Day 4, The Lost Day:
Let me start this entry with something I forgot to mention
in Part
I. Valerie and I had both noticed that the guys in Benny Grunch and the
Bunch sounded like they were from New York, even though they were New Orleans
natives. On my previous trips to coastal Mississippi I had noticed that the
natives there don’t have typical Southern accents and when I asked them (“Hey,
how come you don’t sound like Foghorn Leghorn?”) they said that the coastal mix
of people was different than the south. That turns out to be the case in New
Orleans as well. The Ninth Ward accent sounds more like Brooklyn than Biloxi,
more like Manhattan than Mobile. I’ve heard the explanation that because both
areas developed a similar accent because they had the same mix of working class
Irish, Italians, Germans, etc. That sort of thing always intrigues me. More here.
I wanted to start with something positive because this day includes
some bad stuff. When we checked in we agreed to go to the “Welcome Breakfast”, even
though we knew was it was the timeshare pitch. I inherited a timeshare from my
dad and did want to get an update on how timeshare stuff has evolved in recent
years, since I had a vague idea that you could now exchange without belonging
to one of the exchange companies, etc. Needless
to say, the promised sumptuous breakfast was just barebones steam table eggs,
and it took us nearly three hours to get out of the “one hour” breakfast. We
walked out having been given an AWESOME OPPORTUNITY to convert our timeshare to
a SILVER VIP level points-based membership for a mere twenty-one thousand
dollars! Good for that day only!
But enough about that.
Our big destination of the day was the World War II Museum.
Why is the World War II Museum in New Orleans, which doesn’t have a
particularly strong connection to the war? I don’t know – why is the Holocaust
Museum in DC? Anyway, it’s a very cool museum for what it is. The exhibits are
very well done and it’s very informative and really personalizes the war.
Reading original letters sent home to the parents of casualties was really
moving. So why do I say, “cool … for what it is”? Because a more accurate name
for the place would be, “The Combat History of World War II Museum.” Yes, I
know a war is a war, but the exhibits focused almost exclusively on the pursuit
of military campaigns. I think they could broaden the museum – what was it like
on the home front? How did we create the massive industrial base to crank out
war materiel? What was the impact of having women at work? What was it like to
live through the was as a civilian in Europe? What was going on geopolitically?
And so on. There was a brief, somewhat whitewashed mention of the Holocaust
near the end of main exhibit. The exhibit described how shocked the troops were
when they entered the concentration camps and saw what was going on there.
That’s probably true for the troops on the ground, but in fact the high command
knew quite a bit about the camps by that point.
The museum was really crowded and we had to kind of inch
along through it the act of inching our way through it. This made Valerie’s
back hurt, so when we were done we sat for a bit before heading to our next
stop, the New Orleans Menorah Lighting! You’ve got to hand it to Chabad.
They’re everywhere, and unlike many other Orthodox Jewish groups they focus on
engagement with the rest of the Jewish community rather than just being
insular. They put on a pretty good event. They had food from The Kosher Cajun
Restaurant of Metarie, LA (I had kosher jambalaya). Free potato latkes. Booths
with Chanukah stuff. Laser light displays. Plus, what they kept proudly
describing as “the largest menorah in Louisiana”. I guess the other two are
smaller J
Good turnout, and kind of fun and novel to be celebrating Chanukah alongside
the Mississippi River!
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| Lighting the "largest menorah in Louisiana" |
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, they had Chanukah Mardi Gras
beads! A friend to whom I sent pictures from this event waggishly asked me what
body parts you have to show to get Chanukah. I had to wrack my brain for an
answer. OK, here it is, but it requires some background. You may have noticed
that Orthodox Jews have little fringes hanging from their clothes – like
they’re wearing an undershirt with fringes on it, or something. That’s because
they’re wearing an undershirt with little fringes on it, in order to fulfil the
commandment in Numbers 15:38-39 to, well, wear fringed garmets. These days,
most people will call those fringey things “tzitzit”,
but the older, more Yiddish-based pronunciation that I grew up with is
“tsitsis”. Which leads to the answer to the question: People will offer beads
if you, “Show
Us Your Tsitsis!”
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| Kosher jambalaya, latkes, and beads |
OK, that was a long set-up, but in my opinion the punchline
was worth it.
Anyway, after the menorah lighting wound down we went into
the adjacent outlet mall. There wasn’t much particularly New Orleansy about the
place – mostly just the same brands you’d see anywhere else. But they did have
an outpost of Café Le Monde, and so we indulged once again in beignet and
coffee. Plus, there was a Mardi Gras party store there where I bought purple
top hat which will be perfect for gigs with Magnolia Blue. At the end of the
evening we took the streetcar home. Another night of turning in early in New
Orleans :)
Day 5: Our own
separate ways
On day 5 we decided to split up and each do things our own
way. I headed over to the Marigny neighborhood in the French side of town for
the Confederacy of Cruisers
cruiser bike tour of Creole New Orleans. This was a great tour. Our guide was a
woman named Lara, who in addition to being a bike tour guide worked as a
bartender, ran some sort of crafts business and also lived in this part of
town. She radiated just the right mix of serious history (she knew her stuff)
and New Orleans fun. We rode through four neighborhoods: the Marigny, the
Treme, the Bywater and the French Quarter, stopping to look at architecture,
learn about the effects of Hurricane Katrina, visit African American and
general New Orleans history spots, visit the site where the Plessy vs. Ferguson
case (which went to the Supreme Court and – in a case of unitended consequences
– legalized “Separate But Equal” for decades) got its start. We visited Congo
Square, Oh, and at about 11 AM we stopped at a neighborhood bar for drinks. I
was reminded that I really like bloody mary’s – this one had a nice spicy kick
and came with a very Southern pickled okra and green bean garnish. Track is here.
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| Hopping on my cruiser bike |
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| Biking through NOLA |
My bike ride finished up at Washington Square, just a block
off of Frenchman Street, which is the live music club hub of New Orleans. It
was only early afternoon and many of the clubs were still closed, but a few
start music at noon and were already on their second musical act of the day. I
poked my head into The Spotted Cat, which had been recommended by a guy in my
band. Good stride piano player, but he was playing with a washtub bassist and –
while perhaps authentically retro – I didn’t really find the thumping pleasing.
So, instead I went across the street to Bamboula’s. There, a duo of stride
piano and guitar was finishing up, followed by a gypsy jazz trio (two guitars
and bass) playing Django Reinhardt tunes. I settled in at the bar to have a
beer and listen. I was also pretty hungry at this point and so I ordered a
roast beef po’ boy sandwich. It wound up taking half an hour for them to serve
me the sandwich, despite many assurances from the bartender that it would be
right out. I wound up talking to the manager, who gave me an explanation along
the lines of, “we only have one person in the kitchen and he got slammed with a
lot of orders at once.” I’m afraid I don’t find these “our service is bad
because we’re unprepared to provide good service” kinds of explanations very
satisfying. I told her I didn’t think I should have to pay for the sandwich.
She said, “you ate it, didn’t you?” To make a long story short, I wound up
negotiating a significant discount off the cost of the sandwich but I still
think they should have comped it completely. The bartender felt bad and offered
to give me drinks for free, but between the bloody mary and the beer I was
feeling a buzzed as I wanted to be (lightweight!) and so I declined. BTW, the
sandwich wasn’t very good. But the music and the scene were, and so in the big
picture, everything was fine.
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| Jazz at Bamboula's |
When I left Bamboula’s I took a slow meander back through
the French Quarter. I stopped to listen to some outdoor jazz at the French
market and at some restaurants along the way. I browsed some shops along the
way, including two that had what would be some excellent stage clothing for
Magnolia Blue – but I cheaped out on buying anything. One store had old tuxedo
jackets repurposed into funky New Orleans outfits through the addition of
feathers, sequins, etc. I may try to do this myself with an old suit jacket.
Another had some legitimate stage wear. I wound up having a good conversation
about looking right onstage with one of the guys working there, who told me he
had just come off the road after many years of touring with (mostly outlaw country)
acts. He looked like ZZ Top’s older brother.
On our first day in the French Quarter we had gone into
Goorin Hats, which is a chain (I have a cap that I bought at the Goorin store
in Nashville), but being a hat guy I was itching to go into the venerable Meyer
the Hatter. It’s located near the eastern terminus of the St. Charles street
car, so I stopped in on my way to catch the street car back to the hotel. I
wound up speaking with Sam Meyer. He told me he’s 90 and is the third
generation of Meyer to work in the store (the business dates back to 1894) and
I’m happy to report that the fourth and fifth generations are involved, so the
store will continue once Sam reaches retirement age J I dropped some “dog whistles”
into the conversation to establish that I was Jewish and he wound up telling me
about how when he started out he worked for a while in another business where
the owners went to synagogue every morning before opening the store. I’m just
thinking of the cool strangeness of being observantly Jewish in Louisiana in
the 1940’s.
I left Meyer the Hatter empty-handed as well (I didn’t want to have to schlep a hat back from New Orleans) but wound up ordering a hat I had seen there online when I got home. From another store that had a better price (I'm feeling guilty over that one!).
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| Our main form of transportation |
Meanwhile, Valerie went back down to Magazine Street in the
Garden District and shopped.
In the evening we decided that rather than go out for a big
New Orleans meal we’d go for something local and funky and went to Dat Dog, a
gourmet hot dog place. It’s another local hangout with a feel similar to Claire
& Don’s Beach Shack in Falls Church. I had the vegetarian spicy chipotle
dog. Valerie had something good too. We skipped the alligator sausage. We sat
outside in their courtyard, where they were having a trivia night. We didn’t
officially participate, but we did pretty well in terms of knowing the answers.
Day 6: The Zoo
On our last day we decided to go the zoo. The Audubon Zoo in
New Orleans is a pretty cool place. The exhibits are very immersive – they make
it feel like you’re walking through the Mayan jungle, or the Louisiana bayou.
To their credit, the bayou exhibit doesn’t present the bayou as a pristine
wilderness – there are rusting cars, stills, houseboats, and other signs of
backwoods Louisiana life.
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| Lizard Love |
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| A big cutie |
We also got to see giraffes. I really like giraffes. I
learned on this trip that one of the species of giraffes is known as the
Rothschild giraffe, named after Walter Rothschild, the second Baron Rothschild,
who was something of an amateur zoologist (he was known for stunts like driving
a coach pulled by zebras around London). The Rothschilds were an immensely
wealthy banking family in Europe. Walter’s father Nathan was England’s first
Jewish peer. It turns out that when it comes to being accepted into British
society, money in sufficient quantities overcomes (or at least mutes)
anti-Semitism. Actually, even Downton Abbey had a story line dealing with the existence
of wealthy Jewish families in Victorian England and the friction with the traditional
aristocracy. Lady Rose, a member of the Crowley family, marries the dashing and
wealthy (and Jewish) Atticus Aldridge, much to the consternation of both
families. Shades of Ivanka!
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| Animals |
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| Valerie and friends |
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| Santa's pirogue, being pulled by alligators |
I got a surprise at the zoo when I heard someone calling my
name. I spend 2015-2016 running a project which involved our facility in
southern Mississippi, and it turned out that the guy calling my name was one of
the technicians from the Mississippi office, who was at the zoo with his family
for the day. Good guy, able to build some very sophisticated deep-sea electronics.
He’s an enormous Southern bubba of a man, so of course his nickname is “Tiny”. Hardworking,
easygoing – a good guy. You just probably want to avoid his Facebook page,
which is filled with “Southern Pride” and “A Marriage is Between a Man and a
Woman” sorts of posts.
I was feeling a little under the weather again, like I was
coming down with a cold, so for dinner we went to the Vietnamese restaurant up
the block from our hotel and had pho for dinner. Again, not very New Orleans,
but not bad (not as good as can be found at The Eden Center).
Then, the following morning we headed home, having had a
really good time in a fun city!
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