TCMH, v.75: A Birthday Celebrated in the French Quarter
It's Newbie Orleans All Over Again, as We Explore NOLA's Tourist Epicenter, From the Offbeat to the Cliche.
There was a birthday in our household yesterday. Not mine.
In order to celebrate, we called in a staycation day and noodled around the French Quarter on a day that had all the sun and heat that you could hope for on an early June afternoon. We opted for a touristy blend, mixing in some of the nerdiness you’d expect from this space (and Historiola!). Here were our stops
Day/1, Port of Call (838 Esplanade): This place was on our radar for a while, but big crowds kept us away until yesterday; that’s not entirely true, as we’d walked in once, walking right back out due to the lengthy wait time. This visit we stayed, and were able to finally enjoy the decor, an old-school mix of deep woods and nautical designs, with a huge, T-shaped bar at the center of things. The menu reminded of me of Tucker’s in Soulard, with $30-40 steaks and $15-20 burgers pretty much your only lunch options, both served with classic baked potatoes. Our burgers were fine and didn’t lack for size; our potaotes were slathered in an unholy amount of sour cream and service was crazy quick. Won’t necessarily be back soon, but I’m glad to have finally broken the seal on this NOLA landmark.
Day/2, 1026 Conti Street: Recently, I picked up a book by Christine Wiltz called The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underground, a biography of the late Norma Wallace, who ran a sporting house at this address for decades. Now deep into the book, I hoped to see the place was still standing and YES!, it’s just a few paces from Rampart on the northern edge of the Quarter. We also found a couple of other addresses tied to NOLA’s longtime Queen of Vice, all located within a few blocks of this complex. There’s no question that I’ll be writing about this book (and an STL equivalent) soon enough, possibly as the first guest piece at Historiola! This book’s moving up my list of my fave NOLA reads and I’m looking forward to deepening my knowledge of early-20th century New Orleans with it as a loose guide.
Day/3, Crescent City Cigar (730 Orleans): We’re not cigar smokers, but my travel companion was looking for some art project-ready cigar boxes and we rolled into/out of this old-school business quickly enough. Guessing here, but it looked like a solid place to pick up some quality smokes; if you’re ever in town and that’s your bag, here’s my tepid endorsement.
Day/4: Arcadian Books and Prints (714 Orleans): If you’re somehow unaware, I love bookstores. I’ve been to dozens in my lifetime, of all sorts. I’ve never, ever seen anything quite like this place, which reminded me of the old A. Amitin Bookshop in St. Louis. Books at Arcadian are stacked from the floor (nearly up) to the ceiling and are organized in loose zones, instead of true sections. I’m not as slender as I used to be and was just thin enough to slither through the maze of stacks, aware that a wrong step could’ve sent hundreds of books to the ground. Like, books are literally teetering all around you in a stunning display of will over gravity. The local/regional section is what you’ll walk right into, a step within the front doorway, and there’re countless worthy titles in those piles of NOLA lit. I bought two books, neither of which I knew despite a lot of combing through NOLA titles over the years; we combined for five books, total, purchased from just the top layer of what we could see/access. Again: you have to experience the vibe of this place to fully appreciate the clutter, the chaos, the absolute treasure trove within. Wow… just wow.
Time-out for a shower and micro-nap.
Night/1 Voodoo Lounge & French Quarter Phantoms Tours (718 N. Rampart): With dusk approaching, we headed to the Voodoo Lounge, a 24-hour bar and baggage drop spot that also serves as the official starting spot for a lot of ghost and murder tours in NOLA, of which there’re many, many options at all kinds of day parts and price points. We wanted to exeprience a goofy tourist activity as the centerpiece of the birthday goings-on and this $20 ticket was a winner. As a bonus, a brief rainstorm at the start of the tour dropped temps a bit, which was welcome as this 105-minute tour had us covering a decent chunk of the quarter. (And the Voodoo stocks Finnish Long Drink, a bonus!)
Our tour guide, Jennifer, is a 2021-era resident of NOLA and knew her stuff. A bit sarcastic, not as show-biz as some of the tour guides, who are out in abundance throughout the evening hours, crossing paths on side streets as they take their wards into the “spookier” sections of the Quarter. The tour? It was fine and a bit fun to cross over and actually take part in an activity that you see happen all day/every day in the Quarter. To be honest, I’m not a gore person and the stories that surrounded the infamous LaLaurie Mansion were a bit much for my tastes, but some folks undoubtedly go precisely for the blood’n’guts stuff. FYI, this was the Ghosts and Phantoms Combo Tour, if ever in town and wanting to pick up some odd trivia while getting in your daily steps. Can’t imagine doing this exact ghost(ish) tour again but happy to have taken the time this once.
Night 2/Cosimo’s & Hamster’s Handpies (1201 Burgundy): This is a super old-school bar in appearance, though the music was cranked to modern hits. That was the only gripe about this stop, which found us in a bar of salt/pepper locals and industry workers catching their post-shift rounds. We enjoyed a couple of drafts, discussed the tour and enjoyed the trio of veggie options from the in-house pop-up Hamster’s Handpies, after having eaten a goodly amount of a cow earlier in the day. Good pies and good vibes, overall. Will return.
Night 3/Good Friends Bar (740 Dauphine): Committed to Only The New all day long, we bypassed a favorite FQ bar and went to this LGBTQ spot near Rampart. It was a low-energy night in the Quarter, and the space was big and mellow; sadly, the bartender was a jackass, but not so much of one that the day was ruined. From from it: our staycation was fun. Can’t wait to do it again in a year.
Mixed Media, Longer Form: Over the weekend, we visited Audubon Zoo, on a Sunday afternoon that saw a nice, li’l chunk of the city onsite to stare at alligators, to take selfies and to splash about in a fairly-large water park. (Who knew?) Only a day later, I read that the Audubon name has become fraught of late, with a national conversation taking place about the use of it for organizations and monuments and the like; in NOLA, it’s used by several civic institutions, inc. the zoo. The Free Press (through writer Adam Popescu) has a very readable take on the debate…
Kinda followed an internet conversation thread to Tablet, which I confess to never having read before this weekend’s rabbit hole session, which left me with some more questions about Tablet; is anyone here a reader? This epic profile on Nikole Hannah-Jones by Mark Weitzmann is a long, worthwhile read. May cue up the 1619 Project on Hulu soon and will do so with a new frame of reference about its creator…
Thanks to Kevin B. for this history of a classic mid-American food, pork steaks, via Robert Moss…
Reminder to self to go back and finally read this piece by Jay Caspian Kang at The New Yorker, re: the value of losing…
A year ago, I couldn’t get enough education on the Great Salt Lake. Since, I’ve transferred some of my hyper-regional curiosity about the greater world to the Louisiana coastline. Having come into the knowledge of the website Emergence recently, I read a story by Nathaniel Rich, surprised by some of the twists and turns of the lengthy, entertaining read of life (and a sort of love) in a rebounding swamp, one built and paid for by a stand-in for Wal-Mart. About 75% of the way through, it dawned on me that I was reading fiction, which may’ve changed my early impressions of the piece, Hidden Bayou. Good read. Clever. Thoughtful…
One minute you’re watching Hot Ones on YouTube, the next thing you know you’re pricing hot sauces on the show’s online retailer, trying to figure out if you should go ahead and buy that Korn hot sauce.
Hey, Thanks!: Appreciate completely, totally, 100% voluntary paid subscriptions from Brian K, Euan McL, Roy P, founding member John D and wmaaejf@(_) whose name I can’t determine from the email address; sorry, friend. Will try to upgrade the content here in exchange for your kind donations to the cause. And here’s a Memory Hall easter egg: there’s always a Buy Me a Coffee link in the -30- that ends these ‘letters. I’ll be back to publishing at 6:07 am next week! Cheers to you and yours. And now, our weekly outro…
A YouTube Lagniappe: The world’s premier video sharing service seems to offer a new “Wes Anderson trailer” created by AI every few days. Sure that I’ll get bored with this trend after a bit, but… that day hasn’t arrived quiiiite yet.