New Orleans

After an intoxicating year and a half avoiding the Twenty-first century’s Black Death, I got tired of sheltering in my holocaust robe and subsiding on woke MRE’s (Vegan sushi, sour grapes, and vaccines,) and fear. I decided that I had to get out of here. And go SOMEWHERE!

That somewhere was New Orleans.

I’ve always wanted to see the Big Easy. A town that was populated by paying French prostitutes to go there and settle down is just too good to be true. This was last July, not the optimal time to visit the City That Never Sobers-Up. But I was desperate to get out of town. If just for a few days. I checked out some YouTube videos on NOLA, found out what to avoid, where to go, what to eat, and what’s historic. I bought a one way ticket from Tampa to Louie Armstrong International Airport. Just in case I wanted to stay longer. Or shorter.

I reserved a room in a youth hostel called City House New Orleans on Burgundy Street. It was a block away from Canal street and near the Museum of Death. What’s not to like? I downloaded the Regional Transit Authority app and purchased a 30 day geriatric RTA Jazzy Pass that would allow me unlimited access to streetcars, busses, and ferries in and around the city. (Um. Jon, buddy? I think they’re called ‘senior passes’ not ‘geriatric passes?’ Yah, sure. And I’m ‘Dr. Facilier.’)

I won’t go into intense detail about the visit. I was not at all disappointed. In fact, I extended my stay at the hotel a few more days. A city bus brought me from the airport to Canal street. Along the way I had a nice chat with a couple visiting from Georgia. The youth hostel was almost empty, clean, and the staff, when I saw them, courteous. Of course, I did what I usually do in a new place. I walked. Used the local transport. Got lost. Asked for directions. Had people approach me and ask if I needed help when I was particularly lost looking. And got to know the city.

The RTA app is infuriating. It’s often wrong. I would type in that I want to get to, say, Marie Laveau’s Museum of Voodoo and Sunbathing, and it would show me the destination and which line, streetcar or bus, stopped there. Great. Now show me the stop closest to me so I can get on said streetcar or bus. Nope. If I instead looked for the nearest station to me, it might not be for the line I want.

Great. Schrödinger’s Bus Schedule. You can know where you are or where you are going, but not both.

Speaking of Marie Laveau… One walking tour was with a Vodu priest named Robi (Note: Voodoo only exists in Hollywood.)  He was a card and a full deck at the same time. He let me video his tour and I have it on my YouTube channel (Yes! I have a YouTube channel!) I’ll just say that we ended at the location of Marie Laveau’s house, long gone. The house, that is. Well, Marie, too. When she died and the locals examined her house, they found a secret passageway underneath that lead to another building nearby. She was instrumental in an underground railroad that transported slaves away from the sugar plantations and as far away as Canada. And, well. You know. If some nigga disappears…, them alligators in the bayou leave no scraps. All that BS about Voodoo priestess and horror-magic that Marie Leveau practiced on the unwary was a scam to keep people from looking too deeply into what she was really doing in helping her fellow slaves get to freedom.

I love a woman who can manipulate the clueless. And there are none more clueless that they who know.

One walking tour was for adults only. That allowed our guide to go into the more seamy (there is a less seamy?) side of NOLA. From Alistair Crowley to Casket Girls to Al Capone and the prostitute named Brick. She was a kicker. She had startling red hair which she put up in a bun, which made it look like she had a brick on top of her head. New Orleans, like every other port city from Shanghai to San Francisco, had an influx and outflow of sailors who had been on the celibate seas for months and were looking to dock their cargo in port. Brick is thought to have murdered one for sure, three more probably, and suspected of several dozen more. Don’t dick with Brick.

I went on a jazz cruse. Took the ferry across the river. Rode a streetcar to a cemetery with a ‘Weeping angel’ in it. I made sure to maintain eye contact. Took a boat ride into the bayou. Alligators love marshmallows, don’t you know. And did a lot of walking around the French Quarter, of course. Did a self-guided audio walking tour of the Garden district. Marvelous how the lives of the ne’er do well pale before the e’re do well in society. Smashed my cell phone on the street pavers. Oops. Is there an at&t store around here? Make sure you have an alternate thinking machine with you wherever you go. I had my tablet in the hotel as backup.

There was one thing I wanted to do. That was to buy something local. Most of the gift shops in the French Quarter are owned by one of about five families and all of the merch is made in China. I wanted to get something authentic. So on my last day there I found a little shop far away from Bourbon street that sold the usual trinkets and geegaws. And masquerade masks.

“I am looking for something that is made by a local artist,” I said to the sales woman. “Do you have things that are made by local artisans? I’d like to support local talent.”

“Yes,” she replied. “These masks on the wall are made by me or by the owner.”

“Wonderful,” I said. I peered around the walls, flitting from mask to mask, my eyes finally settling on one garish Mardi Gras celebration of life. It was decorated in peacock feathers around the cheeks and nose, felt, pearls and sequins, and plumes of larger feathers radiating outward from the eye sockets that bore into you.

“Perfect,” I said. I had her ship it to me.

“How do I protect such a beauty?” I mused, once I got back home. “It comes from New Orleans. It represents a gaiety of spirit bristling in a world of pain,” I thought. The mask was just too lovely and fragile and fleeting, “Like a brass band on Bourbon street with the street sweepers bringing up the rear and the dawn behind them.” Another day always follows the last.

“Well, it needs a shadow box.” I thought. “Of…, cedar? Live Oak? Some wood native to New Orleans? No, those don’t do it. What does tribute to the memory of Brick and Marie Laveau? Or Robi, my new Vodu priest friend? Robi is not from New Orleans. “There are no more legitimate Vodu priests in New Orleans,” Robi told us on the tour. “Just imposters.” Robi comes from the Bayou outside of NOLA.

“Ah! Of course.” I realized. “The bayou! The tree clogged swamps surrounding the Mississippi river!” I decided to make my case out of Cypress.”

I found a lumber yard near me that had native Cypress. “Can you tell me where this came from?” I asked. “Since we wholesale it from a distributer we can’t tell for sure.” “OK,” it would have been nice to know exactly where it came from. “But,” she continued. “We can say for certain it is from between New Orleans and Florida and even as far north as Delaware.” “Delaware?” “Well, some. But most likely it was harvested in Florida.”

Florida. OK. That’s good.

I bought some Cypress boards and built a display case for my Mardi Gras mask. It reminds me of Brick and Robi and Marie Laveau. Of the streetcars and the friendly people I met on the sidewalks and the gumbo and the riverboat jazz musicians and the alligators snapping at marshmallows hung overboard by the bayou swamp boat captain. Of the New Orleans RTA official who helped me find the right street car to where I was going.

And of the beautiful city betwixt the lake and the river that is New Orleans.