New Orleans Memories

[Lord DragonsWing]

I'm not sure of the anyone else. But I would like to share some good memories of the city I love.
To give you an update I live in Mobile but grew up in Louisiana. I'm a professional nurse and divorced. My ex-wife and I spent our honeymoon in N.O. And I worked there for years as a nurse. So I'd like to share some laughs I had during the honeymoon many years ago and the joys of working such a diverse city.

I'm sure you all know about the riverboats that ply the Mississippi. Well, the second night of our honeymoon we did the riverboat. The dance, jazz band, meals and everything was furnished. But we should of asked for security. Have you ever seen a 5 ft 9 inch woman attack prime rib when everyone is sitting elbow to elbow? Needless to say, the couples sitting next to her lost. Even at her low weight of 99 lbs dripping wet they lost. I was sitting across the table laughing as she welded her blade and sliced through the meat.
Of course the jazz band was a beauty. We danced on the back deck of the riverboat watching the ships come and go through the port.
A night at Jimmy Buffett's Margarittaville was on the first night. Dancing, trying to beat the scam artist who knew more about my shoes than I did, was fun. I think I lost 20 bucks that night trying to out scam them. lmao The question was, I know where you got your shoes at. Being a newlywed and not wanting to play dumb I played along. There was no way they knew where I got my shoes from. I took the bet. He didn't say from, he said at. My shoes were on my feet AT Decateur Street. He won a quick 20 bucks. She laughed at that and I paid the 20.
I remember getting off work going to Cafe Du Monde and watching the crowd. Eating beignets for breakfast, talking with the guy who kept the telescope. Or watching a Mime as the vamps struggled home from a night out. Or just to listen to the musicians as I sipped coffee.
There is no other city like New Orleans. The French Market with it's fresh herbs and fruit, Bourbon Street with it's bars and endless parties, Decateur Street with it's shops. And my favorite, The Cafe Du Monde with it's chicory coffee and beignets.
I just hope we're able to bring this culture back. If not, America and the world has lost something very important.
So tell us your memories of the Big Easy. I take it I'm the only one that took the shoe scam. lol

 

[LadyJeanne]

Nice, LDW. Thanks.

I didn't take the shoe scam, but I'd been warned. I worked for the midwest branch of a company heaquartered on Poydras, near Lafayette Square, so everyone there gave me all kinds of advice for navigating the French Quarter.

The company was mostly women, so I had an opportunity to meet Southern ladies from all over. One of the ladies in the office showed me a little fleur-de-lis tattooed on the bottom of her big toe. She had been a cheeerleader for the Saints, and the little tattoo was one of their initiation rites.

I did get a tattoo during one of my trips. Not a fleur-de-lis, and not on my toe.

 

[Lord DragonsWing]

Nice, LDW. Thanks.

I didn't take the shoe scam, but I'd been warned. I worked for the midwest branch of a company heaquartered on Poydras, near Lafayette Square, so everyone there gave me all kinds of advice for navigating the French Quarter.

The company was mostly women, so I had an opportunity to meet Southern ladies from all over. One of the ladies in the office showed me a little fleur-de-lis tattooed on the bottom of her big toe. She had been a cheeerleader for the Saints, and the little tattoo was one of their initiation rites.

I did get a tattoo during one of my trips. Not a fleur-de-lis, and not on my toe.

Damn, now I wonder what you got? lol

Another N.O. story. When the Saints started their first season, the kick off went down and the receiver ran it back 99 yds for a touchdown.
I remember the announcer saying the Saints were here to stay after that kick off. We haven't done anything since. lmao.
Now, about that tattoo......................

 

[Huckleman2000]

I've been to NO twice, both times for industry conventions. If I'm not familiar with the broader city, at least I know the Convention Center

As opposed to other convention cities, New Orleans was unique. Las Vegas is well-prepared, packaged, and plastic. Los Angeles (and Western suburbs) is sterile - you drive past "bad" parts of town, but if you ever deal with them, someone probably screwed up. New York is what it is - a convention in town is a drop in the bucket; it's no different from a tourist getaway, except that you have to get to Javits instead of the Met, and the public transportation is worse. Is there a direct subway route from Midtown to Javits? Is there any subway route to Javits? My experience is that it's about a $6 cab fare to Javits, from any Midtown hotel, and that's the story. If you can get a cab.

In New Orleans, the experience began with the cab ride from the airport. The drivers are locals. Not transplants (Vegas) or retirees (Orlando) or immigrants (anywhere else), but proud, knowledgable, and amiable people with just a bit of attitude. It's a difficult living driving a cab, but in New Orleans it's a profession, just like the people at the hotel and restaurants. Those aren't jobs for immigrants or transplants or people on the fringe of society - those are good jobs for solid citizens, and the pride they take in welcoming visitors is balanced by a certain attitude that no one is above anyone who does their job with pride and dignity. If you're prideful or condescending, you'll probably have a tough time visiting New Orleans. If you treat everyone with respect, regardless of their job, New Orleans is like a visit to your crazy aunt - loving, but with goofy stuff happening no matter what you do.

The French Quarter is primarily Bourbon Street for a conventioneer, and there's nowhere else like it on earth. My impression is that Bourbon Street is the final resting place for musicians who are too ugly to make it anywhere else. Six-hundre d pound blues guitarists, toothless keyboard players, harmonica-blowers with an eyepatch and a wooden leg, jazz musicians for whom social security was a substantial raise in income. Nowhere in the world will you find such beautiful music played by such a misshapen band of musicians. And nowhere will you find such beautiful music concentrated nightly in so many venues within walking distance of each other. Conventional wisdom says that it's the loose liquor laws in the Quarter that leads to the wild behavior, but it's the music. I've been around a lot of drunks; without music, it's really boring and depressing; without music, Bourbon Street is a sickly-sweet smelling slum, where the overwhelming odor of blender-drink vomit just barely overpowers the stench of urine. With music, Bourbon Street is the place where human tribalism, the link between modern man in all shapes or colors and our common ancestors in the recesses of our memories, emerges triumphant over class and ethnicity.

I don't know what it's like for women. It's not Cancun or the Mediterranean, where a one-nighter with a hot local is a vacation rite-of-passage. You might hook up with a conventioneer, but it seems like Bourbon Street is a place where couples are moved to give each other public oral sex, not a place where non-couples will hook up. Sort of like flashing on Splash Mountain - it's a riot, but not the sort of thing you do with strangers.

The food.

Hotel restaurants are good in New Orleans. Convention shindigs have excellent food. Breakfast buffets are better. It's easier to find a really great meal, a really unique great meal, than anywhere else on earth. And they know it - if you can get out of New Orleans without gaining ten pounds or offending a waitperson, you're a cyborg, not a human. I'm not saying it's healthy; I'm just saying I'm a white guy who could get smothered in New Orleans someday under a 500 pound black woman, and blame it on carnal pleasure. Come to mama, baby! Call me racist or whatever, but Rollin' in my Sweet Baby's Arms isn't a midwestern experience. It's not even a white-black experience, really - the sum of people I've met in NewOrleans have probably been pretty close to the 67% African-American mix that census figures show. But the 100% experience is that people have a warmth and innate respect for the things that matter.

New Orleans isn't the most efficient convention city by a long shot; but in dealing with the inevitable travel complications, you'll find the most down-to-earth and hospitable people. There are times you'll be hard-pressed for one reason or another anywhere, but there's nowhere that you'll feel more at-home-away-from-home. And I mean at your family's home, not your job home.

In my life, I've traveled to West Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and many cities in the US. New Orleans is unique, a place unlike any other.

 

[R. Richard]

I have been to NO several times. The restaraunts are great but my memories are of eating oysters by the dozen at a little bar and experimenting with different kinds of hot sauce. Oh yeah, and eating corn on the cob down on Bourbon Street.

 

[cloudy]

We were there one year for the sugar bowl....forget which year, but Tennessee was playing, and the quarter was a sea of orange and white. Not surprisingly, I don't have many specific memories of that night, other than orange predominating everything.

Coffee at the Cafe du Monde on Jackson Square.

The old cemetary with the tomb of Marie Leveau.

The beauty and other-worldliness of the Garden District.

This makes me so sad.

 

[thebullet]

My wife went to NO with a couple of girlfriends two years ago. They did all the touristy things, stayed at a fantastic old hotel in the French Quater, saw the Preservation Jazz Band, listened to music, drank hurricanes (ironically) and had a ball. She brought home some beads, but I don't know if she earned them the normal way.

The other day she was talking to our next-door neighbor, a German lady, who went to NO last year. Our neighbor had been horrified. 'Do you know what goes on there at night?', she asked my wife. 'There's this Bourbon Street where just about anything goes! My husband tried to take me there, but I told him, no way!'
My wife was kind of embarrassed, since she spent about 80% of her time in New Orleans on Bourbon Street and vicinity. She finally said 'Don't knock it till you've tried it.'

BTW, I don't know if my wife legitimately earned her beads or not. But I am in the process of buying her a tee shirt printed with the following:

(FRONT) Who Needs Tits?
(Back) With an Ass like this

 

[shereads]

Preservation Hall. Like a tiny church devoted to the worship of jazz. Coming in from the party atmosphere of the French Quarter on a weekend night, you're aware of the sudden silence. There's a dusty smell reminiscent of attics and used book stores.

When I was there, more than a dozen years ago, some of the musicians in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band were ancient little men who reminded me of thin, black Yodas. They looked delicate and withered, and sat so still and expressionless while they waited for the audience to settle down, it was a shock when they started to play their raucous, relentlessly upbeat Dixieland Jazz with all the energy of your neighbor's kid's garage band.

There are a few non-sexual moments that I remember as elation. Diving the Bloody Bay Wall at Little Cayman. The first childhood trip to Disneyland. Lying on the beach with my college roommates, listening to Marvin Gaye, all of us stoned on paranoia-free pot. And discovering a love of Dixieland Jazz that night at Preservation Hall, the place that celebrates its birth.

I remember New Orleans for the quality and quantity of the street musicians who played for spare change all over downtown; the iron-lace balconies that make the French Quarter so different from the historic districts of other American cities; beignets and coffee with chicory; breakfast at Brennan's; wanting to shout "STELLA!" when a streetcar went by; cemeteries that looked like white marble villages.

But the best memories are of hearing "When the Saints Go Marching In," played two ways: at Preservation Hall, where the band saved it for their curtain call; and by the band that accompanied a funeral procession.

New Orleans has been through cholera epidemics that were as deadly as the Plague, and like medieval Europe, it buried its dead and kept on living. Who could fail to have faith in a city whose signature song celebrates death as the moment for hope, and makes a funeral sound like a party?

 

[Brinnie Spears]

I miss ru del a course.
I know it's gone... I just know it.

 

[variable Xy]

I miss ru del a course.
I know it's gone... I just know it.

I was thinking the same thing the other day

 

[glynndah]

A few years ago we rode the City of New Orleans from southern Illinois to New Orleans. During that long ride over Lake Pontchatrain, we sat in the observation car while a man from Louisiana gave us a wonderful "lecture" on the Lake, the bayou and the sights, sounds and tastes of New Orleans.

Our mini-vacation to New Orleans was just before Halloween. It was a great time to be there. The atmosphere of the French Quarter was decadent and perfect for Halloween.

We, too, were approached with the "Betcha I know where you got them shoes" scam. We smiled and said "on our feet" and them gave the kid a dollar anyway. We learned early on to keep a pocketful of quarters and singles to tip the entertainment on the street. The Aluminum man and the Copper guy, the kids who tap-danced in tennis shoes, etc., etc., etc.

We took our 17 year old son who is autistic and a music fan. He had a great time on Bourbon Street listening to all the different kinds of music and trying to act nonchalant while eying the come-ons from the Hustler Club and all the others. The first time a girl threw beads at him and trying to explain to him that it was a honor and to just smile, tip his cap and yell "Thanks". He ended up with quite a large collection by the end of the trip. The band at the Cafe du Monde let him "jam" on vocals with them. The picture I took was one of the highlights of the trip. (And counted as a music performance credit since he missed the class to go to New Orleans.)

We took a walking tour of New Orleans' voodoo sites and graveyards. The man who gave the lecture was wonderful. We wanted to turn around and take the whole thing over again.

My husband spent time in each restaurant chatting with the waiters, cooks and busboys about the food, how it was prepared, the tips, the best place to go for... He has bought coffee from a place in New Orleans (Orleans Coffee Exchange: check out their site and support them, back in business from Baton Rouge on 9/15) for over 20 years and dropped by to say "hi" to Grandma Ruth.

We had a wonderful time in New Orleans and plan on going back as soon as they're ready for us.

 

[hurricane64]

I fell for that shoe scam once, to the tune of a ten spot.

Riding in on a train is very picturesque. I was on the Crescent, coming from the eastern side over the water, on my first visit. I flew in twice after that on business/pleasure trips.

The sights around the Quarter always stand out. So do the restaurants. All the old classic favorites like Tujague's and Antoine's and Brennan's and Galatoire's, the newer ones like K-Paul's and Nola. All great in their own way, and hopefully all will return.

Pat O'Brien's and Cafe du Monde.

Being able to walk around any time of day or night and know that you could order a drink with no hassle, if you wanted it.

The River.

Outside the Quarter, Lake Pontchartrain and the walk beside it.

 

[shereads]

A few years ago we rode the City of New Orleans from southern Illinois to New Orleans. During that long ride over Lake Pontchatrain, we sat in the observation car while a man from Louisiana gave us a wonderful "lecture" on the Lake, the bayou and the sights, sounds and tastes of New Orleans.

Ridin' on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday mornin' rail
15 cars & 15 restless riders
Three conductors, 25 sacks of mail

All along the southbound odyssey the train pulls out of Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms & fields
Passin' graves that have no name, freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of rusted automobiles

Good mornin' America, how are you?
Don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans
I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done

Dealin' cards with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain't no one keepin' score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
And feel the wheels rumblin' neath the floor

And the sons of Pullman porters & the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers' magic carpets made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep, rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel

Good mornin' America, how are you?
Say don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

Night time on the City of New Orleans
Changin' cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Halfway home, we'll be there by mornin'
Thru the Mississippi darkness rollin' down to the sea

But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
"The passengers will please refrain:
This train got the disappea rin' railroad blues

Good night America, how are you?
Say don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

~ Steve Goodman

 

[shereads]

I
My impression is that Bourbon Street is the final resting place for musicians who are too ugly to make it anywhere else. Six-hundre d pound blues guitarists, toothless keyboard players, harmonica-blowers with an eyepatch and a wooden leg, jazz musicians for whom social security was a substantial raise in income. Nowhere in the world will you find such beautiful music played by such a misshapen band of musicians. And nowhere will you find such beautiful music concentrated nightly in so many venues within walking distance of each other. Conventional wisdom says that it's the loose liquor laws in the Quarter that leads to the wild behavior, but it's the music. I've been around a lot of drunks; without music, it's really boring and depressing; without music, Bourbon Street is a sickly-sweet smelling slum, where the overwhelming odor of blender-drink vomit just barely overpowers the stench of urine. With music, Bourbon Street is the place where human tribalism, the link between modern man in all shapes or colors and our common ancestors in the recesses of our memories, emerges triumphant over class and ethnicity.

Nice. This made me remember how it felt to be there, right down to the stuff on the sidewalks. There is greatness in a city that can make you feel a little drunk when you haven't been drinking - and too happy to care very much about a bit of tourist-vomit on the bricks.

I know that Chicago and St. Louis are both famous for their blues bars, as New Orleans is for its jazz. But in New Orleans, you don't need to know which clubs to go to, or even have a destination. You go for a walk in the Quarter, and the music comes to you.

 

[shannon_est]

I saw this thread the other day, and didn't get time to read all of it. So I printed it out. Today I sat down and read everyone's wonderful memories. I am touched by this thread. I regret that I have never gotten to visit NO, tho I've often wanted to go. I was always fascinated by the stories told of Mardi Gras. In the 90s when I was reading Anne Rice's vampire series I discovered that the city had much more to offer. Hopefully time will mend this great city and I will be able to visit it as it once was, tho I fear there will be scars and nothing will ever be truely like it was.

I hope this is not out of place, but I would like to use some of the comments posted here in this thread in a story I am writing. After donating blood and money to the Red Cross, and clothes for the victims of Katrina, I still felt I wasn't doing enough. About a week ago I started a story, the setting in New Orleans just a few years back. It's an erotic vampire tale. After searching numerous sites on the internet, I got frustrated and let the story sit. I was looking for something much like what's on this.... personal experiences, to intertwine in the story. I want it to be a tribute of sorts to this city that has lost so much. What I'll do with the story when/if I get it completed, I'm not sure. I just know that writing soothes the soul, and my heart and soul have been very troubled over this tragedy. I would like permission to use your comments in my story and anyone who agrees will get acknowledged for it. This story may no go further than Lit, but I feel I HAVE to do this.

Thanks for listening to me ramble. PMs are welcome!