Adventures in citizenship

I was getting ready to leave Iggy's, on Rampart Street, when the phone rang.  Someone had left their keys behind, and Lyle, the bartender had found them.  He asked if anyone was leaving, otherwise he would have sent the keys in a cab to the Bywater neighborhood to deliver them to their owner.  I was leaving.  Though the Bywater is in the opposite direction of my house, I volunteered.  It wasn't too far out of my way on the motorcycle, and I rarely travel down there, so this instantly qualified as a good deed and an adventure.

"Where is he?" I asked.  "At Markey's.  It's a block uptown from the corner of Desire and Royal Streets," was the answer.  I said I could find it, and I took the keys.  The whole errand took about twenty minutes out of my way, but it was in my way.  It was something I should do.

I went down St. Claude Avenue to Desire.  I turned right and crossed Bourbon, Burgundy (pronounced bur-GUN-dee) and Dauphine (doe-FEEN) Streets until I reached Royal.  I turned right again and found Markey's Bar, which is a long shotgun building that looks, to my eyes, like it should be condemned.  Inside, it was a spotlessly clean showplace that would be a welcome respite for the ruling class in a world-class city, like Indianapolis, or Des Moines, or Chicago.  Gritty on the outside, squeaky clean on the inside.  The kitchen smelled good, but I had already eaten.  I found the keys' owner and delivered them.  "Oh, man, they sent you!  You didn't have to to this, baby," he said.  "Can I buy you a drink?" he asked.  I said no.  I was headed homeways, which is always bestways.

I would never have gone into the Bywater except for this errand.  I discovered this beautiful place, and I passed many that I've ignored in the daylight, but were hopping at night.  It was an adventure, and I saw New Orleans in all its pulsing glory.  I didn't stop for a drink.  I used the restroom, and then left, motorcycling homeways along unfamiliar streets whose names I know well from further uptown.  

A good deed is a good adventure.  That is what people should do every day.  When I got home my wife said I was smiling like a cat who swallowed a canary.  I was.  I still am.  I have been to Markey's.

Moving a New Orleans monument

Doughboys deserve to be remembered.

James R. Schindler of New Orleans makes a good point in a letter in today's Times-Picayune.  He suggests the massive and impressive WWI monument located on Burgundy Street be relocated at the terminus of the new Rampart/St. Claude streetcar line.

While I don't go down Burgundy Street that often, I knew exactly what he was talking about when I read his letter.  While one of the joys of meandering about New Orleans is discovering the memorials tucked away in the neighborhoods, I've always felt (for six or seven months since I discovered it really) that this imposing archway is misplaced in the dense confines of the Bywater.  It deserves some breathing room and it could certainly command the vista of Elysian Fields wide neutral ground.

In his letter, Mr. Schindler suggests that a traffic circle be built at where St. Claude Ave. intersects with Elysian Fields.  I'm not so sure about that proposal.  Something on the scale of Lee Circle would probably involve eminent domain and drive the project over budget.  I also don't know about Mr. Schindler's assertion that it would become the most photographed monument in the city.

Where we do agree is that this monument, supposedly the first permanent memorial for WWI servicemen (and one woman) in the US, deserves more prominence.  What was once known as The War to End All Wars is largely forgotten now since WWII took its place in the popular imagination.  It shaped the modern era in ways we no longer consciously realize.

I would like to add to Mr. Schindler's idea and suggest the statue of the doughboy on Tulane Avenue be also relocated to the Elysian Fields neutral ground, creating a hallowed ground to commemorate those who served in the first total war under modern battlefield conditions.  Along with Louisiana's Civil War Museum and the National WWII Museum, this would be a nice adjunct to how New Orleans honors its veterans .

If you are reading this, Mr. Schindler, let me know what I can do to help.   This is an idea that deserves better than withering away on the editorial page.
WK

New Orleans architecture promotes exercise

It's a fact of life, men can lose weight in a hurry.  Some of them don't gain very much to begin with.  When I lived in Italy for three years (courtesy of the US Navy) I gained twenty pounds.  It took me more than three weeks to lose them on returning to the States, but I've managed to keep them off without too much trouble.  While I am ten pounds heavier than I was two decades ago, I like to think I'm in fighting trim for a desk jockey.

What does this have to do with the price of a Luzianne teabag in New Orleans?  I'll tell you.   During the whole relocation process of moving from apartment to house, we've been eating out a lot.  Not just po'boys at the Parkway Tavern but also pizza at a joint up the street in our new neighborhood.  I stepped on the scale last night and guess what?  I lost a pound.  I credit all the heavy lifting of boxes up the stairs.  That and the fact that a New Orleans house tends to be loooong.  I'm getting my exercise walking from front to back and back again every time I've forgotten what I got up for in the first place.

I've got to ride my bicycle from the Lower Garden District to Faubourg Marigny sometime this week.  That won't really be exercise. New Orleans is so flat, you can't really break a sweat if you ride like I do.  I ride like I write, just meander about hither and yon, take a detour and then double back to stay on course.  It isn't the destination that matters, it is the journey.  I tend to make the most of the spaces in between.

My mother will tell you that even as I child I was one to stop to smell the roses, a regular Ferdinand the Bull as opposed to Taurus (I'm really a Sagittarius, ruled by the loins, born in the Year of the Snake).  Some inclinations are hard to break, more so than habits.

So, fit as a fiddle and sleek as a bowspit, I wander my new neighborhood, chatting up everyone I greet and asking questions only a stranger would ask.  It's a real Nantucket sleigh ride.  They must be thinking,  "Who is this new weirdo who rides a motorcycle in a suit down Ursalines Street?  Will he still be here next week?"  Yes, neighbor, he will.  He lives here for better or for worse.  Probably better.  Nice to meet you!

-WK

New Orleans crime statistics

A cup of Confucius or a cup of commercially mixed Hurricane will do you well when trying to figure out what to make of the crime scene in New Orleans, LA.  I investigated the NOPD's crime map to see how many reported crimes took place within two miles of my new address since June 1.  Answer: Zero.

Not a bad track record.  I can walk Ursulines Street and St. Bernard Avenue without a care in the world. The crime map does offer a caveat, however: "The City of New Orleans makes no representation that the information is accurate, complete, confirmed, investigated, timely, consistent, or correctly sequenced.  Users must not consider the information reliable..."  You agree to this disclaimer before you are allowed to check any statistics, such as they are.

I've been monitoring some internet chatter about a rash of break-ins and attempted rapes and robberies in the 7th and 9th wards, around Marigny-Bywater.  I'm quick to dismiss things as alarmist, especially when reports contain bandanna-masked desperadoes kicking in doors.

If it's not on the crime map and it's not in the Times-Picayune, New Orleans paper of record, how much weight should I place on loose talk heard in the street?

Some young women from the Bywater neighborhood came to view our apartment last night.  We made chitchat while they talked amongst themselves about how much more room this apartment would give them over their current half shotgun.  "Why are moving up here?" I asked.  "Because there's a crime spree in the Bywater and we don't feel safe," they answered in triplicate.

I'm more inclined to trust these ladies' gut instinct than I am to trust a crime map that says no crime, no matter how petty, has not been committed across a vast swath of the city for six months.  No news may be good news but sometimes it's just ignorance forced from above.  I can understand the only city-wide newspaper of national repute not wanting to paint the city with a tarred brush, but withholding news is not a newspaper's mission.

I've been reading the T-P the past few days with more than my usual diligence.  I learned today that the film "Black Swan" deserves only three stars.  "Yogi Bear" got a star and a half.  I haven't read the Lifestyle section yet, just the first section, the metropolitan section, and the lagniappe.  Maybe unsafe conditions are in Lifestyle; it is a city lifestyle issue much more than comic strips advice columns and diet advice.

So, is everything rosy in the Crescent City?  No.  It is a city, no matter what the truth may be, bad things happen, distasteful things, the kind of things people try to protect their children from experiencing.  There is so much good in New Orleans that is leavened by the criminal.  Criminals are everywhere.  That is why we make laws.  Some laws are just, others a nuisance.  Breaking and entering no matter what else follows, is a crime.  This is news that should be counterbalanced and outweighed by the positive happenings in a city as big as this with as big a heart.

The T-P and the NOPD are in cahoots, letting pastel be the shade of the day by omitting details.  They do us a disservice.  I'm not moving away.  I just bought a house because I believe in this city. The administration and the media cheat me of making a responsible decision based on the city's character painted as a whole.  Luckily, I don't rely on the NOPD or the T-P to guide my decisions.  I am alive on the streets, I take the good and the bad, weigh each hand-to-hand like Osiris balancing a feather against a cardiac weight.  New Orleans is good no matter how you describe it, warts and all, every facet, every wrinkle, every pock mark, every scar.

I am happy to live here no matter what I am supposed to know.  I know New Orleans is good and I made the correct decision to plant my roots in the Mississippi mud.  I am home and I raise a toast to the Crescent City.  Long may it thrive.  I am onboard for the journey for the rest of the decades I have left to do the deed.

Ineffable Magazine Street

"The New Orleans that can be described is not the true New Orleans." -paraphrased from the Tao Te Ching.

Millions of people visit New Orleans every year.  They take pictures; they write postcards.  New Orleans has been captured in literature and history books more than many other American cities.  Tourists tramp the streets, ride the streetcars, take the guided tours and wander the neighborhoods by dint of their own intuition often following nothing more than their noses.  Everyone comes away with impressions, only impressions.  New Orleans is too big and varied to be able to pin like a tattered butterfly to admire at your leisure in a box constructed of words.  It is in constant motion, flickering too quickly to capture in one sitting or a week's worth.  When you think you know New Orleans, it surprises you with a different side catching the light.

"Do not confuse the finger pointing at New Orleans for New Orleans." -paraphrased from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps.

The lady of the house and I are moving from one part of New Orleans (the Lower Garden District) to another (Esplanade Avenue).  What these choices of address say about our tastes is immaterial.  Both parts of the city are beautiful in similar ways and they have their admirers for similar reasons.  For myself, I admire all of New Orleans, even the parts closer to Lake Pontchartrain.  While Lakeside and Lakeview, and Pontchartrain Park don't appeal to me personally, they seem more suburban than urban, they have their appeal and it takes more than one kind of housing stock to make up a world-class city.  If New Orleans is nothing else, it is diverse.

The neighborhoods surrounding Esplanade Avenue are very different from the neighborhoods found Uptown.  Things don't seem as... convenient.  Uptown has two strengths going for it (more than two but these are the ones that attract me and the ones that made us consider Uptown first before settling on our future address).

Firstly, I am a big fan of the St. Charles Avenue streetcar.  I am a big fan of mass transit.  We took the streetcar yesterday, on Thanksgiving, when, because of the holiday it was running on its Sunday schedule.  What's the St. Charles' Sunday schedule?  The same as every other day.  I wrote yesterday how much I enjoy hearing the streetcar grind its way through the night, all night.  I'll miss that on Esplanade which, like much New Orleans, is served by bus.

Secondly, I will miss Magazine Street and I am not the only member of the King household who will.  Magazine Street has spoiled us.  It holds everything a body or soul could want. We both travel down Magazine Street every day and we still discover things we never knew were there before.  Between June 9 and November 26, we both have the same impression of Magazine Street:  it is a bottomless well, a inexhaustible cornucopia, a miraculous wine jug that always has a few swigs left no matter how much a thirsty person gulps.

Magazine Street is laid out in a straight line between Canal Street and Audubon Park, you will find what you are looking for eventually just by looking left to right and back again.  The same isn't true in Faubourg Marigny or Bywater.  You have to poke around in those neighborhoods, be in the know, do a lot of exploring around every corner.  There are good things to be said about that, the method and texture have their own rewards.  We are just spoiled by Magazine Street where a platter of delicacies are laid out like jewelers' temptations on mossy velvet.

So it will be another New Orleans adventure.  Another quest to make a home for ourselves in a city unlike any we have ever known before and, if popular wisdom is to be believed, a city unlike any other in the world.  I believe it.  I believe in New Orleans.  I believe that no matter where I rest my head in this city of lights and fevers, I will be home: where the heart is.   Just ask the people who live in Mid-City.

North Claiborne is no Magazine.  North Broad Street is no Magazine.  St. Claude, St. Bernard, Franklin, Elysian Fields, Jefferson Davis Parkway, North Carrollton, North Rampart, Basin Street...none of these hold a candle to Magazine.  There is no other street like it.  Uptown isn't like Downtown.  No one even says "downtown" in New Orleans.  Uptown is a world of its own without a downside reference to compare it to.  There is no up or down.  There are north and south streets (which have nothing to do with compass points) there is riverside and lakeside (when neither river nor lake are visible or relevant to one's bearings), there is east bank and west bank (which are north and south on map).  In New Orleans, everything is topsy-turvy.

It's still New Orleans though.  That is why it is good.  Every neighborhood is a uniquely cut facet in this gem of a place hewn from marsh and miasma to provide the foundation of celebrations and joy come what may, bitter or sweet, hell or high water.    

There is one thing that Magazine Street doesn't have.  New Orleans' best comic book store.  That's on Freret Street.  Uptown, 'natch.