Grumpypants pushed past everyone with a deep frown on his face, begrudgingly flipping all the seat-backs the other way around for his return trip.  Thankfully we wouldn’t be on it.

The first thing you see when the streetcar dumps you at the City Park stop is an impossibly long dual-driveway lined with forty of the world’s oldest and most stunning live oak trees.  The Anseman and McDonogh oak trees that grow in City Park are between 750-900 years old and they are stunning.  The massive trees create a wide, low-hanging canopy that covers a lot of acreage with their ancient, moss-covered branches dipping low enough to touch the ground.  It looked to me like two rows of petrified octopuses, leafy soldiers holding guard over the New Orleans Museum of Art, which stood at the end of the long driveway(s).

(The driveway leading up to the museum is so long that it’s actually called Lelong Drive.  For realz.)

Behind the Museum of Art sits the Sydney and Walda Betshoff Sculpture Garden, and while the art gallery charges an admission fee the Sculpture Garden does not.  That was one reason why we were opting to spend our time with the sculptures and not with the hanging art.  The other reason was because the Sydney and Walda Betshoff Sculpture Garden is awesome.  I should know, I’ve strolled though it at least a half-dozen times before.

Though Alan wasn’t in too much discomfort yet, we walked that long, tree-lined driveway nice and slow in an effort to save his tender knee for the sculpture park itself, which would require extensive meandering.  

And meander we did!  We saw the whole shebang over the next ninety minutes or so, from Rene Magritte’s axe-wielding tree stump The Labors of Alexander along with Renoir’s Venus Victorious in the opening courtyard, through the towering Karma by Korean artist Do Ho Suh (a definite highlight) and the jarring but hilarious Window with Ladder – Too Late for Help by Leandro Erlich, and all the way to the jaw-dropping Mirror Labyrinth (and so much more in between) that looped us back to the front again.

The sculpture park holds too many unspeakably great works of art for me to describe in a way that comes close to capturing the true wonder of it all, so I won’t even begin to try.  

I will, however, point out that the final 40% or so of the Garden was open, and a fine 40% it was too.  The area had been undergoing renovations for so long that I had never seen it before and frankly, Sydney and Walda’s curators seemed to have reserved some of their niftiest sculptures for this section, which was reached after following a concrete gulley that skirted a waist-high canal of water.

There was a fractal chrome bear by Frank Gehry (Bear with Us) and a piece called Pacific Red (VI) by Larry Bell that was simply a colourful cube inside another colourful cube, but it changed the world seen through it in a way that elevated the piece instantly to “cool art”.  

But the coolest of the cool, the undeniable peak of the park and a work that I had never seen before (and one I will never forget) was a spiral of mirrored pillars called Mirror Labyrinth Besthoff Sculpture Garden that I referred to earlier.  Oh, how I loved Mirror Labyrinth!  It was an amazing optical illusion from every angle.  From inside or out the staggered mirrors made it virtually impossible to distinguish between reality and reflection.  

Alan sat down to rest for a while (on a piece of art no less; Three Figures and Four Benches by American Pop Art icon George Segal) while Kenny and I took in one of the many looping offshoot paths lined with art, but otherwise all three of us saw the whole thing.  And the whole thing was just fantastic.  I will certainly try to make it to the Sydney and Walda Betshoff Sculpture Garden again when I am lucky enough to find myself back in New Orleans, though next time I might just bee-line it past the whole collection and run straight to Mirror Labyrinth so I can take it in at length.

After a bathroom break inside the gallery we made the long trek back out to the streetcar stop, taking it even slower this time and adding a lingering bench-break in the middle.  Al’s knee was hurting but there was nothing to do but be patient and make our way ever-so-slowly back to the trolley.

And once we got there guess who was driving it?  Yessiree, it was Capt. Grumpypants again, still barking and snarking and being thoroughly rude and rudely thorough at every stop.  At least it gave Kenny and Alan something to grumble about under their breaths for the whole ride back to the hotel.

Once we arrived in their room I was tasked with gathering information about the upper-crust Happy Hours that I had been telling Kenny about.  Y’see, New Orleans is rife with upscale eateries that offer sublimely delicious and wonderfully creative food, but these southern delicacies generally come at breakneck prices that are sure to empty your wallet.  However, many-to-most of these highfalutin’ spots also offer a daily Happy Hour, and along with the obligatory drink specials these Happy Hours tend to include a short menu of fancy-schmancy appetizers for five or six bucks per plate.  In the past I’ve gone on little Happy Hour tours where I’ll hit up three or four of these restaurants during the 4-6pm range and for a reasonable price I’ve sampled some of the best food in the city, not to mention gotten a fair headstart on an evening of drinking.

So I settled into my chair-by-the-window and did some googling to see what was available.  A few minutes later I showed them what I’d managed to find in the nearby-ish area, which was pretty fancy-schmancy indeed: Wagyu empanadas, tuna ceviche, papaya salad, crab rangoon, black truffle fries, crawfish beignets…you get the idea.

And guess what?  We decided to try out a local burger spot instead.  Heck, with these two teetotallers even the 2-for-1 Happy Hour rum sour spritzers weren’t a temptation.  And once again I find myself on an island of one.

When suppertime came around Kenny and I started getting ready to leave but Alan was slow to join us.  I suggested that maybe he could stay in and nurse his knee and Kenny and I would bring him back a burger after we had dinner.  He immediately agreed but quickly corrected himself and told me not to worry about it, he was just going to make himself a sandwich.  

I’m glad Alan changed his mind because when Kenny and I walked down to the Burger Bar we discovered that it was takeout only.  We didn’t want to eat in the adjacent hotel’s busy lobby – as the dude in the burger place had suggested – and we didn’t want to eat our dinner back in the room either, so we opted to grab a slice and a beer just a few doors down at Willie’s Chicken Shack (no beer for Ken of course so I picked up his slack and drank two).  Then we stopped into one of the many CVS locations along Canal Street for some salty snacks and just like that we were back in their room by 6:15 with a full day in the books.  Sheesh!

With an eye towards resting his knee Alan suggested we might try the hop-on hop-off bus tour the following day and Ken and I agreed.  I poured myself a drink and opened my computer to look into it.  A few clicks later I had it all squared away, which called for another drink.

With the droning television putting a damper on the NOLA vibe that still clung to my skandas, my internet clicks started once again veering towards Frenchmen Street.  I poured another drink and started casually flicking through bar websites, hoping to find a musician I recognized that was playing at one of the countless venues that lie just beyond the French Quarter.  I found nothing, like I knew I wouldn’t.  It’s not like I hadn’t been obsessively checking the show listings for weeks already.

If I had been smart I would’ve just wished my cousin and my brother a good night and got my butt over to Frenchmen Street and let me ears do the deciding, but instead of being smart I was lazy.  And laziness is the bane of the bored traveller.  It often takes a lot of muster to get your butt off the couch to go out and do something, even (especially?) when you’re on vacation, but when you do it’s almost always worth the effort.

And I didn’t.  Ah well, there was still a bit of whiskey left in that bottle of Jack.

*If you combine this visit with my quick $100 win at the same casino a couple of days previously (and why wouldn’t you?) I was still up $10.  It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to maintain a perfect record with regards to Harrah’s New Orleans: I’ve gambled there on three of my trips to the city and I ended up ahead all three times.  As of this, our final stop at the casino, the score is Harrah’s: 0, me: $410.

121523 Chickie Bus Tour

Early to bed and early to rise…

I was up and on my way to the exercise room by 6:30am.  After a slow shower and an even slower cup of coffee downstairs I was knocking on Alan and Kenny’s room by 9am.  They were both fed and ready so we walked a few hundred yards down Canal Street to stop #6 of the Hop On Hop Off City Tour.  As we waited for the bus a young friendly guy approached us with a ticket-printing machine tucked under his arm and asked if we wanted to purchase tickets.  We did, indeed.  “Yeah, I’ll take three please,” I said, reaching for my credit card.  The kid was sizing us up.

“Would that be three seniors, sir?” he asked.  

“Well, um, how old do you have to be to be considered ‘senior’”? I replied.  

(Sure I’m only fifty-six but some companies begin offering a seniors discount at age fifty-five.  Not many, but some.  Enough that I don’t feel like I’m being sneaky when I ask some unsuspecting teenager if the Cineplex has a seniors discount.  Merely asking the question has saved this white-bearded non-senior dozens of dollars.)

“How about we don’t bother with the specifics and I just charge all of you the senior rate?” he asked with a smile.  That would save us $3 each, plus tax.  And whattya know, the bus was just arriving.

“That’ll be great,” I answered.  I scanned my card, the bus opened its doors and we all hopped on, ticket-guy included.

Kenny and I headed straight for the stairs and took a bench up on the roofless, open-air second level; Al chose to stay downstairs.  The Hop On Hop Off bus does a two-hour loop through all the major neighbourhoods in New Orleans, with nineteen designated stops along the way where patrons can disembark and explore at their leisure.  There are several busses making the loop at any one time so a new one arrives at each stop every half-hour, and a ticket is good for twenty-four hours.

As we had boarded at stop #6 (Canal Street), the next opportunity for passengers to come or go came at stop #7 (Harrah’s Casino), then again at stop #8 (the Central Business District), stop #9 (Caesars Superdome), #10 (the National WWII Museum), etcetera, until it looped all the way back to stop #6 on Canal Street again.

And all the while (and I do mean all the while), an energetic guide with a microphone chattered away, spouting a constant stream of facts, figures, myths and idiosyncrasies about what we were seeing.  We would eventually discover that our guide was quite excellent, but for the moment we merely thought that he was pretty good, dropping several funny one-liners in between providing actual sources to back up many of his factoids.

After taking us through the Garden District and along St. Charles Street to the Arts District the bus looped through the French Quarter and Tremé before stopping for a five minute break at stop #5, the Basin Street Station Visitor Information Center, where patrons could get off the bus to use the toilets or peruse the gift shop.

It turned out that stop #5 was also where the guides and drivers switched over so when our bus pulled out to finish the circuit we had a fresh driver and guide with us.  Our new guide was pretty good but his particular style of speaking made him a bit harder to understand compared to the first guy.

No matter through, after riding the whole route without a single “hop off” we only had one more stop to go before arriving back at our starting point.  We got off at stop #6 and agreed that it had been a pretty fun excursion.  I had learned tons of new things about one of my favourite places in America and Ken and Al had gotten to see the entire city.  

As I had anticipated, by this time we all had lunch firmly on our minds.  This would be our last full day in New Orleans and although we’d enjoyed some pretty great meals (Johnny’s Po-Boys and our two visits to Mother’s spring to mind) we still hadn’t gone anywhere that was even remotely upscale, anywhere that was more than just a hole-in-the-wall or a “this place will do”, anywhere that might actually (gasp!) have a star or two after its name in the restaurant listings.  

So as I was sipping my morning coffee I’d surfed around the internet and found what looked like a good place not far from stop #6, a classy-ish yet informal restaurant called Public Service.  Their menu featured roasted brussels sprouts, oysters, and meatloaf Wellington alongside things we would actually eat, like burgers, fries, and club sandwiches. 

Perfect.

As the week progressed humming and hawing about where we should eat our next meal had become our most time-consuming exercise, so once I selected the restaurant I made a plan to act on it unilaterally and it worked like a charm.  To wit:

As we got off the bus I told Ken and Al that there was a place nearby where we could have lunch and I just started walking in the right direction without looking back.  And just as I had hoped, they simply fell into step behind me.

As soon as we turned off Canal Street we found ourselves walking by the very fancy Roosevelt Hotel, a grand old Waldorf-Astoria property that is well-known for its annual Christmas decorations.  We weren’t that hungry yet so we took a moment to pop inside.

Stepping through the door one’s senses are immediately pummelled with everything Christmas.  There can be no doubt that the Roosevelt does indeed boast the largest annual presentation of holiday lights in all of New Orleans.  I can’t tell you how many Christmas trees they had lining the long, ornate hallway…Dozens?  Hundreds?  Standing between the trees and otherwise scattered throughout the lobby were huge poinsettia-filled pots with long, ribboned birch branches sticking out of them, and absolutely everything in the room was covered with tiny white lights.  There were lights everywhere.

As if all that wasn’t Christmassy enough, there was a children’s choir assembled in the middle of the grand foyer singing carols and looking as cute as gingerbread cookies.  The kids were encircled by their adoring parents and grandparents who all stood frozen in place, swooning and taking videos with their phones.  

It was a pretty classy display, and the bathrooms we used before we left were classy too.  There was an attendant in there handing out towels, the stall doors had floor-to-ceiling wooden doors, and just like the rest of the hotel the bathrooms had gleaming marble floors.  Emerging from the loo and ready to continue on to our lunch spot, we followed that marble floor to the shiny brass revolving doors and spun ourselves back onto the street, just a thousand feet from Public Service.

We beat the dinnertime rush by a mile; when we sat down we were the only ones in the restaurant besides staff.  And a big room it was too, with unreasonably high ceilings and dozens of tables.  The entire front of the restaurant was nothing but clear, floor-to-ceiling glass panels so it was really bright in there as well, which made the room appear even more spacious.  

The waitress handed us menus and asked about drinks.  “I’ll just have a water,” said Alan.  “Yeah, same for me please,” added Kenny.  

“And for you?” 

“I’ll have a large IPA on tap,” I answered.  

“At least someone knows how to do New Orleans,” she said, giving me a respectful nod.

Ken and I both ordered the cheeseburger and fries, Al went for a club sandwich.  I was pleased that everyone seemed to enjoy their meal quite a bit.  Small-serving-Al even ate a measurable three-quarters of his sandwich.  Our burgers came with a side of warmed…was it ketchup or was it salsa?  Ketchla?  Salsup?  Whatever it was, it was great.  Also, the burgers each came with their own little airplane-bottles of ketchup, dijon mustard, and mayonnaise on the side; all Heinz.  I used my tiny mayo but I gave the mustard to Kenny and saved my ketchup for the next time I go camping.  Ken pocketed all four bottles to bring home, his only non-Saints souvenirs.

When all was said and done the three of us were stuffed to the gills.  As we were waiting for our bill Al read my mind and suggested we hop on the bus tour again.  After all, our tickets were good for twenty-four hours and it would be a low-impact way to fill a chunk of the afternoon.  Everyone readily agreed.

So with full, satisfied bellies we waddled back to good old stop #6 and hopped on the next bus that came by.  This time we all rode downstairs.  We had a different guide, which resulted in several different stories and even – oddly enough – a few different facts.  For example, our first guide had told us that gambling was illegal in New Orleans until 1999 (on land that is; gambling has always been legal on the riverboats), while this new guide told us that gambling on land was still against the law.  

(So why was Harrah’s Casino allowed to open all the way back in 1991?  On this point both guides agreed: The casino got away with it by referring to their establishment as a “gaming” house as opposed to a “gambling” house.  Curiously, neither of the guides mentioned anything about bribery but c’mon now, there must have been a few bags of money involved in order to convince city council to support such a flimsy loophole, non?)

I tell you, NOLA is full of street art.  Whether sculpture or mural, there is free public art all over the place.  Sure you see pieces here and there wherever you go in New Orleans, but after riding the entire Hop On Hop Off loop all in one go you realize just how riddled the city is with cool, thought-provoking art.

One piece you won’t see anymore is a statue of Robert E. Lee riding his horse.  The larger-than-life sculpture sat atop a tall pillar in the middle of Lee Circle since it was unveiled in 1884, just fourteen years after the failed Confederate General died.  Back around 2016 I happened to be staying on the sixth floor of a hotel that was on Lee Circle, which put me on eye-level with the statue every time I looked out the window.  I remember thinking how odd it was that all these years later there was still a statue in the middle of the city that commemorated not only the losing side of a 150-year-old war and the leader of a rebellion that lasted a mere five years, but also a blatant symbol of racism and slavery.  And in a city where blacks outnumber whites almost two-to-one.  Crazy!

Fortunately, it was only about a year before the world caught up with my inner thoughts (it usually takes longer) and on May 19th, 2017 the statue of Lee was taken down and locked away in storage.  When the bus came to Lee Circle I noticed that the pillar remains conspicuously empty.  I’d have thought they would have put some other statue in its place, but leaving it empty seems to make an even bigger statement.  The void screams for attention.  (Although I do find it odd that it’s still called “Lee Circle”.)

Once again the guides changed at stop #5 and the last guide – our fourth – was terrible.  As the day wore on it occurred to Ken, Al and I that our first guide had been exceptionally good. 

But good or bad, it was obvious that each guide designed their own narratives and that they were all free to select which landmarks to highlight.  So between all the different guides (and drivers, I suppose, though they all drove the exact same route) we learned an awful lot of stuff!  Here is a mere sampling of what we picked up during our two circles ‘round the Big Easy:

-Though the New Orleans Saints played their first regular season NFL game in September of 1967, the team was founded on November 1st, 1966, which was All Saints Day (the guide told us that this led to the team being named the Saints but wikipedia – and logic – told me that the team was actually named after the classic NOLA jazz song When the Saints Go Marching In and I was right.  In fact, when the team got the nod from the NFL the owner decided it would be good PR to delay the news by a week so they could officially announce the new team on All Saints Day.)  

-On the first play of that first game in ’67 the Saints ran the opening kickoff back ninety-four yards for a touchdown, though they ended up losing the game by fourteen points to their opponents, the LA Rams.  (I was suspicious of the guide’s “facts” so I looked this up and yes, it’s true.  I even watched an old B&W clip of the play.  Sometimes the internet is cool.  Not often, but sometimes.)

-Shotgun houses did not derive their name from the obvious fact that you could fire a bullet through the front door and it would travel clear out the back door of the long slender abodes without touching any walls (though the third guide of the day claimed that was exactly how shotgun houses got their name).  In fact (guide #1 told us), they became known as shotgun houses because the word “shotgun” sounded similar to the African phrase “to-gun” which means “house” or “gathering place” and was a term that was used by many of the African and Haitian immigrants who were settling into New Orleans at the time.

(I looked this one up too and it seems that some experts agree with one guide and some agree with the other.  I will point out that our first guide added as evidence the fact that the shotguns that were common at the time would fire a spray of lead pellets rather than just a single bullet, and that any such bevy of ammo would never make it all the way through a shotgun house and out the back door without shooting hell out of the inside of the house.  Hence [he argued, mostly to himself], nobody back then would have thought to call them “shotgun houses” because of the bullet thing.  To which I will comment: “good point” and agree with him.  But I leave it to you to decide for yourself.)

-Actor John Goodman lives in NOLA year-round and his wife owns a children’s clothing shop on Magazine Street called Pippen Lane.  The internet agrees.

(Okay that’s it, I’m done looking this stuff up.  You must have a computer or something; you can look up the rest of these facts if you want to.  Otherwise let’s all just trust that they are all true, okay?  It’s more fun that way and a lot less work for me, which is another way of saying: Ignorance is bliss.)

-Brad Pitt and Harry Connick Jr. were responsible for raising millions of dollars to rebuild the 9th Ward after the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.  Pitt took care of the Lower 9th while Connick took care of the Upper 9th.  

-The house just off of St. Charles Avenue that we were told belongs to Beyoncé is rather large and looks very much like a church.

-The St. Charles line is the oldest still-operating streetcar line in the world, going all the way back to 1835.  Furthermore, they haven’t added a new car to the St. Charles line since the 1920’s, which is pretty amazing.

-The French Quarter didn’t get flooded during Hurricane Katrina.  This one surprised me so I looked it up and yeah, it’s true.  All right, I also looked up the St. Charles streetcar stuff and the Brad Pitt thing too; all true.  Actually, the only consistent lie here seems to be me saying that I’m no longer checking these facts. 

-When you cross the street from the lower Garden District to the Garden District the average house price goes up around $250,000.  (The other guide we had when the bus crossed between the districts said the price jump was actually somewhere between $400,000 to $1 million per house.  She said the houses in the Garden District were currently selling for between $800,000 and $1.6 million.  I’ll take her word for it; for a New Orleans lover like me, looking at property for sale in the city could prove costly.

-In 1788 a fire wiped out 80% of the buildings in New Orleans, back when the city was comprised of just the French Quarter.  After the fire a new law was passed that required everyone to keep water barrels in their backyards so they would be ready to douse any fire that might arise.  Unfortunately, all of this stagnant water contributed to a mosquito-borne Yellow fever outbreak in 1853, which killed 8% of the city’s population.

(Not to go on and on about it, but yeah, I looked that one up and it’s totally legit.  I even took the opportunity to add some actual statistics.  Now, this next part I can’t find evidence of in a quick search and I’m not taking the time to dig any deeper – really, I’m not – but it’s interesting stuff, so I’ll include it:)

-Though lots of people died during that Yellow fever outbreak (9,000 in New Orleans alone), many of the “deceased” were in fact merely in a coma (so said the guides), and as a result there were several cases of people being mistakenly buried while they were still alive.  To protect against this potential horror, local coffin-makers developed contraptions that would allow people who found themselves waking up six feet underground to pull a string which would ring a bell that was installed on the surface.  Putting all of the guide’s claims together, this whole rigamarole led to the coining of the following terms (and probably a few others): saved by the bell, dead ringer, and I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole (poles that were used to move the corpses had to be at least eleven feet long, as anything less was considered close enough to catch the disease).

-The balconies that are ubiquitous throughout New Orleans are not “balconies” at all, they are “terraces”.  Terraces are as deep as the sidewalk beneath them and they are supported by poles.  Balconies are neither of these things.  (The ‘net has a few things to say about our guide’s definition of “terrace” but I shan’t repeat them here.)

-Louisiana was named after King Louis XIV, who was best known for being the King of France from 1643 to 1715.  Which is true.

-Joan of Arc is the Patron Saint of New Orleans, and a statue of her riding a horse currently stands on the edge of the French Quarter, not far from the Cafe du Monde.  Originally cast by French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet in the late 1800’s, France erected the statue in 1972 as a gift to NOLA in order to honour not only St. Joan but the Louisiana city’s French heritage as well.

Locals call the statue “Joanie on the Pony”.

-Canal Street was initially planned to be an actual canal.  The waterway was never built, but that’s why the street is so wide.  It is known as “America’s Widest Street” as it is the broadest roadway in the US that is officially still a “street”.  The guides didn’t mention that last part, I picked that up from the internet.  I also learned that way back in the way back Canal Street served as a cultural divide between the Catholics and the Creoles, and the median in the middle of the street became known as “neutral ground”.  Today, all medians in New Orleans are referred to as “neutral ground”.

-The streets that cross Canal Street have different names on either side because the Catholics who started moving to the city after the Louisiana Purchase took up residence in the new “uptown” area south of Canal Street, and they didn’t want to be seen to be living on the same streets as the Creoles who lived in the Quarter (even though they did).  Hence, when Dauphine Street crosses Canal it changes names to become Baronne Street, when Bourbon crosses Canal it becomes Carondelet, when Royal crosses Canal it becomes St. Charles Ave., etcetera.

-Louisiana loses a parcel of land the size of a football field every hour to erosion and rising water.  To be honest, the guide actually said that it was New Orleans that loses that much land every hour but that is so crazy to imagine that I figured she must have misspoken, so I’ve changed it to Louisiana.  That seems much more believable, though if true it’s still pretty crazy.  It was the last guide who told us that and she was pretty bad at her job, so there’s that to consider.  

-However, that same guide also told us that she worked with a group of volunteers who plant cypress trees along the shores of the Mississippi in order to help mitigate all that erosion.  I believed her, and if she volunteers in that capacity then she probably has some ground to stand on (pardon the pun) with regards to the previous fact too.  She added that they specifically choose to plant cypress trees because cypress are very hearty and fast-growing, and the internet backs her up there.  So there’s that to consider too.

-And finally, all of the guides told us about the life and exploits of Bernard Xavier Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville, which goes something like this:

A French-Creole nobleman born into vast wealth in New Orleans in 1785, the astounding notoriety and outrageous life of Bernard de Marigny cannot be described in any sort of detail here, but suffice to say through a life of extreme sloth, overt drunkenness, and obsessive gambling Bernard went from growing up owning half of the city to dying in it penniless and alone.  This was the man who brought the game of craps to North America, it was he who financed the building of the New Orleans fairgrounds and horse track, he was the guy who started the very first Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, both Marigny Street and Mandeville Street are named after him; I mean this guy was somethin’ else.  There really ought to be a movie.

With our second Hop On Hop Off bus tour completed we found ourselves back on the sidewalk next to stop #6.  We saw a streetcar coming and with no better plans jumping to the fore we crossed the street and got in line.  As we were boarding I recognized the driver as Mr. Grumpypants from the day before, so I got my Jazzy Pass ready and gave him a big smile as I got on.  “How are you today, sir?!?” I asked as cheerily as I could.  He didn’t say a word.  He just cemented his frown and stared straight ahead, shaking his head back-and-forth real slow and subtle as if to say, “I know what you’re trying to do boy, and I ain’t playin’…”  I found it funny as hell but man-oh-man, Kenny and Alan stuck to their guns: they thought the driver was Satan incarnate.

By the time we got back to the hotel it had been at least three hours since we’d had lunch and I was still too full to even think about supper.  Ken said he felt the same but Al was hungry so he popped across the street to the Subway.  While he was gone I checked in to my flight and so did Kenny.  When Alan got back he had a problem checking in so I gave him my secret they-answer-on-the-first-ring Air Canada phone number (but only after making him double-swear that he’d immediately delete the number from his phone and never ever under any circumstances ask me for it in the future) and with this he was able to quickly get things straightened out and check in for his flight.

We all packed up and got our things ready for our departure the next morning, and then there was nothing to do but sit around and wait until it was time to go to the Mike Cooley show up the street at Chickie Wah Wah.  Unfortunately, the longer we sat around waiting for the 8pm show time the more rooted to his bed Alan seemed to be getting.  Once he pulled up the covers I knew it was over: “Hey Al, if you don’t want to come I can try to sell your ticket for you.”

“That’d be good.”

“But,” I warned him, “the show isn’t sold out so the only way I’ll be able to sell your ticket is if I sell it for less than what you paid for it.”

He said he didn’t care, he’d paid for the ticket long ago so it didn’t really matter to him.  That’s the same attitude I tend to take in similar situations (not that I often find myself in similar situations).  So, after allocating some extra time for standing around trying to sell Al’s ticket Kenny and I left the hotel shortly after seven o’clock.

As I’d noticed during our streetcar ride to City Park the previous day, Chickie Wah Wah was just a handful of stops up from our hotel, right on Canal Street.  I had never been to the venue before but I had been coveting the bar’s name since I’d first heard of the place.

(For the uninitiated, the first time any guitar player tries out a wah-wah pedal they invariably play what sounds like chickie-wah-wah.  And even better, until they get used to wah-wah pedals guitarists can’t help but to mouth the chickie-wah-wah sound whenever they play it.  Though I’ve owned one for years, I use my wah-wah pedal so infrequently that I still copy it with my mouth, every time.  It’s actually rather embarrassing, which is one of the reasons why I rarely use the thing.)

As soon as we arrived I poked my head in for a quick peek.  The room was rather small, with seating for perhaps sixty people (by this time all the seats were taken), a sizeable bar on the left-hand side, a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows along the right (beyond which was an outdoor patio/smoking section), and quite a bit of floor space in between for standing and watching the show.  There was a foot-high stage at the back of the room and blacked-out windows in the front.  Though it was a small place it was definitely a proper venue, and I instantly liked it.  Good sightlines, good staff, good sound; good setup all-around.  There was even a ticket window opening up to the sidewalk out front, and after surveying the bar that is where Kenny and I stood as I tried in vain to sell my brother’s ticket.  

Not only were tickets for the show still available at that ticket booth, Mike Cooley had another not-sold-out show booked at Chickie Wah Wah the following night as well, so ticket demand was decidedly low.  Plus, it looked like most of the people who had purchased tickets for this night were already in the bar.  No biggie though, I figured I could recoup at least some of Alan’s money from the next person that walked up to the ticket booth.

Only nobody walked up to the ticket booth.  Like, nobody.

Well, okay, one guy did.  “Hooray!” I thought with excitement.  “Now I can sell this damn ticket and Kenny and I can go inside and grab a good spot before the show starts.”  As he approached I asked the fellah if he was interested in buying my extra for $30.  

“Uh,” he said, looking me up and down.  “I own the place.”

I raised my eyebrows: “How about $25 then?” I asked.  

Fortunately, he got the joke.  Unfortunately, after waiting outside for another half-hour the time came for Al to eat his ticket and we went in.  I bee-lined to the bar and ordered a big IPA for me and a ginger ale for Kenny (have I mentioned that Kenny is allergic to alcohol?).  By this time the room was really starting to fill up.  Ken and I took three steps back from the bar and parked ourselves basically dead-centre in the middle of the venue – which put us about twenty feet from the stage – and we didn’t budge for the rest of the night (except for my occasional three-step sashay back to the bar for more drinks).

Now, If you know Mike Cooley at all it’s because you know him as one of the singer/guitarists from the band Drive-By Truckers.  He’s the cool-looking dude who stands on stage left, the guy who looks like he drove a Camaro in high school and wore mirrored sunglasses as he sold hash for $10 a gram behind the McDonalds.  

He’s also the one who writes those wonderful three-chord grab-you-in-the-first-ten-words-and-keep-you-breathless-’til-the-end songs that always jump out at me when I listen to the ‘Truckers.  Take, for example, the very first line of the very first song of this show:

“Which one’s the birthday boy?” she said,

“I ain’t got all night…”

I mean, wow.  That’s a novella in a dozen words, right there.  Where is she?  A hotel room, probably.  Or more likely, she’s at a low-budget frat party in some dingy roadside motel.  How old is the birthday boy?  Is he nervous?  Where does she have to go afterwards?  And after what, exactly?

I’m not sure if I had heard Birthday Boy before but if I did that opening line had somehow escaped my attention.  The storytelling power of those twelve words haunted me; I was thinking about that opening line for most of the concert.  Which was great by the way, from start-to-finish.  Luckily a lot of the other songs he played (on both acoustic and electric guitars) had pretty awesome opening lines as well, some even good enough to distract me from my Birthday Boy fixation.  Like Checkout Time in Vegas:

A bloody nose, empty pockets

A rented car with a trunk full of guns

It ain’t true that the sun don’t rise in Vegas

I’ve seen it once

Or First Air of Autumn:

First air of autumn up your nose

Popcorn, heavy hairspray, nylon pantyhose

Please stand and bow your heads and pray you don’t get old

Or Panties in Your Purse:

Saw you standing in the hallway

Red plastic cup and one of them big long cigarettes

You asked me if I could play you some Dylan

I said “Dylan who?” and you told me to kiss your ass

See what I mean?  Heck, Cooley deserves a Nobel Prize just for his song titles.

The show was long – twenty-one sonic dramas of drawled brilliance in all – but it never got old, not for a minute.  I think he even held Kenny’s interest all the way to the end.  I tell you, if I didn’t have a flight home booked for the following morning I would have gone to Cooley’s second show for sure.

Who knows, I might have even found someone selling a cheap ticket out front.

After the show we went straight back to the hotel.  With the exception of the one other time we went out to see live music on this trip (when we saw George Porter Jr. at the Maple Leaf Bar) this was our latest night of the week, by a long shot.  Even still I was in bed well before midnight.

As I lay there staring at the dark ceiling it struck me out-of-the-blue that on our walk home from the bar Kenny and I reached the hotel without passing the Joy Theatre, so for once I didn’t have to listen to him sing the damn song.  Of course this thought alone was enough to start it looping through my head.

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart…

It was some time before I got to sleep.

121623 The Joys of Going Home

Our final morning in New Orleans was an early one.

I was up and out of my room by 7am.  Exercised, showered and dressed, I was out the door and on my way to knock on Al and Ken’s room before eight o’clock when lo and behold, here they came walking down the hallway towards me.  We’d decided the night before that we would all go for breakfast at Al’s regular spot in the food court of the School of Medicine across the street, but when we got there we found the building locked up tight.  (Of course it was closed.  It’s a school and it was a Saturday.)  

We shrugged and went back to the hotel.  I grabbed one last coffee from the lobby coffeeshop and brought it and my luggage to their room, where the three of us sat around twiddling our thumbs until it was time to check out.

I’ve got to say, the Jung Hotel had been pretty great.  The spacious, trouble-free rooms were quiet and clean, with large bathrooms and functional kitchens.  There had been shockingly few boisterous bachelor parties roaming up and down the halls and the staff was never anything short of cordial and professional.  Tall ceilings and marble floors in the foyer along with large couches for waiting around or just hanging out, and always a pair of valets jumping to open the door whenever anyone got near.  As I mentioned earlier, I’ve stayed in several timeshare places in NOLA and I would easily rate the Jung Hotel in the top three, probably top two.  

Checkout took less than a minute, most of which was taken up with sparkly-eyed Thank-you’s and neighbourly Y’all come back soon’s and the like.  Then out the door we went, turning right and clack-clack-clacking our luggage over two blocks of bricked sidewalk to the New Orleans Public Library, the spot where the airport shuttle had dropped us off a week before.  Our bus back to the airport arrived ahead of schedule but the driver waved us on while he stepped outside and stretched his legs.  We scanned our transit passes for the last time and took seats on the warm, empty bus, settling in for a comfy, convenient express ride straight to the Louis Armstrong Airport.  And after just a few minutes we were ready to go.  

The bus started down Tulane and turned right onto Poydras.  Had we turned left we would have gone right by Mother’s Restaurant, which had served us a couple of fine southern suppers.  Then we passed the Superdome, where Kenny finally got to see his beloved Saints play, and they had won too!  In some ways it was too bad that the highlight of the vacation had come so early in the trip, but on the other hand we didn’t have the looming excitement of the game distracting us the whole time either.

There had certainly been other highlights too – to varying degrees depending on the person I suppose – like the George Porter Jr. show at the Maple Leaf Bar, the double-shot of Hop On Hop Off bus tours, the bike ride, Mike Cooley at Chickie Wah Wah, the sculpture park, and of course all the food!

Not bad considering we were back in the hotel watching television by 7pm nearly every night.

When I stepped off the bus at the airport I handed my bus pass to a guy who was waiting to board, telling him that it still had a few hours before expiring and I didn’t need it anymore because I was flying home.  I needn’t have bothered with the explanation; Kenny had already given his bus pass to the same person.

Once we found our gate I snuck away and bought Ken the cheapest souvenir I could find: a $5 kitchen towel that said “po-boy” on it.  I felt he should bring home something that didn’t have a Saints logo on it.  Well, he had those little ketchup and mustard bottles, but still.  Once we got on board Alan was seated in Business Class once again, and once again Kenny and I weren’t.  After the plane hit cruising altitude Alan ordered himself a Caesar, which marked his first and only alcoholic beverage on the whole trip.  A trip to New Orleans.  Imagine! 

In Montreal we would be splitting up; Ken and Al were flying from there to Moncton while I would be flying through Halifax and on to St. John’s.  My flight departed first so we all went to my gate.  We got there about twenty minutes before my flight was scheduled to start boarding and they both used the time to thank me for arranging the trip, a gesture which I truly appreciated.  I was really glad to have shared a week in New Orleans with them both.

Then the call came to board and just like that it was over.  Our brief goodbyes (“See ya.” “Yep.”  “Yeah okay, see ya later.”) were just as touching as our greeting had been a week earlier, and off they went down the hallway to find their gate.  In the end my flight left Montreal ten minutes behind schedule but I didn’t care.  My connection was already running forty-five minutes late; I was going to make it.  I plugged my headphones into the Air Canada system, punched up some classic jazz and slammed my eyes shut.  It had been a really good trip (I lay there thinking), and the three of us will have a lot of joyous memories to share for as long as we live.  As a matter of fact, one might say:

We’ll have the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in our hearts…

I sighed a deep sigh, sank into my cramped and lumpy economy seat and fell fast asleep, and I stayed that way until the drink cart came by.