Travelogue: New Orleans (2016)

Apr 21, Thursday:

Just got back from a 24-hour place called Daisy Dukes on Chartres St. where I had an alligator po’ boy and it was everything that I thought it would be. Super tired from this morning’s travel, I vowed to stay away from the bars for now. Strolled back to my hotel, the French Market Inn, on Decatur St. near the steamboat dock through the drizzle and sidestepping the drunks sleeping in the doorways. That’s New Orleans for me—off the track, wet, stinking in a sweet spicy way and chunks of the sidewalk covered with plywood and scaffolding holding up facades and everything off kilter and kind of fucked up. Crumbling Franco-Spanish-Creole elegance. Amazing smells are everywhere—magnolias, jessamine, wisteria, the garbage left out on the curb and the wet beer keg on wooden floor musty waft all together blending in the cooling rain. Flowers bursting from dead things. 

Apr 22, Friday:

Woke up today and saw tankers crawling down the Mississippi crescent out my window. My Jazz Fest tickets were for two days and I chose today as my free day. I planned two possible walking tours—the Vieux Carre (French Quarter) or the Garden District. The latter was entirely new to me so to the St. Charles streetcar stop I went. They’re not like San Fran cable cars as these are more like buses with streetcar interiors and open windows. Spent the morning hiking around the $5M+ mansions—this was the district where the well-to-do white folk planted themselves, and later, celebs. I met a guy on a scooter who commented that I was looking at John Goodman’s house, and I told him that the owner before that was Trent Reznor. This he didn’t know. He was a local whose brother-in-law apparently did some of the renovation on the house. 

On Magazine St. there’s hip restaurants and shops. I choose the Red Dog Diner for the 60s Virginia City vibes and sat at the bar in the back for an excellent noontime omelet with beef brisket and a beer. Struck up a conversation with the bartender over local microbrews and how Lagunitas, a California transplant to Chicago, has taken over from Goose Island as the most popular micro in my area, and about the mandatory pilgrimage to Three Floyds in Muenster, Indiana for genuine hop fiends.

Back in the Quarter, Royal Street offered free street music. I caught a lively Dixieland jazz band composed of hippie types playing in the street, the lead singer proclaiming the last and true clarion call of the blues, pontificating while standing on a milk crate and twirling his beard prophetically.

At the hotel, I changed into jeans, then went out in search of a beer and some music. All the Bourbon St. places were packed and annoying. I roamed above the crowd, a silver-haired wraith. Fritzl’s had good NO Jazz and then I found a dive on Royal St. where i tried a new IPA and posted a photo of myself hoisting my glass celebrating my mom’s birthday today, the first one she didn’t live to see (my family was also posting the same tribute). Best thing I saw all night was a young guy and a girl on the sidewalk, him playing some wicked, sold-my-soul dobro slide guitar and she laying down a lagging shuffle on her cajon. You never know where you’ll find the good stuff.

Apr 23, Saturday

Through a couple of years of attending Riot Fest, I’ve adopted my stock approach for attending outdoor music fests. Today started with a good breakfast with enough long-term protein (an excellent seafood omelet with Hollandaise sauce from Pierre Maspero’s) and plenty of water. Wore my loose khaki shirt with walking shorts and low-rise hiking shoes. Together with my flat desert hat with neck cover, I got to the festival looking like a Bedouin beekeeper, but fuck-em, it works. Plenty of sunscreen plus a re-layer three hours later. During the day I didnt drink alcohol, but a 20 oz water every 3 hours. It paid off as I made it through the withering sun while standing next to folks suffering from heat exhaustion who tried to make it through on alcohol alone.

First up was Leo Nocentelli, the guitarist from The Meters. His special guest star was Bernie Worrell from P-Funk, and the band did “Flashlight” and “Mothership Connection”. Then Tab Benoit, who can righteously sing and play the blues, but could use a lyricist to bring the pain. Then Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, who in my mind stole the show with an R&B tour-de-force. Here was a band with something to prove—that they’re not just one hit wonders. Rateliff introduced “S.O.B.” by asking the audience not to throw their drinks at the band, as the song is a paean to delirium tremens. They mashed that up with The Band’s “The Shape I’m In”. 

Then I hauled myself across the race track to catch Pearl Jam: “Even Flow”, “Daughter”, and a chest-pounding take on “Go” before I had to tear myself away to catch the last half of Van Morrison’s set. Van was in fine voice, but I thought his set erred on the mellow side. “Wild Night” was perfunctory, but “Moondance” had the right swing, and Van played some alto sax. Well worth seeing, but I thought he would have done better with a horn section to add punch to the songs. I had to bug out to hit the shuttle bus 15 minutes before the set ended. Before that, I looked up to see a skywriter tracing Prince’s glyph high in the sky.

Got back to the hotel, showered, made some calls, and went to The New Orleans Hamburger & Seafood Co. one block down Decatur to chow down on a wondrous confection of catfish with crawfish cream sauce and stuffed jambalaya. They also overserved me a few “44s” which are their specialty triple-rum cocktails to commemorate the Super Bowl that the Saints won. After that, I got the bright idea to prowl the late-night streets of the Vieux Carre alone as jotted down some half-drunken notes to an imaginary audience:

Where am I right now?  Chartres.  No tourist potential.

The cracked sidewalk and the sewer smells and you kiss me next to the flickering gaslamp,

Portending sweetness and death and everything in between.

I can’t wave it away, and then summon it back with just a gesture. The Ju Ju is too thick here.

Lestat prowls. Hungry. Selective.

A black cat crosses my path. This is a true story.

I walk Bourbon St. and see only victims.

From now on, I seek only street performers. For they are blood of my blood.

Apr 24, Sunday

To Maspero’s for breakfast again for their Louisiana Lost Bread, then back to the Jazz Fest to see the Imagination Movers (for kids), The Electrifying Crown Seekers (gospel tent), Big Chief Walter Cook & the Creole Wild West Mardi Gras Indians, The Garifuna Collective (Belize pavilion), Better Than Ezra with their Stone Temple Pilots and Prince tributes, BeauSoleil, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter Duo, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Iguanas. A musical blend of varied joys.

Back to the Quarter to The Gumbo Shop for the creole combo plate and watching the tourists stumble down St. Peter Street. I caught Nick Jonas shooting a video on Bourbon St, with his entourage throwing beads from the balcony. The next day I left New Orleans in mid-discovery, like an unfinished book.