Wandering Through New Orleans

A trip to New Orleans can be many things; refreshing, exciting, dismal, confusing, joyous, frightening, enlightening. It is a city of many shades, of many colors. I've been there before, I've just gone again, and these are some of the things that I've seen.

PDX to MSY. Never a direct route. You've got to deal with connections. Fortunately on the way there, there was only one. I'd stayed up the night before my early flight due to the excitement of departure, a touch of cocaine, and to catch up on some research. Ileana and I caught the MAX around five am, got to the airport, breezed through security, and had a non-impressing breakfast at the "franchised" Rogue Ales pub before boarding the flight. After a drowsy three hour flight we arrived in Minneapolis. It's quite the airport they have there. It's a journey travelling between gates and like a mall in between. We had a quick bite and a drink at the local TGI Fridays before boarding the next flight. Then another drowsy mid-air interlude before entering Jefferson Parish on the outskirts of New Orleans. We opted out of a cab to take the E2 busline into the city proper. A forty minute bus ride with marginal criminals down Airline Hwy out of Jefferson Parish through Metaire into New Orleans. We get off Mid-City, and walk ten minutes through a post-apocalyptic neighborhood to our new temporary residence at India House. After the dumb clerk checks us in, she takes us up to our room in the adjacent building, and it looks like a fucking crackhouse, which it probably was right before they purchased it. Since such a room provides no reason to be in it but to sleep, we promptly got the fuck out of there and took the streetcar south down Canal St. and went into the French Quarter. Then we walk. Hustlers, drunks, whores, tourists; the usual mix of Quarter goers. We start drinking. I think we ate.

When I remember again we end up at Lafitte's Blacksmith for drinks. Which is a cool little spot near the end of Bourbon St., out of the tourists reach. The place is lit only by candles and the drinks are stiff, probably not far off from the way it was there a hundred years ago. Afterwhich, we take a walk down Frenchman to check out some of the bars. We pop into some bar near the end of Frenchman with free drinks and a laundromat in it; we become embroiled in some conversation with an Irishman and a Brooklynite. We then loop around down Decatur to see more. End up on Bourbon, you always end up on Bourbon. We go into this club called Utopia, meet a couple of newlyweds, and the woman hits on me. We meet Evan the bartender, he tells us about the Limelight Lounge, a locals spot that we'll end up frequenting. End of the night out, we eat cheap burgers at Krystal's and catch a cab back to India House.

Back at India House, we wander down to the commons area outside and drunkenly talk to some of the other hostel guests. We briefly talk about going back out to Bourbon, but plans fall through. And there's no drink left, so I start wandering around Mid-City looking for beer, booze or whatever. All I find is a seemingly open gas station with no one in it, cops, criminals, and crackheads. No drink, no nothing. I go back to my rat infested room and talk with Ileana in bed until we pass out, and another day comes.

We wake up the next day and it's raining. We leave the shit eternal rain of Portland, and it's gotta fucking rain down there during our short stay. Anyways, she likes touristy stuff, so I take her down the Riverwalk. I show her the fountain, the Missisippii, and we breeze through the shitty mall over there with all the silly Cajun knick-nacks. Leaving there, we walk through the Magazine distict. She's hungry, grumpy, and walking is not her thing; so I hear shit all the way to the Quarter until we reach Bacco's for lunch. Bacco's is a cool spot though, good New Orleans food, a ten cent martini special for lunch, and all in all classy place; if you believe that. It only buys me a few minutes of peace though. I guess when you're an angry woman, there's always something to fight about. So we leave. We hit a bar on Decatur. I try to break the ice, and am only somewhat successful. So we just go to the Canal Shoppes and watch a movie to pass the time. Sometimes all you need is some quiet time to kill the hate. After the flick we hopped the street car back uptown and got changed for the night.


So we dressed up in our shitty rat-fuck of a hostel room. I mean why would we even bother to get dressed up in this shitty room in this shitty city. I guess it was because we were going to Emeril's place NOLA. So we head back down to the Quarter, and it's early so we hit Utopia, kill time, down and out, I run around to other places, it's beat... We head to NOLA. The food was exquisite, except for the St. Louis ribs that I ordered. Ok, shit, I mean, fuck. You know, what the fuck. Wait, now, I think I have this all mixed up. I believe there was an earlier interlude before all of this where we wandered down the streets in the rain; pouring rain you know. We ducked into the W Hotel and headed up to the rooftop for a drink, which was somewhat pleasant, albeit it was an $8 Irish coffee, but then we sauntered into the Harrahs on the south end of Canal and paced through the casino a couple of times before giving up on the cliched American dream, well at least I did; I think she kinda liked it, or was at least willing to make the best out of it, which I was not.

After dinner we wandered around Bourbon St. for awhile before making our way over to the Limelight Lounge. The area was quiet with an air of danger due to its proximty to Rampart. The bar was almost empty too, but we went in anyway. We hung around for awhile, drinking, reading, and making friends with everyone inside. The owner was real cool and we talked for awhile. Then we met Louis, who we would be good friends with for the rest of our stay. Louis, an older man, a real New Orleans native, would be our confidante and guide for the next few days.

... having a lot of trouble remembering details, the longer I wait, the worse it gets, i'll try to finish this someday...

. bourbon. utopia. tipitinas. limelight. louis, vance, evan, tash, monkey.. lucky dog, astro, metarie, laura, rbar, french market, buffets, muffaluttas, remoulades, st charles, parades, tulane, uptown, jaques-imos, missippi, ghettos, dreads. walgreens.

[Blurry--Finished Another Time]