A bed and breakfast visit on Esplanade Avenue

A fictionalized account of a typical day on the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A.  Everything is familiar except the ending.  In New Orleans, nobody asks anybody to stop singing.  Everybody encourages everybody else.  Everybody follows the lead of the muse.


New Orleans is for lovers of the good life.

New Orleans is the City Care Forgot

Modesty is always in style, even in New Orleans, LA.

Many, little things happen in New Orleans.  They all add up.  The good buries the bad.  Not every melody is a dirge, but every melody is a march.  A cry of agony can sound the same as joy.  You can sob with laughter, or you can sob with tears.  You can cry because you are happy.  Those who are true to their heart of hearts, cannot know anxiety.  New Orleans is the City That Care Forgot.

A trip to the Doctor.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

The doc gave me the diagnosis.  I am invisible to x-rays.  As if I didn't have enough enough hereditary quirks to escape notoriety.  His office is in a boarded up shotgun off North Robertson Street downwtown of Elysian Fields.  I had to crawl through a window to get into the waiting room, but his rates are reasonable, even if his front door is boarded up.

After a battery of tests and procedures appropriate to a general physical examination to establish a person's current state of health, Doctor Omphaloskepsis (he seems to be of Greek-and-Creole descent) told me, without mincing words, "You are radiolucent."

It is a benign, congenital medical condition reported in 0.00051% of the global population.  Its complications, as reflected in morbidity and mortality reports, are statistically nil.  My doctor advises me that, if I do, indeed, suffer complications that impact my activities of daily living, I should increase the lead in my diet.  Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease.

As he put his X-ray spectacles back in their case, he looked at me ruefully.  "This is not a disability that you cannot overcome with appropriate, professional oversight.  I have some fishing line sinkers in my tackle box back home.  If you put one between your cheek and gum every day for a month, the prognosis is favorable.  Make an appointment next week and we can review your treatment plan.  I will dispense the medicine then.  The cost of a sinker is $1.56 apiece, and you will be receiving thirty of them.  Remember to bring $468 in cash or money order, as well as the fee for the office visit.

My radiolucent nature has never been an impediment, so I declined to undergo the prescribed therapy.  Dr. Omphaloskepsis did listen to my head with his stethoscope, and he diagnosed me with an accute case of confabulation.  His recommendation for this:  a good night's sleep every night.  Ascelpius may be the good of medicine, but Hypnos an Morpheus swab balm when and where it is most needed.

After a night in listening to the pulse of the New Orleans' musical spirit in five venues at the end of my street, it is time to try correct my radiolucent symptoms.  I need a little, doctor-prescribed shut-eye.  I predict a lot of lumber will be sawed in the Odditarium tonight.

-Don't do anything Whalehead King wouldn't do!
Baleanius Rex!

Back to back parades in Treme

In other news... while heading home from Gretna on the stretch of highway elevated above Claiborne Avenue, my passenger spied a second line parade winding through the Treme neighborhood.  That merited a detour off the exit ramp.  We found it.  It turned out to be back-to-back parades...

I love living here.

Welcome aboard, it's New Orleans!

I don't understand the backgrounds in this video clip..

I used to watch the show every Saturday night before Fantasy Island and it never occurred to me then.  Older and wiser now, why didn't the Love Boat pull into the port of New Orleans?  Why isn't the ship pulling past St. Louis Cathedral?  Imagine the adventures the crew and guest stars would have had.

My theory is that Isaac may have been a good shipboard bartender but he couldn't keep up with the concoctions conjures by New Orleans' mixologists.  Doc certainly had nothing to worry about.  He was as competent as most Crescent City physicians.  Cruise director Julie could run a tour.  She was conscientious and would do her due diligence to get the facts straight after obtaining her mayoral permit to conduct tours in city limits.  Congressman Fred Grandy would fit right in with both the political class and the concierges in the city.  Captain Stubing could navigate the Pacific Princess up the the Mississippi River from the Gulf guided by tug boats.

Why not New Orleans?  The same question over and over again.  Why not New Orleans?

Gayerre Place, Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, LA

I've been in love with this little vest pocket park since I first saw it when the lady of the house and I  ventured to New Orleans last August.  We came to the city to see if we would like to move here and we wanted to sample the weather at it's most unbearable.  We were sure we could shrug off a Louisiana winter (so far so good) but weren't sure about the deepest doldrums of summer when the temperatures reach one hundred and the humidity is close enough to be a hundred percent that no body bothers to measure anymore.

Gayerre Place is a mystery park.  There is no indication why it is there besides the fact that the parcel of land bordered by Esplanade Avenue, Bayou Road and North Tonti Street is too small to house a home or commercial structure, even a snow ball stand.

With it's masonry pedestal and its neo-classical statue, the parklet beggars a descriptive placard.  There's a plaque that say's Gayerre Place and that's that.  The visitor is left with his or her imagination to fill in the blanks as to why this picturesque monument stands here.

Chales Etienne Arthur Gayerre was known as Louisiana's premiere historian.  He as elected to the US Senate in 1835 as a Democrat but immediately resigned for health reasons.  After directly traveling to France for a cure (where else would the grandson of New Orleans' first mayor travel?) he researched the documents pertaining to his home state and wrote four volumes on the progress of the Pelican State from founding to his present day.

The statue today is a replica of one that stood during the New Orleans World's Fair in 1884.  It is Cleo, The Genius of History, The Goddess of Peace.  I'm not clear how these two attributes became conjoined for this Greek Muse who also has a street named after her Uptown, spelled and pronounced differently: Clio (kl-EYE-oh as opposed to the Greek kl-EE-oh).

This gorgeous little triangle of urban green space and civilization is a sort of blank spot on the streetscape.  My initial research yields all sorts of conflicting stories that I am interested in getting to the bottom of, sifting the details and weighing the evidence probable and improbable.  Much of it is dry as an old dishcloth but, if you are interested as I am, it is interesting stuff.  I am going to be passing this site every day and it was my first evidence that New Orleans is a city rich in history outside the Vieux Carre.    I am enraptured by Esplanade Avenue, a long neighborhood that bears little resemblance to the surroundings through with it passes.  Esplanade Ridge is an interesting slice of New Orleans.

Someone's got to figure it out.  I have appointed myself the mission.  WK, armchair historian will be at work poring over the records, gleaning the archives, blowing dust off crumpled papers brittle with age, turning the microfiche, and walking the boulevard to query neighbors.  Donning a fedora I will be the Indiana Jones of Esplanade Ridge.  It's a good thing Whalehead King is a suitably romantic and dramatic moniker for the task ahead.  Adventures are sure to follow.

Adventure dogs every step in New Orleans.

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.

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.

New Orleans is a blessing

You may have noticed that the past few day's I haven't been writing up any lengthy reports.  I'm too busy living in New Orleans.  Words can't capture the experiences.  Greater writers than I have tried to describe what it is like to  be alive in this wonderful city and they've failed.  What dram of insight can I add?

I'm not despairing at my lack of ability.  Rather, I am reveling in it.  Bombarded with so many sights, smells, sounds, tastes, changes in air pressure and temperature... Blinkered by sudden shocks and delights and mysteries around every corner...  Besotted by kaleidoscopes and cornucopia and cacophony in the light of day and the dead of night...  I am rendered dumb by the mixture of joy, beauty and resilience that courses through New Orleans' neighborhoods, main streets, side streets, alleys and concourses.  The tap rooms and living rooms, the shops, the libraries, the front porches, the riverfront, the parks, the markets, the offices and their lobbies...all of New Orleans is soaked through with the sustaining ether that pervades every action and every moment.

Rather than write, I live for the moment in the moment.  I am delirious, dizzy and devil-may-care.  If a city can be a sinful place, New Orleans is a blessing.  I am not debauching or pursuing hedonistic, libertine delights.  I am going about my business, running errands and sharing conversations with my fellow citizens in this most delightful metropolis in the whole, wide world, a place where the mundane is magical and the miraculous is more common than pennies on the sidewalk.

If you've never been to New Orleans, everything you've heard, positive or negative, is true but bigger, better, more robust and vibrant.  If you've spent an hour here, you know what I'm talking about.  If you were sitting next to me we'd nudge each other and wink in agreement.

'Nuff said.
WK

Treme zoning

I discussed the recent zoning proposal for part of the Treme neighborhood.  The Times-Picayune reports that the new zoning to allow some commercial enterprises has been approved.

The article I referred to in the last post wasn't explicit about how the proposal and its detractors felt about bars and alcohol.  I suspected this was an issue and this detail was made clear in today's report:

"The critics' biggest objection was that the types of businesses allowed by the overlay district do not include bars or establishments offering live music, which the critics said is central to the neighborhood's history and culture.

Supporters of the plan said the residentially zoned buildings affected by the change aren't allowed now to house businesses featuring live music or selling alcohol and that approving the overlay district would not affect owners' right to seek a zoning change to allow such uses in the future."

The only reason that the buildings are now zoned for residences only is because they have not had active businesses in them for some time.  I assume the levee failures put the kabosh on whatever businesses were active at the time in what are obviously designed to be commercial spaces.

I'm not recommending that bars and late night music are an economic panacea, but they don't hurt.  Why do you think casinos include both in their business models?   A coffee shop, which is an approved use under the new zoning, is a nice place to meet people and discuss the issues of the day, but who wants to meet in a coffee shop at night and listen to the radio?  

This seems prudish to me and a circular argument.   "Sure you can't open a bar now but you couldn't open one before."  That's because the city revoked the commercial designation for the buildings in question.  "Yes, bars aren't allowed but anyone can apply for a variance."  If it will be as easy as pie, why add the extra layer of permitting?  The same about the 10:00PM closing time.  Ten PM?!?  I moved from Boston to get away from these early closing hours.  Why are 24 hour bars allowed in the Quarter and Uptown and not in Treme?  Because tourists and college students can be trusted not to tipple away their savings while the residents of Treme cannot?  Truth be told, I suspect any new 24 hour establishment wishing to open in any other neighborhood would face pushback, but it's the principle of the matter that irks me.  

New Orleans isn't a city known for its love of beauty sleep.  New Orleans is beautiful because it runs round the clock and it is in ferment every hour of the day.  Things happen, minor miracles are birthed, precisely because parts of the city encourage conviviality and creation, especially the musical kind.  To shut that out of one part is a warning to the others.  Rather than offer limited opportunities, New Orleans should offer limitless opportunities everywhere within city limits.  New Orleans is about people bumping into each other and sharing common experiences no matter what the clock says.

Score one for the urban planners but this is a loss for urbanity.  If you are going to sing the praises of local culture, don't zone it out of existence.  The zoning ordinances, as adopted, will make Treme, and by extension all of New Orleans, as exciting as New London, Conn.  I've lived there and I can report that New London, for all its charms and natural advantages, is a place just holding on.  New London has its government and zoning to blame.  Don't let New Orleans go down that same damned road to irrelevance.

Bakeries are permitted.  I don't expect to see a glut of bakers setting up shop on Ursulines Street.  

I know I like to say the Dot Matrix is non-political but these top-down zoning fiats get my goat and my dander up.  So much for community input!  Thanks for bearing with me today.

WK

Treme

New Orleans' Treme neighborhood has been getting a lot of press lately because of the HBO series of the same name.  I haven't seen the series and I don't know how much it deals with Treme per se as the aftermath of the Katrina levee failure.  

I enjoy touring through Treme (which, I suppose, should have an accent over the second 'e').  It is a historic African American neighborhood, full of small homes and corner businesses that has developed a unique, self contained culture over the centuries.  It is bisected by the highway overpass on North Claiborne Avenue, which is the topic for another report.  

I was reading the newspaper the other day about a zoning plan that proposes letting 20 businesses open in the neighborhood.  These would be groceries, coffee shops, local service stores to serve the neighborhood.  Most of these would occupy spaces that were already commercial but abandoned post-Katrina.  The planning board asked residents for input.  Most residents seemed to want a midnight closing time and live music until that hour.  The board put the kabosh on that stating that these businesses aren't traditionally open that late.  So much for community input.  The presence of bars was alluded to but not spelled out in the Times-Picayune article last week (sorry, no link.  I think it was last Wednesday).

Anyone who has read the Boston era posts here on the Dot Matrix knows that I am in favor of 24 hour activity in a city.  That is one of the reasons I moved to New Orleans.  Anyone who has read the New London era posts here knows that I am relatively against central planning.  I believe a city is an organic collection of people who will provide what the neighborhood wants without too much interference.  I believe commerce should co-exist with residences...that is the definition of urban living as far as I am concerned.  The smaller scale the development according to community needs the better for all involved, small businesspeople and customers alike.  At least no one is proposing an upscale mall for Treme (yet).

Treme was once a more vibrant place, commercially, than it is now.  The architectural remnants don't lie.  I have no doubt that before zoning and good government planning bureaucrats got involved, the neighborhood flourished without outside interference.  It is how it was formed and how it got its reputation as a hotbed of cultural innovation.  That was then and this is now.

Saint Ann's National Shrine is on Ursulines Street. 

Another one exists in Metarie, established after the St. Ann's Church on Ursuline closed.  It is now tended by local, neighborhood devotees.  The day I went, two pleasant elderly women sat in the cave and welcomed me.

Treme is garnering its share of attention because of the HBO show, its geographic location, and its historical significance.  Lightning doesn't strike twice by design.  Left to it's own devices, the neighborhood will raise itself up without any help.  I believe in the inherent genius of the common person.  If you think the advice of professional planners will only do good, be careful what you wish for.  The designs for the post- Claiborne Avenue Overpass don't look any more inviting than what is there now.  More open space perhaps but less shade.  That's the thing about urban planners: they are in love with parks that no body wants to visit.