The Big Easy does it

An earful and a mouthful

After a stressful week of packing and moving and unpacking, compounded by snow and cold, Luis and I welcomed a break. A few months ago I signed up at work for a conference on online learning starting Monday in New Orleans. We decided to fly out Saturday morning to take advantage of the weekend. The timing couldn't have been better, especially with a nor'easter threatening New York.

My fascination with New Orleans began about 20 years ago, when I saw Queen Ida and Her Bon Ton Zydeco Band on Saturday Night Live. I started listening to zydeco and Cajun music but still can't do the two-step. Besides Queen Ida, my favorite artists are Bruce Daigrepont, Balfa Brothers, and Wayne Toups and Zydecajun. I read the rich literary works of New Orleans through such authors as Anne Rice, Harry Crews, Walker Percy, Tennessee Williams, and of course, John Kennedy Toole's hilarious A Confederacy of Dunces. By the time I first visited the Big Easy in 2000, I felt like I already knew it.

The Iberville Suites, where we stayed, is connected to the Ritz-Carlton and lies at the outskirts of the French Quarter--central but quiet. Remnants of the recent Mardi Gras are everywhere--beads in the trees, on the ground, atop statues. The French Quarter looks like the aftermath of a drag queen riot. Bourbon Street really is one big Girls Gone Wild video. Drinkin' and smokin' are allowed pretty much everywhere in the city.


A shot of Bourbon after dark

New Orleans has two things you can't (and don't want to) escape: food and music. Music fills the air at every turn. Every corner in the quarter, it seems, is claimed by scruffy troubadours performing for money or fame. A lone trumpet player can elevate songs like "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "This Old Man" to acoustic art.

We'd eaten a few times at Clover Grill, at the very gay end of Bourbon Street, on our last trip 5 years ago. The same counterperson, Earl, was there. Earl is like a black, gay version of Ignatius J. Reilly. He dances and sings at the top of his lungs to all the divas playing on the jukebox: Whitney, Diana, Aretha, Mariah, Patti. He is fierce, and he does not have time to play around. When someone acts up, he points to the sign over the door: Be Nice or Leave. He remembered us from our last trip. The menu is a hoot, with not-so-subliminal messages sprinkled throughout it: "If you are not served in 5 minutes, relax. It may be another 5 minutes. This is not New York City." "You can beat our prices, but you can't beat our meat." And my favorite, "Have character--don't be one."

The essence of New Orleans is live and let live, which seemingly belies its Catholic roots. Everyone seems to laisser les bon temps rouler. The convergence of many Western cultures over the past few centuries has given the city a distinctly European look and feel. The Spanish gave asylum to the Cajuns fleeing religious persecution by the British in Canada. The Irish took refuge there during the potato famine. German, Italian, African-American, and of course, French influence are evident in the architecture, food, and customs.

Like New York, New Orleans is a walkable city. But maybe we overdid it. By Saturday night, we had walked so much I told Luis I felt like I had polio and scoliosis (or poliosis, as I called it). We spent most of the afternoon in the Garden District, home to some of the most magnificent homes and lush foliage. Anne Rice lives at First and Chestnut, and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has a home there. The strip along Magazine Street is full of antiques and coffee shops. It runs for 6 miles; I think we walked about 4 of them.

I found the mother lode of rare Russel Wright pieces in a store called Cool Stuff. I've been collecting Wright pieces for almost 15 years. The pieces here were from Wright's lesser known Sterling, Harker, and Justin Tharaud designs. Luis said I looked like a kid in a candy store. I ended up buying 20 pieces for a great price.

Bulldog's, a bar with more than 50 beers on draft, is a favorite student hangout and one of the many typical pubs in the Irish Channel section of the Garden District. Most bars have on tap Abita, a local beer brewed in New Orleans that's available in many styles. My favorite was the lager Amber, I'd love to find it somewhere in Brooklyn.

On our last visit to New Orleans, Luis had a meltdown after eating in one too many local greasy spoons. He refused to eat until we went somewhere with cloth napkins. This trip, it was paper napkins all the way. The bartender at Bulldog's recommended Parasol's, an Irish pub a few blocks away. Sure, it was greasy and a little seedy, but the shrimp po'boy (dressed, of course) and hush puppies were very tasty.

The Italianate, Empire, and Gothic architecture along St. Charles Avenue is spectacular when viewed from the St. Charles streetcar, which we rode to its terminus at Canal Street. After all that walking, beignets and café au lait at Café du Monde were the perfect reward.


Luis at Café du Monde after beignetfest

Me inhaling beignets

We walked back toward the hotel, enjoying the cool night, the romance, the feeling that anything could happen. Just then I stepped in a puddle of sick right outside the hotel and slipped.

Big Easy does it

The adoration was cancelled today. We have no idea why. No adoration today. Move along.


Once again, the adoration was cancelled

The crazy long line at Mother's is crazy long for a reason: the food is that good. Since 1938 the New Orleans institution has been serving traditional Louisiana food, including its signature dish, black ham. "When I was younger I looked like Elvis," the greeter at the head of the line said to us as we waited. He pulled out of his wallet a photo of himself. The DA and the cheekbones were similar, but he looked a little more like a young Jason Priestley than a young Elvis.

Mother's other trademark is its biscuit with "debris"--bits of roast beef that fall off the bone as the meat is roasted. Simple scrambled eggs everywhere we had them were consistently firm and delicious.


Mother's knows best

Biscuit with debris

Gambling is legal in Lousiana, and it's no coincidence that Harrah's, New Orleans's only land-based casino, is situated at the foot of the French Quarter. More than 100,000 square feet of blinking lights and clinking machines stretch down toward the river and waterfront shopping. The continuous humming of the slots sounds like the soundtrack to Philip Glass's film Koyaanisqatsi. I lost $40, but Luis quadrupled his initial investment of $5 and cashed out.

The Warehouse District, between the business district and the Garden District, is full of old buildings--mills, bakeries, and warehouses among them--that, as in many post-industrial areas, are being converted to condo lofts. Construction in the area is booming. "For sale" signs appear everywhere. The average price is not cheap, but the spaces are pretty big. A 1500-sq-ft loft in the district goes for about $600,000. At the edge of the Warehouse District is Lafayette Square, a lush oasis in the middle of the government center.


Traditional? Post-modern?

Hugging a lamppost in Lafayette Square

It was cool out, with sporadic rain, but it was still nice enough to take a riverboat cruise on the Cajun Queen up the Mississippi. I think The Cajun Queen himself was narrating the cruise.


A Cajun Queen tiara

His heart will go on

New Orleans doesn't feel like a Southern city, but it does have Southern charm, hospitality, and efficiency. Three places we tried to go to for lunch at 3:00 were closed, so we ate at Clover Grill again, where a creepy waiter tried to hit on Luis. The only French thing the nearby French Market sold was French fries. The flea market sold tourist crap, like mugs and T-shirts; the farmers' market had excellent produce.

Several times we passed the Chris Owens Club on Bourbon Street and got it in our heads that we just had to see her. Most other self-respecting gay men were watching the Oscars--we wanted to see Chris Owens. Chris is a Big Easy legend. performing covers of pop, rock, and country six nights a week since 1967. She looks like she has been done to death, which means she looks fabulous for a 90-year-old--or however old she is. She looks like a cross between Michele Lee and Jocelyn Wildenstein and attributes her youth and vigor to the vegetarian lifestyle. We couldn't wait to see her.

The show was at 10:00. We took a disco nap (remember, we're in our 40s) and woke up at 8:15. We ate a dozen oysters each at Felix's, one of the pair of dueling oyster bars on Iberville Street that recalls the Coke vs. Pepsi debate. If only we could get a dozen oysters (that we wouldn't catch hepatitis from) for $6.50 in New York. At Felix's you make your own cocktail sauce with ketchup, horseradish, and hot sauce. The oysters are smooth and chewy, not briny at all.


Enhancing my sex drive

With minutes to spare, we hurried to the Chris Owens Club for the 10:00 show. It didn't look like anything was happening. Were we in the wrong place? No, the bartender said, Chris had a sore throat and wouldn't be performing again until Thursday. How cruel!

Walking along Royal Street, we admired displays by local artists in gallery windows. George Rodrigue's famous Blue Dog is probably the best known. We discovered that Peter Falk, of Columbo fame, is also an artist.


The artist apparently known as Peter Falk

We couldn't decide whether to have drinks or dessert, so we did both. Café Lafitte in Exile, a gay bar on Bourbon Street, seemed like a retirement home for drag queens (my favorite New Orleans drag name is Blanche Debris) and showed bad 1980s videos. From there we went to the insanely addicting Café du Monde again. I followed Luis's advice of dunking the beignets in the coffee for a better experience. There's so much powdered sugar on the floor it looks like a cocaine cartel exploded.


Uncontrolled substances: beignets and café au lait

Late night at Café du Monde

When we got back to the room and turned on the TV, she was on. Chris Owens. We can't believe we missed her. Cruel, so cruel.

Pearls in the shell

My e-learning conference started bright and early, at 8:00 a.m. Monday. I attended a session on best practices in e-learning design. My favorite course was Design Your Own Planet.

I met Luis late morning at the Old Coffee Pot in the French Quarter for breakfast: ham steak, eggs, and callas (fried Creole rice cakes with pecans, powdered sugar, and honey). Everyone does eggs right here.We walked to Faubourg Marigny, the last of New Orleans's bohemian neighborhoods, on the outskirts of the French Quarter. A bookstore owner lamented the coming of the big box stores and high-rises, something we in Brooklyn can empathize with. Luis walked me back along the riverfront to the convention center to attend another e-learning session.

After the conference we had red beans and rice and oysters at Felix's rival Acme Oyster Bar. We sat at the bar and watched our shucker, Shorty, work. He looked to be having a lot of difficulty prying open his oysters. "Looks like hard work," I said. "It's all about having the right tools," Shorty said. The tools are a sturdy shucking knife and a hard surface against which to anchor the oyster. We liked the oysters here better than at Felix's, but mainly because they were better chilled.

Juicy, lean, mooey, and perfectly charbroiled, the burgers at Snug Harbor Jazz Club are worthy of their "best of" status in New Orleans. But the real attraction was Charmaine Neville, a member of one of New Orleans's first families of music. Her band was kickass, especially drummer Gerald French, also a descended from a long line of jazz greats. Charmaine often pulled out of her bag various percussive instruments--sleigh bells, a cowbell, and our favorite, a tambourine. It would be interesting to hear a duet between her, who sounds like Nina Simone, and her high-pitched brother Aaron.

Another clue

After my Tuesday morning sessions, I retrieved my voice mail. A message from Luis. He was working in the café in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton. "I'm very excited! You'll never guess who's ordering coffee at the counter...Peter Falk!" I wish I had been there to see him. Luis said that Falk said hello to him when he left, maybe because he knew he had been recognized.

Lunch was at Commerce Restaurant, an unassuming neighborhood diner known for its home cooking. The shrimp po'boys (dressed, of course) were gigantic and amazingly delicious, not greasy or fishy.

I had some time before my next conference session, so we took the St. Charles streetcar uptown and walked around Maple Ave, off the campuses of Tulane and Loyola. We had coffee at PJ's, New Orleans's counter to Starbuck's, then took the bus down Magazine Street to the Convention Center in time for afternoon sessions.

Dinner was mighty fine gumbo and the Lousiana sampler (red beans and rice, jambalaya, and shrimp creole) at Quarter Scene on Dauphine and Dumaine, a charming, quiet restaurant away from the pukey, tata-baring madness of Bourbon Street. After dinner we strolled (well, more like power minced) along the riverfront and got an assortment of chocolate, vanilla, rum, and coconut pralines at Praline Connection, which I didn't find terribly good.

Six feet over

"Guess what?" Luis said when I met him after my Wednesday morning sessions. "I saw Peter Falk again, this time in our hotel." We had a late breakfast at Clover Grill. Earl was there. "Can I take a picture of you?" a waifish girl asked. "Sure, honey," Earl said, smiling for the camera. "I just thought it was better to ask," she said. "Oh, baby, it's always better to ask, but it's OK if you didn't because I didn't do nothing wrong."

After breakfast we took the St. Charles streetcar to Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, the setting of many of Anne Rice's novels. Many of the largely above-ground tombs date from the mid- to late 19th century. The tombs are above ground because of New Orleans's high water table. Many of the graves have been vandalized and destroyed and are being restored under the sponsoship of a group called Save Our Cemeteries. Each tomb appears to house a lot of bodies, and we wondered how they all fit in there when it looks like there is room for only two. Once a person is buried, a tomb is not opened for at least another year, allowing time for the body to decompose. The door to the tomb is marked with the date the tomb was last opened. After the allotted time, the remains of the previous corpse are separated from the casket, the casket is discarded, and the remains are spread on the ground within the tomb to make room for the next body. That's how so many bodies are able to fit in one tomb.

Each tomb has a hidden story that allows the imagination to run wild. I expected to see mostly French names, but there were a lot of Germans, Italians, and Irish as well. A number of tombs bore names of children, sometimes several to a family, who apparently were stillborn or died of a disease such as yellow fever. One tomb had a bottle of Pernod placed directly in front of it. Another simply said "Born."

One of the most popular tombs among gay men, who sip champagne in front of it in tribute, is dedicated to destitute orphan boys.

Lagniappe

With a little time to kill before heading to the airport, we ended the trip at Acme Oyster Bar. We ordered a dozen and a half between us, but our shucker threw in two extras for us on the house. Our shucker said he shucks about 4 to 5 thousand oysters during an average 7-1/2-hour shift. "Isn't that incredible?" said the guy sitting next to me, who was from Pennsylvania. I nodded. "This is one of my favorite places in the world." "Acme?" I said, "or New Orleans?" "Well, both. This place has the best oysters...and you can drink and smoke anywhere." He launched into a reverie about his halcyon days of drinking and smoking, and he wasn't that much older than I. "I remember when you used to be able to drink with a bottle in your car," he said. "Really?" I said facetiously, "You know, there are always those irresponsible people who ruin it for everyone else." "True," he said wistfully.


Gotta have junk in your trunk to drink them

In New Orleans you don't need cloth napkins to have a good time, just a good attitude.