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T H I S+W E E K Acting on wild impulse
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DESPITE CRIME, POVERTY, AND HORRENDOUS SUMMER HEAT, LOYAL NEW ORLEANS RESIDENTS PARTY ON IN A CITY THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO HATE. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY LANCE P. MARTIN | to tell someone you live in New Orleans is to invite both
fascination and pity. New Orleans, the Babylonian soul of Louisiana, is a
city of mirth, revelry and excess, a hedonistic Mecca. Every day, the
historic French Quarter swells with tourists. At night, conventioneers
filter past the ornate ironwork of the Quarter's balconies and co-mingle
on Bourbon Street, spilling Hurricanes on their name tags and ogling the
tawdry strip joints. We celebrate something or other every weekend,
making it possible to chuck the calendar and track time by the parties.
Beneath this frolicsome, carefree veneer, however, lurks a troubled and flawed reality. In many respects, the city is an abject urban failure. We have an enormous and pervasive crime problem. For years, not only has the New Orleans
Police Department been ineffectual at stemming the tide of violent crime, in many cases its officers were the perpetrators. The NOPD, until quite recently, was notoriously corrupt. Signs around town that read,
"This Neighborhood Patrolled by Off-Duty Police Officers" provoked more
trepidation than solace. But with the introduction of a popular new
police chief, Richard Pennington, things have started to turn around. Although the city has a long way to go, the locals are cautiously
optimistic that Pennington will be our panacea.
New Orleans is also a city of stark contradictions. In contrast to its
popular image of decadence and heedless consumption, the city has the
highest child poverty rate in the nation, a moribund public
education system and a failed public housing program. Neighborhoods
like the Garden District and Uptown, with their opulent mansions and
ostentatious wealth, abut the blight and decay of poverty-stricken neighborhoods and dilapidated public housing.
In some areas, like the University Section near Tulane and Loyola, the contrast is literally block to block -- from beautiful and safe to decrepit and deadly.
New Orleans' civic leaders are amusing and border on the
picaresque, and we locals read the papers and shake our head as they
steer public affairs into constant scandal and corruption. Every major project undertaken ultimately lands in court. The 1984 World's Fair flopped. A casino shell at the foot of Poydras Street, half-completed and mired in bankruptcy, has been sitting dormant for over a year. The city's attempt to acquire an NBA franchise failed and, as expected, is now a subject in a federal grand jury probe. The mayor's powerful political machine, LIFE, is under scrutiny by the United States Senate. Development is set to begin on a $76 million dollar amusement park, Jazzland, in New Orleans East. I wish the best for the park, but I cringe at the thought of its almost inevitable failure.
Even Mother Nature is less than kind to my hometown. This time of
year, the weather is brutally hot and humid, an oppressive, enveloping one-two punch that causes perpetual sweating and stickiness. When you step out on the street, it hits you like a jet-wash blast. The heat shimmers off the street and causes that fuel puddle mirage effect. The temperature rises early and we bake for the bulk of the day. It doesn't begin to cool until dusk, and even then, not much. Clothes cling. Eyeglasses steam. To survive a New Orleans summer, you come to enjoy the background
whir of your air conditioner. You learn to slow down and relax. You seek
comfort in Sno-balls, iced tea and beer. It is, quite literally, deadly
to exercise during the day. In the Central Business District (CBD), where
I work, the sensible corporate types wear poplin, pincord or seersucker.
To wear wool, even tropical wool, is to court disaster.
Yet, despite the myriad social problems and unbearable summer
heat, we locals are fiercely loyal to our city. And it isn't just the
partying that keeps us here: Most of us leave the
Quarter and Bourbon Street to the tourists. Many vacate for Mardi Gras,
or, more likely, surrender their homes to visitors. Nor are we
genetically endowed with some
inherited trait that permits us to ignore the city's woes. We are as
vocal and condemnatory as anyone about what needs fixing. Rather, there's a trade-off phenomenon, a subconscious balancing of the scales.
The city is so much more than a raucous, raunchy,
non-stop party site. It is wonderfully quaint and
unique, sui generis as Huey P. Long would have said, and its subtle
pleasures are infectious and ultimately trump the problems. It's the
sublime joy of listening to home-grown swing and
be-bop on WWOZ, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage station. It's
marveling
at the massive oak trees that stretch and arch over the loop at Audubon
Park, forming a thick canopy of foliage for joggers and bicyclists. It's
strolling through the charming tree-lined Uptown neighborhoods and
admiring the distinctive and diverse architecture -- Victorian cottages,
Greek Revival mansions, pastel camelbacks and raised shotguns with
porches and gingerbread cornices. It's sitting on the wide
verandah of the Columns Hotel, sipping an Abita (the beer of choice,
brewed 30 miles north of the city) and watching the streetcars glide
down St. Charles Avenue. This is why New Orleans is addictive.
Food, of course, tops the list of factors inducing this irrational
addiction. New Orleans was recently awarded the dubious honor of the
city with the fattest population in the United States. Nice.
But what do you expect? This is the city of beignets, étoufée, poboys,
gumbo, remoulade, pralines, bisque, muffelatas and bread pudding. The
names are almost as rich as the dishes. This is a city where if it ain't
fried, it's swimming in butter, a city where the natives like their
crawfish boiled, their oysters raw, their catfish fried and their red
beans and rice spicy. You would think that the fat study would be a
source of opprobrium for the locals. A time for introspection and,
perhaps, a reordering of one's gastronomic priorities. Maybe. But I
haven't seen it. For all I could tell, the residents were unfazed.
New Orleans has a restaurant for every taste and
budget. The French Quarter houses the doyens of French and Creole
cuisine, Antoine's and Galatoire's. These places are prandial
anachronisms -- old, storied and fiercely resistant to change,
particularly menu changes of the heart-healthy or weight-conscious
stripe. In the CBD and the Warehouse District, establishments like
Emeril's, Graham's and Mike's on the Avenue serve the best of the city's
haute cuisine.
New Orleanians' love of good food and good times is nowhere more
evident, however, than in the plethora of no-nonsense neighborhood
restaurants, with their affinity for dark faux-wood paneling and aversion
to printed menus. A famous Uptown haunt called Charley's Steak House
serves one appetizer (fried onion rings), two entrees (Filet, T-Bone)
and a salad consisting of a triangular wedge of iceberg
lettuce topped by a tomato slice. So much for presentation. Another
restaurant frequented by Uptown denizens, Franky &
Johnny's, specializes in fried seafood, but is otherwise indistinguishable
from Charley's. The food is heavy,
artery-clotting and with a fat and caloric content pushing six figures.
But it tastes so good you just can't resist. That rings true for New
Orleans itself. So much is wrong with the city, there's an infinitesimal
number of reasons to abandon
it, but once you've experienced its charm, resistance is futile.
New Orleans also has a tremendous music scene. Here, on any
given night, you can find jazz, big band, blues, zydeco, funky butt,
rockabilly, Latin and alternative rock. Every night, joints like Snug Harbor,
the New Showcase Lounge and
Donna's Bar and Grill showcase the city's jazz talent. Legendary
Tipitina's, the Sistine Chapel of Uptown New Orleans clubs, continues to
bring in great acts. I crammed in to see Cowboy Mouth during Jazz Fest
week, and the place was electric. And if you're on Carrollton, the
Mid-City Lanes Rock-n-Bowl offers bands and bowling in a
quintessential
New Orleans environment. No turkeys on the stage, and rarely any on
the
lanes (if that's not their slogan it should be). Because there's always a
festival somewhere in the city, free music is never hard to find, or, if
you're a music-loving agoraphobe, there's always WWOZ.
Would-be
writers can sop up the city's rich literary history. William
Faulkner wrote his first novel here. Tennessee Williams and Walker
Percy
wrote about the city. The muddy Mississippi calls to mind Mark Twain,
and
you can't look at a French Quarter lucky dog vendor without thinking of
William Kennedy Toole's unforgettable Ignatius O'Reilly. Richard Ford lives
in the Quarter.
And if vampires and witchcraft are your thing, Anne Rice is a local
cottage industry.
She's ever-present, often purchasing full-page ads in the
Times-Picayune
to express her opinions on social and political issues. She's also
gobbled up a significant amount of New Orleans real estate, including a
convent and a Catholic chapel, stirring up significant controversy in the
process. Think Donald Trump in creepy black drag and with a penchant
for
Catholic iconography.
It has often been said that New Orleans is the last great place
where it still means something to be a member of the aristocracy. I
wouldn't know, being a member of the working poor. But
Society is alive and well in New Orleans, and it appears to be taken quite
seriously. Many of the bluebloods are quite conspicuous, particularly
during the Mardi Gras and Debutante seasons. At that time, the society
page of the Times-Picayune, the section that Raymond Chandler's Phillip
Marlowe once aptly characterized as "the section I read when I run out
of
things to dislike," is bloated with young maids in dazzling gowns and
staid old codgers in tuxedos. The weekends are given over to lavish
balls
hosted by this or that mysterious carnival Krewe. This year, Mardi Gras
fell early, and I overheard a socialite friend lament that there would not
be enough weekends to accommodate all the swank social gatherings to
which
he was accustomed. As an outsider, all this ersatz royalty looks quite
pretentious and ridiculous. But I suppose if I were invited to attend one
of these frivolous spectacles and sip champagne and eat oysters en
brochette, I might change my tune. I guess we'll never know.
Ultimately, though, Magazine Street is for me the tangible reminder of
why I
live in New Orleans. It is, without exaggeration, New Orleans' greatest
street. Parallel to St. Charles, only closer to the Mississippi, it runs
some 60 to 70 blocks from the CBD through the Garden District
and Uptown, then past Audubon Park. It is lined with an eclectic
gallimaufry of restaurants, cafes, bars, antique shops, art galleries,
bookstores and homes. It is the essence of New Orleans and a
testament to what makes this city great and captivates the locals. The
5400 and 5500 blocks of Magazine, smack in the heart of Uptown, and
walking distance from the apartment I rent, are as complete and perfect
as any two blocks in the country. It has hip coffee shops, Lenny's
News' comprehensive collection of newspapers and magazines, the
intellectual oasis of Beaucoup Books and All Natural Foods & Deli, a
New Orleans restaurant anomaly with its healthy, vegetarian lunches. All
this in
addition to a long stretch of eclectic, independently owned specialty
stores selling
everything from antiques, costumes, jewelry and home furnishings to
toys, pet supplies and flowers. This small stretch of Magazine is the best
of New Orleans in microcosm.
Several months ago, after a particularly chilling crime spree in
the city (including a grisly bludgeoning a few blocks from my apartment),
I thought I would join the hegira out of the city. I started an apartment
hunt and found a new place in the suburbs. I told my prospective
landlord
that I would drive to his house and sign a lease on a Sunday morning. I
woke that cloudy morning anguished and tormented, and as I drove
through
the misty rain to the suburbs, my stomach flip-flopped and I began to feel
nauseated. By the time I arrived, I couldn't bring myself to sign the
lease. I still live in Uptown New Orleans and I'm often on my block of
Magazine on weekends, drinking iced coffee, reading the papers and
watching the pedestrians. I guess I too am addicted to New Orleans.
Lance P. Martin is a New Orleans attorney and a freelance writer. In
1996, he won the Faux Faulkner Contest for a short story scheduled to
appear in the Paris Review. He is
currently at work on a novel, when not toiling slavishly for the Man.
+ + + + + + + + Discover all the fabulous places to wine and dine New Orleans-style in Wanderlust Marketplace. + + + + + + + + |
![[Big Easy addiction]](trumpet970722.gif)
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