The hot dog's answer to turducken.

Boudin.

I think I've found the perfect New Orleans hot dog.  It didn't come from a Lucky Dogs cart in the quarter.

I was patrolling down St. Roche Avenue around lunchtime and spied a cart in the neutral ground.  I felt a little gnawing in my middle and the smell from the cart tempted me to stop.  I'm glad I did.

The proprietor served me a wiener that sums up New Orleans. It was over the top in it's meat-centricity and reliance on local cuisine.  Allow me to paint you a picture...

Your typical American hot dog:

It didn't look anything like this.

The man handed me a half a baguette in which was sandwiched a frankfurter.  He dressed it with a butter knife slathered with coarsely ground mustard.  On top of that he added a generous layer of shredded roast duck.  The juice out of the duck drenched the bread.  "Would you like some holy trinity with that?" he asked.  I assented and he dipped a spoon into a chaffing tray and ladled the sandwich with a confit of simmered bell pepper, onion and celery, better than any pickled relish.

That was one succulent dog.  Price: $5.50.  With a soda and small bag of chips: $6.50.

I asked why he didn't use boudin.  "Boudin is too expensive.  The duck drives the price up enough as it is.  I use Nathan's franks and they match the duck well enough.  Boudin would be too rich."  Words after my own heart but I don't doubt that many of his patrons wouldn't mind biting into a rich pork and pork liver sausage for lunch.

As it was, it was a meal that stuck with me and repeated itself all day.  Much better than the fare at Lucky's which I tend to toss in the trash after a few bites as money wasted.

A summary of New Orleans' hot dog market.  Here's another (each sentence in this paragraph is a link)!  Here's how they do it in Boston. 

New Orleans is not a hot dog town.  This gent's on the right track to make it one.  Just add duck.

Storyland in City Park

This is the 900th post on this blog.  That's a lot of bytes. 

With the amount of ink that's been spent trying to describe New Orleans, you would think the whole city would be referred to as Storyland.  In fact, Storyland is a special nook in City Park dedicated to bringing children's stories to life, or at least to three dimensions.  It is full of whimsical statues brightly painted.  Today's photos were taken the other night during Celebration in the Oaks.  There are twenty-five exhibits.  

Pinocchio atop the whale, a particular favorite of mine.

Though I am 45 years old and have little patience for children (though that's changing the older I get), I have a fascination for toys and cartoonish things.  I have no patience for Sponge Bob or whatever is popular now but, as someone who loves old things, I find a stroll through Storyland charming.

I may be crotchedy but I am also whimsical, subsisting on a steady diet of daydreams and poppycock (a word with very off-color Latin roots).  I am an honorary citizen of the Land of Cockaigne, having spent many an idyll on Rock Candy Mountain.

 Of particular interest to me was this frog.  An exact replica of the one in the Ryan Playground in my beloved Dorchester, Mass. the biggest and best part of Boston.  

I spent many a moment with this frog's Bay State twin.  It was the only sculpture in the park, tucked away in a corner painted an identical shade of green.  When I eventually move into my new home I hope to find two siblings to guard my front door.  I will call them Patience and Fortitude in honor of a couple of lions I know.  

Speaking of moving, there seems to be some kind of snafu (another word with off-color roots, these an acronym) at City Hall.  I read about this in the paper a week or so ago, so I expected it.  No one knows when the closing will take place because there is some trouble researching the deeds and conveyances.  I'm told few things go smoothly in New Orleans unless you get involved with your City Councilperson.  I don't know about that and I prefer to think things will work out for the best.  After all, I'm a citizen of Cockaigne, expecting freshly baked pies to fall off of trees and fully cooked pigs running around with a knife in them, offering an easy slice of ham as they pass.

A salute to Dorchester, Massachusetts!

You may think you've never heard of Dorchester, but you have.  It's Boston.  To those who live there, it's called Dot for short.  It is Boston through and through, more Bostonian in many ways than downtown.

It's not the North End where Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day.  It's not the part where Mystic River was filmed (though much of it looks like that).  It's not where Bunker Hill is or where Paul Revere set off on his midnight ride.  The Boston Pops don't play in Dot.  It's not where a lot of tourists go unless they are visiting the JFK Presidential Library.  Some tourists visit.  They are either the smart ones or the ones who leave from the wrong side of the JFK/UMASS T station.  Either way, they enter the best part of Boston and when they get back on the Red Line they don't see Boston the same way again.  They have seen its true, better nature.

Dorchester is the biggest of Boston's neighborhoods, some people (present company included) say it's the best.  I lived in Dot for three years and I wouldn't trade those years for the world wrapped with a ribbon.   Plenty happens in Boston...plenty, but much of it involves college students and professors, scientists, doctors, engineers, politicians.  Dorchester life is the common life sprinkled with the kind of minor miracles that make it a pleasure to get out of bed.  A neighborhood of neighborhoods in a city of neighborhoods, everyone is pleasant, they get to know each other and they work together to make a livable place enjoyable for a few blocks or a few miles as far as the eye can see.

Ethnicities rub shoulders and elbows and jowls and bellies in Dot.  If there is any friction, it is smoothed by common courtesy and cordiality.  Bad manners have no place in Ashmont, the Polish Triangle, Lower Mills, Codman Square, Upham's Corner, or at Port Norfolk.  If there is a circle, it is the gravitational orbit that centers around where the Neponset River empties into Dorchester Bay.

Despite the impression of rampant gang warfare and weekly shoot-'em-ups you may cull from the daily newspapers, Dorchester is an overall peaceful and congenial place in which to raise a family and spend a lifetime.  Generations have done it.  A few bad apples can't spoil a bushel or a barrel filled with golden eggs, none of those rotten.

Big things are afoot in Dorchester.  It is a part of Boston where things happen under the radar while regular citizens reap the rewards, spin filigree from flax, glean kernels from chaff, and chafe at a bum rap, all the while getting along, getting ahead, getting together, and having a good time.  Loving one's neighbor is easy in Dorchester and the high proportion of churches ensures it is a chaste affection exchanged between passing pedestrians.  Playgrounds are populated with well behaved, impish scamps who don't know the word "truant."  They scamper about harmoniously with a twinkle in their eyes, bright smiles, and evident good breeding, respect for others, and a sense of fair play.

There are worse parts of Boston than Dot, much worse.  If there are better parts, that's a matter of mistaken opinion.  If you are thinking of moving to Boston, talk to your realtor about Dorchester.  Don't believe the nay-sayers, distrust the haters.  Visit yourself, walk the streets, witness the camaraderie and kindesses and civic pride that is on display.  Walk into the shops, witness the landscape, the streetscape, the peoplescape.  Say hello.  Introduce yourself.  Ask yourself, "Can I picture myself living here the rest of my life?"  When you ask yourself this question, after plumbing the reaches of your soul's needs and measuring the existential bounds of what makes a good life, the answer can only be, "Yes.  I can."  

Thanksgiving comes first!

In a city in which Mardi Gras is the major holiday, the others seem like an afterthought.  I haven't heard anyone mention X-mas or July 4th or any of the other major holidays.  In New England, these and Thanksgiving are the big ones.  Independence Day is the big civic holiday.

I mentioned that I had made reservations for Thanksgiving, not having any family here, and the person I was speaking to said she was surprised I didn't just order a prepared meal for home.  In fact, I said I was in Zara's Supermarket on Prytania Street yesterday and saw they were selling a turkey dinner but it included a can of cranberry sauce and I would rather make my own.  "Oh really?!" she sniffed as if that's something unheard of here.  I did see bags of cranberries labeled as "fresh" in quotation marks at Zara's (celebrating 70 years in business).  The quotation marks around "fresh" gave me pause.  Were they previously frozen?  Leftover from last year and stored in the back until this Thanksgiving season?  I'll probably buy some in the next week, cook down a batch of too much sauce and freeze what's extra.  What difference does it make?  I must admit it will seem odd to have such a New England food, a taste of the old Cap Cod cranberry bogs.  I think I've read that Wisconsin is the #1 cranberry-producing state now.

All of this is neither here nor there.  The real news is that X-mas decorations have been hung on Canal Street...before Thanksgiving!

The first picture on this post is a little out of focus but it reflects what Canal Street looks like at 6:00 in the morning.  This second one is a little dark for noon.  It was a brilliantly bright day today in the 70s.  I understand Connecticut has already seen snow.  It is the middle of November and, while I have worn a sweater on some nights, I haven't had to break out a coat.

It's odd to see wreaths and artificial pine wrapped around the light poles in this semi-tropical weather.  The natives tell me not to be surprised if we see snow.  I was talking to a local who had visited Boston in August. "Man!" he said, "It was cold at night!  Even in August!"  Yup.

One last picture of Canal Street in the morning, this time in focus:

Then again, maybe not.  It's very pretty but somehow lights on a palm tree don't really say X-mas to me.  Besides, blue and gold aren't X-mas colors; they're Navy colors.  I have learned thought that purple and yellow are LSU colors.  At least whoever is in charge of holiday decorating didn't go that route.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  It's a week away and then we can think about Christmas with a clear conscience.
-WK

Link is mod

Odds and ends today.  Plenty happened but it was all off the record.  Instead, we bear witness to the Rose Tavern which is no longer in business though it looks like good times were had there for many a year.  I'm not clear in which neighborhood this lies.  I think of it as Broadmore but I only have a vague idea of Broadmore's boundaries.  It is in a self-contained knot of streets hard by Xavier University where President Obama spoke a month or two ago.  It could be part of Hollygrove.

Here's a close-up of the sign:

"Home of the Original Calliope High Steppers."  I don't know if the Calliope High Steppers are still doing whatever it is they did or where they call home now that the Rose Tavern is obviously out of commission.  Odd bits of tantalizing, off-the-record history abound in New Orleans.  

New Orleans is steeped in its own broth.  It is hip in a way Miles Davis was hip, like Louis Armstrong was hip, like William Burroughs was hip.  It is home to a gaggle of hipsters now spread all over the city but concentrated, it seems in the Bywater neighborhood.  New Orleans is not mod.

This picture is a recommended link.

There's been a lot of good writing about the kinds of topics I enjoy.  Here is a Boston-based example.  This is the kind of story I like to tell, a real stinker.  My ears are bent and my eyes are open in the Crescent City on the prowl for material. 

Hot dogs or turducken?

Open 24 hours a day

There is no more beautiful sight than Bud's Broiler, especially in the wee, small hours of the morning.  Located up by City Park, about a half hour from my humble abode by bicycle, this is the place that robbed me of my chance to meet President Obama.  I didn't really mind.  While I'm not a hamburger fan, Bud's serves a hot dog unlike any other in the Crescent City.  Cut in quarters with barbeque sauce on a hamburger bun, it a treat.

Not having any family in New Orleans we are looking for a place to have Thanksgiving dinner.  I figure Bud's is a good choice if they are open Thanksgiving Day.  I'll have to make a trip after work; their website doesn't say.

Not that I think a hot dog meal will go down well with the lady of the house.  She's got something else in mind....

New Orleans, Excelsior!

George' Bank herring from off the coast of Canada...

George's Bank is located off the coast of New England.  It is a fabulously fertile fishing ground that gave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts one of its symbols, the Sacred Cod that hangs in the Statehouse.  Can a cold water fish really be at its best when dressed in Louisiana spices?  Some would say yes.  I like to think so.

I was born and raised in Connecticut, a small state many people confuse with a city in Ohio when I travel cross-country.  Whether they it is Cleveland or Cincinnati or whether they there really is a Connecticut, OH, I've never bothered to ask.  Ohio was once a part of Connecticut's Western Reserve, but that is a story for another day.

As I discussed yesterday, I have lived in a number of cities and I would like to spend today's post discussing why I feel New Orleans is best.

Culture clash in New Orleans

When worlds collide...

I've lived in New Orleans since June 9th this year.  That makes four and a half months.  I can't say anyone has been anything but gracious and welcoming.  I can't say anything but that I find New Orleans the most wonderful city I have ever lived in.  To recap my history, I have called the following places home:

New Orleans Mass Transit

A certain European I know likes to say there is no mass transit in New Orleans.  I point out that there are plenty of bus lines and three street cars.  Her reply?  "I think of mass transit as being faster than driving."

While I disagree with the semantics, I do agree with the aesthetics.  In order to be more tempting than propelling yourself by whatever means, public transportation should be more convenient.  Mind you, this is someone who takes the Riverfront street car line to cross the quarter while I forget it even exists.  The Riverfront Line is faster than walking from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue even if you don't catch it on time.

A bus will never be faster than a bicycle unless the bus doesn't have any stops.  RTA buses have stops, plenty of them, most people pay cash with wrinkled, dirty dollars bills the machines can't read.  The buses can take circuitous routes.  I have nothing against a bus.  It just isn't a way to get anywhere in a hurry.

The same can be said of the street cars.  They stop for traffic lights and their tracks can be blocked by cars crossing over.  I understand New Orleans can't have a subway because of the expense of burying a tunnel in mud, but in a city with so many elevated highways on which no commuter pays a fare or a toll, why not an elevated street car line that would zip over traffic and everyone boarding would have already paid before entering the train?

I'm happy enough to take my bicycle anywhere, but for long trips a limited access train would be a nice way to connect the far-flung parts of the vast city of New Orleans and knit it together even more.  While the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority may be too safety-conscious, it does a good job of keeping a dense city connected with all its component parts.

Mass transit is a vital part of New Orleans' civic life and it is a popular tourist attraction and service.  It isn't really a part of the city's identity.  Aside from the three street car lines, every city has mass transit buses and buses are considered the bottom rung on the ladder of options to get around.  Even walking is higher in the hierarchy.

I can't seem to post an image at the moment so I will direct you here, to this link of the Boston transit map that also includes the major bus lines.  The name of the map's code is "subway-spider jpeg."  That's aptly descriptive.  NORTA doesn't publish anything as elegantly simple and certainly not anywhere on signs where the public can read it on the hoof for direction and bearings.

Even with four lines that are composed of tunnels, elevated lines and street-level trolleys, Boston's MBTA is iconic.  It's abstract map arranges how people visualize the city's layout and it is visible throughout the system for reference and reinforcement.  New Orleans doesn't have such a far-reaching or comprehensive system in terms of visibility.

This article isn't a complaint, just a review of different ways of doing business with different expectations.  The MBTA's jurisdiction extends to all the communities around Massachusetts Bay, not just Boston.  NORTA's jurisdiction ends at city limits.  As far as I can tell, only one Jefferson Parish bus connects New Orleans to the airport.

Good customer gets feather in cap

I went to Meyer the Hatter at lunch yesterday.  I have enough hats, so I wasn't in the market for another proper topper.  I just needed some new feathers for my fedoras.  The South's Largest Hat Shop has a box on the counter toward the back with a selection of feathers for sale at 35 cents each.  They are a three feather affair, wide in the back, more narrow in the middle, and the front feather is a little, flourish-y tendril in a contrasting color.

I went in and there were five other customers and three staff.  The customers were trying on hats and asking questions.  The youngest of the hatters asked me if I needed help and I replied, "No, I'm just here for feathers."  I pawed through the box, careful not to crimp the merchandise and picked two hand-bound feather confection as artful as a trout fly and as dashing as one of Fred Astaire's handkerchiefs.

When I made my way to the register, a hatter was waiting for me with a small paper bag.  "That will be 70 cents plus tax," he said.  I apologized for my "whopping purchase."  "You came in and you knew what you wanted, knew where it was, and bought it.  That kind of customer is a luxury we don't often have here.  Come back anytime," he replied.

Being right off Canal Street, I suppose the staff at Meyer's is used to gawkers who take up their time without spending any money.  The staff is gracious and attentive regardless though they aren't quick to make eye contact.  They've been around a long time and know that sales will be made for their specific niche products eventually.  The same was true of the curmudgeons at L.J. Piretti in Boston.  The same was true of Parade News at 68 State Street, New London, Connecticut, about the only shop of interest that sold sundries and magazines and cigars a block from the ferry and train station.

What?  No Magazine Street photo?  Pshaw.  Here you go:

We've got one more sign to go until this series crosses the street and doubles back.  Pshew!

Boston pizza vs. New Orleans pizza

Still on the same block of Magazine Street.  With a few interuptions, I started this photo series weeks ago.

While I lived in Boston I worked in the Longwood Medical Area.  I was reminded of it while looking at the picture here.  In just a few blocks of each other are Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Dental School, and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.  New England Baptist Hospital is a few blocks away at the very top of the hill.  I'm probably leaving something out.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I enjoyed walking across the lawn of Harvard Medical School on Louis Pasteur Avenue to get to work.  Beautiful building.  No point in linking to where I said it before since I just said it again.

Boston is a bigger city, of course, but I am struck by the concentration of biomedical technology and research and healthcare delivery in the city.  New Orleans is trying to build the infrastructure to be a hub of this, but I suspect this will just attract a sliver of the pie in this direction.  There may be state aid but there won't be the economy of scale.  Of course, if the state and city didn't encourage biotech they would be accused of missing the bandwagon on this trend.

Also in the Longwood Medical Area are seven pizzerias.  New Orleans isn't a pizza town.  You can buy a pie but I don't any shops selling pie by the slice.  Nobody walks around nibbling one.  Where I come from we call it pizza pie.  I haven't eaten much pizza in New Orleans but I haven't had a bad pie yet.  I've only been to two pizzerias and both were better than your average New England pie.

I'm not going to drone on about pizza today.  If you want to learn more, you can click the "pizza" tag below.  You'll find out all about Boston pizza from whatever comes up.

My favorite so far in New Orleans?  Rocky's.  It reminds of me of when I was a kid in Connecticut.  It is not as good as the best pie in Boston which a trip to our archives will reveal.

America's second-dirtiest city

Sophie Wright,  New Orleans educator.

Travel and Leisure Magazine ranks New Orleans as America's second dirtiest city.  I'm not going to say New Orleans is April fresh and clutter-free.  It isn't.  I've passed through clouds of questionable smells while walking through the French Quarter and other neighborhoods.  They are the kinds of smells you can't put your finger on and wouldn't want to if you could.  These are organic smells, not the industrial or chemical scents that define other cities I've visited.    

Canal Street is clean.  Magazine Street is Clean.  Prytania Street is clean.  Banks Street is clean. There isn't an inordinate amount of litter that I see.  I think the impression of dirtiness comes from the state of disrepair that afflicts the city's architecture.  I can't say that St. Claude Avenue is dirty.  It just doesn't sparkle.  I feel this way about St. Bernard Avenue and Washington Avenue and Freret Street, the whole St. Roch neighborhood, Treme, heck, even the Vieux Carre itself.  It isn't litter, it's just disrepair.  In an old, moist city the decay and peeling paint are inevitable.  Some would say this is part of New Orleans's charm, others would say it indicates a lack of civic pride.

If New Orleans lacks anything, it isn't civic pride.  This is a place that inspires fervent love in its inhabitants.  It does in me and I'm new here.  I'll take any street in New Orleans warts and all over the prim, manicured vistas of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.  Plop me on Jefferson Davis Parkway or any stretch of Broad Street or Chef Menteur Highway and I will find something to catch my eye and someone to talk to.  An entirely different city, New Orleans has the vibe of New York (the dirtiest city on the list).  Everyone is up to something.  They may not be chasing a buck but New Orleanians are engaged with their lives and their surroundings, working to make a mark.

Politics at its best

I'm not tempted to run for office at the moment.  I have no idea of what the lay of the land is here.  If I were though, I would take a page out of this cat's book...


Yep, this ad is from this year.  Hot off the camcorder.  Brilliant.  I'm not familiar with anyone in office at the moment except the mayor but I'm not sure if they are all as squeeky clean as this chap presents himself to be.  One can hope.

WK

The anti-Landrieu

I have no opinions on the website being advertised in the video above.  My interest is on the spokesman. It's Boston's current and longest serving mayor.  I've watched this four times and I still think he's saying "George Washington dot com."

He seems to be an able, if uninspiring, manager.  He is always out and about and his name is plastered everywhere.  He must have some asset to make up for his lack of charisma but in three years I was never able to observe it.

He's like an anti-Mitch Landrieu, the most telegenic mayor I've ever had the pleasure to see in person.

A tip of the fedora to Universal Hub for the clip.  Read the local Bostonian comments here.

College Town

I noticed a change in the social climate in New Orleans at the end of August if not the temperatures.  College students began appearing in the places I was spending my time.  It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't the most welcome change in season.  I just moved from Boston, a city which, along with Cambridge right next door, is home to 30 colleges and universities.

I find New Orleans' college students tolerable.  Of course, they are obnoxious and lacking social skills but compared to what I'm used to they are a bearable number.  I don't often go out late at night to their haunts.

For our viewing pleasure from Boston's Improv Asylum, a view of the drama that unfolds every school year in Bean Town.  Same issues at Tulane, I'm sure.



I haven't counted how many colleges are in New Orleans.  I assume Loyola, being Jesuit, is rather tame. Xavier is another Catholic school.  There are two seminaries that I know of, I can't imagine these are party schools.

Harvard and MIT aren't known for being particularly rambunctious either.  It's the other institutions of higher learning.    Come to think of it, Boston College is a Jesuit school and Boston University is Methodist.  I guess religious affiliation isn't the proper yardstick to guess the seriousness of the students.

New Orleans Art Market

Our last illustration was from the same shop.  Yes, you can buy a piano on Magazine Street.

The New Orleans Art Market is held on the last Saturday of every month in the Carrollton Park at the end of the St. Charles streetcar line.  Today, of course, is the last Saturday in September and we rode our bicycles to where Carrolton Avenue becomes South Carrollton Avenue, at the intersection with South Claiborne.  It's all very confusing unless you look at a map.  Carrollton Ave. has an excellent bike lane and it is well shaded and you can race the streetcar to the next stop.

The art market is quite extensive.  There were probably 150 artists exhibiting their work.  This isn't museum quality work but much of it is more satisfying than the things you'll find in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in the CBD.  While artists from all over Louisiana and southern Mississippi are invited to participate, locals predominate.

Noteworthy is how much of the art is locally proud.  New Orleanians love their city and they don't seem to be able to get enough of things that express their pride in place.  You can see it in the flags and banners hung outside homes and on the bumpers of cars.  You see tattoos of fleurs-de lis on every city block and it is safe to assume these stand for love of the Crescent City rather than alliance to the Bourbon monarchy.

I work with four women and they all wear fleur-de-lis earrings, a bauble as common as pennies on the sidewalk.  The buckles on my Puritan shoes have fleurs-de-lis on them.  I bought them in Boston to remind me every time I looked down that I would soon be living somewhere else, somewhere far away and more grand.

You can't do wrong doing right.

Art as advertisement.  Magazine Street. New Orleans.

Not every night on the town in New Orleans ends in a dance.  There's plenty of song and syncopation, and sometimes even some tap dancing.  New Orleans isn't synchronized though.  It moves by serendipity.


While in Houston last week, I visited a bar called Sherlock's that the hotel staff recommended.  "They have three floors and it's always busy."  It was a long room in the strip mall that did, in fact, have three rooms connected by a step or two between each.  The music was a combination of canned top 40 hits from the 80s and 90s.  The clientele was a bunch of blowhards in chinos with their oxford shirts unbuttoned and tie-less.  Nobody danced, nobody mingled.  Groups sat at tables to see who could talk the loudest.

There was no there there, just a collection of warm bodies going through the motions and paying their tab as they went.  Houston really put me in a funk that I haven't shaken yet, five days later.

I'm not a talker by nature.  I keep to myself though I love to go out.  The day after I arrived in New Orleans, I went to my usual watering hole and everyone asked where I had been.  I answered simply, "Houston."  Everyone commiserated.  I didn't buy a drink all day.  Sympathetic souls took up a collection.  "This guy just got back from Houston, can you chip into the pool so that he forget the past week?"

It didn't work.  I'm not one to overindulge in Dixie beer or sympathy.  A man's got to do what a man's got to do.  Before last week, the last time I was in Houston was 15 years ago.  I hope it will be more than 15 till I go back.  I'll take New Orleans any day.  Houston may be the 4th biggest city in America in population but it is last in appeal in my book.

If Houston is for you, and no offense to Houstonians, especially those I ran into at Sherlocks, more power to you.  You have more thickly skinned souls than I do.

Thanks to the Institute of Official Cheer for our footage today of what an ideal New Orleans night is like when the stars are aligned.  You won't find that in Space City, Houston's official, apt nickname.

Win free groceries!

Still meandering down Magazine Street in New Orleans.

You can win a year's worth of free groceries by clicking here.  It's not a hoax but a sweepstakes from the "World of Pasta" family of brands.  You don't get food stamps but the first prize winner gets a sweet check for $5,200.  450 runners up will get $100.

You have to name your favorite brand of pasta from a predetermined list.  Unfortunately, Prince spaghetti isn't on the list.  Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day, as everyone in New England knows.


I know Luzanne is tea and Dixie is beer.  Blue Plate is mayonnaise.  I assume Crystal Preserves are jelly.  Is there a New Orleans pasta?

Guess what Juan's Flying Burritos sells.  I'll give you a hint: It isn't flying donkeys.  The shop is very popular.  I haven't tried it so I can't recommend one way or the other.

My camera battery gave out the day I took all these Magazine Street sign photos.  I didn't get halfway through photographing them all and we haven't gotten halfway through the ones I took.  There are that many thriving little storefronts along about three blocks.

And, sorry, I couldn't resist one more:

Magazine Street, New Orleans

Magazine Street.  For the life of me I can't remember what they sell.

I was walking down Magazine Street this afternoon and I noticed an Up in Smoke outlet on the Jackson Avenue intersection.  I hadn't noticed it before.  I am interested in all kinds of smoking products, whether I am interested in smoking them or not.  I just find it interesting that this niche market exists after all the anti-smoking hullaballoo I am used to in New England.  Did you know that in Boston, pharmacies cannot sell tobacco products?  Not only is smoking forbidden indoors, in workplaces, in restaurants, and in bars, it is also forbidden on the outdoor patios of said places.  It makes for an interesting culture as people get up, leave their drinks temporarily behind (no drinking on the street in Boston) and walk half a block to have a cigarette.  The city claims this is good for business.  I have no opinion pro or con but I am happier in New Orleans whether I smoke or not.  Live and let live.

While I doubt Up in Smoke carries the kinds of pipes I'm interested in, the shop is worth an investigation just to make sure.

Anyhow, I don't know if this head shop just opened or if it has been there the whole three and a half months I've been passing the storefront since I've moved here.  That's the thing about New Orleans: the city is so thick with details that it takes repeated exposure for me to notice them all.  This isn't true of just Magazine Street; it is every street.

When I posted the photo above of the next sign on our tour down Magazine Street, I couldn't remember what was in the window.  I still can't though I obviously walked by it today.  I was too busy looking in the Aidan Gill window next door.  See?  This is what New Orleans does.  It captivates your imagine with one facet and then reveals another when you aren't paying attention.  Luckily I have another errand to run in the neighborhood tomorrow.

Cheers,
WK
 

Four days and five nights in Houston

Magazine Street, New Orleans.  I haven't seen anything like this in Houston.  I've seen plenty of Chili's outlets though.

I'm headed home tomorrow afternoon.  It's not soon enough.  Nothing against Houston but it isn't for me.  I've never lived anywhere that is so brand-spanking new and spread out.  Blocks of architecturally unimaginative apartment complexes are punctuated by strip malls and glass office buildings.  Houston architects must all subscribe to the same copyright-free newsletter.  Either that or they got their degrees from a correspondence school.

I've got nothing against the 600-odd square miles that make up Houston.  The city just doesn't charm me.  This is not a coquettish place.  I have no desire to return any time sooner or later.  God bless the people who call this place home.

Everyone complains about the heat.  I've seen people drive a hundred yards to have lunch.  I walk during my lunch hour.  I travelled two miles today in a suit.  Based on the reaction when I returned you would think I walked to the Gulf of Mexico and back.  I have no idea how far I am from the Gulf.  The landscape is generic and without anything I would call a landmark unless you count the Home Depot between my hotel and where I spend nine hours a day watching power point presentations.  It seems to be a city in which imagination slumbers due to boredom.  I know I said I have nothing against Houston.  Let's think of this as a non-judgemental, subjective observation.

People complain of the heat.  As a New Englander from birth, I eat dinner on restaurant patios and the wait staff comments, "You must not mind the heat."  If it's not snowing I'm going to be outside.  The heat is nothing compared to the New Orleans summer I just spent the last three months enjoying.

I'll be happy to be back in New Orleans where places stay open late, the music isn't all pop pap piped over the juke box, where food isn't made in a New Jersey factory and then trucked a few thousand miles for reheating in a chain, commercial kitchen by "chefs" specifically trained in the arts of the convection and microwave ovens.

Ah well, no use crying over a less-than-stellar week.  Looking at the bright side, I have confirmed in my mind that I made the right choice to move from Boston to New Orleans.  I am happy in New Orleans, ecstatic really.  I doubt I would be able to same the same thing after living three months in Houston.  One week in Houston makes me appreciate the three years I spent in Dorchester (Boston's biggest and best neighborhood) which seems like it passed in the blink of an eye compared to this past Sunday night and now.