What are some of your favorite New Orleans memories?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In this post I mention one of my most disturbing, so in fairness to the devastated city I thought I’d mention some of my favorites.

My earliest memory is of riding in the back seat of a station wagon on New Years Eve (early 1970s) sitting between my grandparents (Mustang and Meemaw) while scantily clad women and hippies danced in the street and looked through our windows. Mustang was holding his 8" pocket knife and lamenting “I wish I had my damned gun… wish I had my damned pistol… but it’s in the suitcase…” while his wife looked out the window and said “Those women don’t have any clothes on… that boy doesn’t have any clothes on… he must be a whole lot younger than I thought he was, or it’s cold our there one.” My parents were choking laughing and I had to have a lot of it explained to me later, but it’s still one of my favorite moments.

My absolute favorite was passing the Jeopardy audition there (AND THE SONS OF BITCHES NEVER CALLED ME BECAUSE ALEX TREBEK AND MERV GRIFFIN ARE BOTH MOTHERLESS COMMUNISTS WHO’VE HAD AFFAIRS WITH ANIMALS) on a hot as hell morning when I walked through the Quarter as the businesses were opening. Hard to explain- it was just a magic day. Later I had the idea of doing “I’m the King of the World!” pose on the ferry to Storyville, but when I got to the front there was a big sign saying “NO TITANIC POSING!” which I thought was pretty cool.

What are some of yours?

2

Cruising the French Quarter with my college roommate back in September, 1978. We were both interviewing at Tulane for medical school and we made a weekend out of it. Discovering a lingerie and novelty store there, and buying a ton of stuff to present our then-girlfriends (who are our wives at this date) upon our return.

Oh yeah, the drinks, the music, the nekkid women, the nekkid "looks a lot like a woman, but isn’t, quite’. Preservation Hall Jazz music spilling into the street. Eating at the Court of the Two Sisters restaurant.

3

Solo Road Trip 1997: Spent a night in New Orleans on my way around the country. I had a great time in the French Quarter. Without getting into all the details, I made a nice friend from Chicago, although our friendship was short-lived.

Mardi Gras 1998: Road trip with my law school roommate. We made the decision to go at the last minute. We drove tp NO, rented a U-Haul, parked by Tulane, and slept in the back of the truck. We took showers on campus. We drank and partied all weekend. It was great fun.

Both trips were some of the best and most memorable times in my life.

I particularly enjoyed the local and legendary drink of choice called the ‘Hurricane.’ I wonder if anything about that drink will change.

4

Being serenaded for my birthday by a jazz trio, two members of which were trumpeter Gregg Stafford and Preservation Hall bandleader Dr. Michael White.

Sitting in the shade of my umbrella on the grounds of the Old Mint (which is now, I understand, roofless) listening to the “jazz band summer camp” band playing at the first Satchmo Summerfest festival on a hot, hot August day, and realizing that most of those 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids are already good enough to be professional musicians.

Getting friends’ attention who were riding in Mardi Gras parades and getting inundated with as many beads as my arms would hold.

My first Zulu coconut.

5

Another cool memory was when I was living in Montgomery. A local “adult novelty store” had been raided and charged with selling pornography (illegal in Montgomery) “after a six month investigation” by the city’s long term Ayatollah like mayor and his police force. This was causing a lot of jokes about “how the hell does it take you six months to deduce if something is porn? Watch the first three minutes- if there’s cheesy music and nekkid people having sex, then BINGO! You’ve got porn.”

I went to New Orleans later that week and one of the first shops I passed leaving the hotel had an inflatable vibrating sheep in the window. This was one of those great “we’re not in Montgomery any more” moments. Other shops I’ll always recall:

-the Russian shop that sold the most stunningly gorgeous nesting dolls I’ve ever seen (several were of the Romanovs and the painting was just gallery quality)

-the shop that sold nothing but carved wooden “detached Buddha’s” (I can’t find an image, but it’s the Buddha with his head buried in his hands in a “contemplating his navel” position- it’s all the store sold, though they ranged in size from the size of a chestnut to life sized, almost like something out of a Tom Robbins novel

-the Blue Dog shop

6

When Ivylad was in the Navy, we drove from Connecticut to his new posting San Diego, stopping off in Florida to visit family and then to New Orleans on the way. I remember getting my first mask of my collection there (the ceramic masqerade party masks that you hang on the wall) and going to see can-can dancers. Ivyboy was only about 18 months old and he was enthralled with the dancers. At the end of the dance, the girls came out into the audience and handed out their garter belts.

A beautiful girl with skin the color of cafe au lait with the stage name of Grasshopper (in French, of course) came down and handed her garter belt to Ivyboy. The audience went awwwww and Ivyboy just grinned.

7

A couple of trips there last year with Nocturne. The City was (and I believe will be again) vibrant and alive in a way that I think no other US city approaches.

Drinking with locals in a bar in the Quarter (not one of the Bourbon street tourist traps. If it ever re-opens, go have one at The Alibi, voted one of America’s top twenty dive bars. Wonderful place.

Getting asked for directions by tourists a lot. Apparently, dressed in our goth garb, we looked like locals.

Chatting with a tarot reader (a California surf-goth) who had gone to NO some years earlier and never left.

Sharing a cigarette with a few people in the street, local people who had stopped us to say hi and comment on my mohawk. Good people, living very poor. I worry about them now.

The general friendliness

I love the City with every ounce of my being.

8

Just strolling . . . Such a great town for walking through. My old friend David lives there, and he and I would just walk aimlessly and “ooh-ahh” at the lovely, decrepit 19th-century architecture.

9

My first time in New Orleans started on July 24th, 1993. I was there to work on my friend’s film. It was a two-week shoot, and I had three hours to explore the city the whole time I was there. He was living under a house on Freret, not very far from Tulane. The basement was at street level and the house was built above it. The basement had two rooms in addition to the open storage space. He and his g/f stayed in one room, and I stayed in the ‘war room’ (which was wear they did art projects, prepared for the film, etc.) There was a separate toilet, but we used the showers in the house proper. I couldn’t believe how hot and humid New Orleans was. I fell in love with it.

The next time I was there was also to work on a film. Stayed at the Freret house again.

Other times I was there for Mardi Gras. My friend had moved over to Burgundy with his new g/f. Much nicer digs. One of my favourite things was to sit at Café do Monde sipping cafe au lait and munching on beignets while a cool breeze blew off of the river and street musicians played jazz on the sidewalk. Kaldi’s was across the street, and it was pleasant to sit at the open window with my coffee and watch the people pass by.

Checkpoint Charlie’s was a favourite hangount in the evenings. Nice and cool there in the evenings, with a breeze blowing through the open windows. Good live music and cheap beer. Didn’t even have to pay a cover, since we’d get in before cover-charge time. And the burgers there were really good. Checkpoint Charlie’s always amused me because if also contained a small laundromat. Sometimes we’d go to The R Bar.

The Clover Grill at Bourbon and Dumaine was a great place to grab a bite. They cooked their burgers under hubcaps. A cheeseburger with a side of hashbrowns always hit the spot. There was a French bakery staffed by Vietnamese not to far away from there, and I liked the pastries.

My friend’s g/f worked at ‘The Famous Historical Court Of Two Sisters’. One Mardi Gras we made a sign that read ‘Heinous Hysterical’ and put it over the ‘Famous Historical’ part of the sign.

Surprisingly, I’m not actually the least romantically successful person on these boards. but I think I’m close. But I was at a party at the Burgundy house and met a girl. We went to a pauper’s cemetery and then went to her place for sex. Best oral sex I’ve ever had. And the intercourse was great, too.

The Krewe Of Cosmic Destruction parades. Who wouldn’t like them? I always joined in when I was in town for Mardi Gras. It was unspeakably fun! I never sussed out bringing an instrument, so I’d find a beer can and some discarded beads for an improvised musical instrument.

Walking around Algiers. Cool.

Visiting the tomb of Marie Laveau. And Marie Laveau’s House Of Voodoo. And the Voodoo Museum.

Eating alligator-onna-stick with local hot sauce.

I still have the cheap-ass pair of tortoise shell shades I picked up at the French Market.

Thai food on Esplanade.

Neutral Ground.

Meeting up with my mom and taking her for a drink somewhere on Bourbon Street. Imagine taking your mom to Bourbon Street! :eek:

Riding the trolly from the Freret house to the French Quarter.

So many pleasant memories. Though I don’t like hot, humid weather, New Orleans is my favourite town. Good food, good music, cheap beer. And the spirit of the New Orleanians I met was fun.

Favourite sayings from New Orleans:
[ul]li New Orleans. Third World, and proud of it![/li][li](Another T-shirt) It’s not the heat. It’s the stupidity.[/li]* If you can’t make it in New Orleans, don’t leave![/ul]

10

CrazyCatLady and I got married in New Orleans on December 30, 2002.

We had thirty or so friends and family members with us; the plan was a brief, stand-up wedding on the steps of the cathedral in Jackson Square, followed by a buffet for all at the Acme Oyster House. (How many weddings include a Build Your Own Po Boy Bar?) We had called about having the wedding in the park, but it was ridiculously expensive to get a permit, considering what we wanted.

When we arrived in NO, we found our plans thwarted–they were renovating the cathedral, and the main steps were blocked by scaffolding. OK, we thought, we’ll get married on the steps on the side.

The morning before the wedding, we walked by to find them jackhammering up those steps. No problem, we thought, there are steps on the other side.

When I arrived 45 minutes before the wedding was to start, there was a band playing on those steps, and they were planning to be there for hours. Frustrated and out of ideas, I looked into the perfectly empty park. “What would they do,” I asked the hired minister, “if we just had a wedding in the park without a permit?”

“I’ve seen the police break groups up,” he said. “They know if there’s supposed to be a group in there.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

I went down the street to find CrazyCatLady, getting all dolled up in a friend’s hotel room. I explained why we were out of available cathedral steps. “I have the perfect spot, though,” I said. “The only catch is that we might have our wedding ceremony broken up by the cops.”

She thought for a minute. “Well, at least it’ll be a great story if it does.”

It actually went without a hitch. There was a contingency plan that a friend was going to moon the cops, or grab someone’s camcorder, and run off to keep the cop busy until we got the wedding overwith. (That’s a real friend.) We did hear a siren start up during the ceremony; on the video you can see everybody get nervous for a minute, and then chuckle.

11

I’ve only been to NO, once. Went with a good friend of mine who was taking classes in Baton Rouge at the time. We spent a day there, just wandering about. Took the St. Charles Street Trolley (I have that right, don’t I?) and enjoyed the heck out of ourselves.

A couple of things stick out.

JJ was telling me about this or that architecture, and was a little surprised that I wasn’t asking her for how she knew the odd details she was pulling out. As luck would have it, we were passing between where the USS Kidd was tied up and a large office building, and a riot* of squids came out of the building. (It was a weekday and lunch time, so…) I explained that I was quite comfortable with the fact that an educated eye will be able to pick up details that don’t mean anything to the uninitiated. And proceded to tell her the jobs that each of the squids did, how many years some of them had been in (as a minimum number) and whether they were visiting friends from another command or were in the administrative office in the building they were coming out of. JJ is a very sharp lady, and I have never had the chance, before or since, to make her eyes widen so far with useless, and esoteric knowledge.

The sounds - music everywhere.

The smells - I was reminded of walking through the Fanueil Hall marketplace. It seems just silly to say that about New Orleans. I can’t imagine two cities less like each other than Boston and NO, but, especially in the French Quarter, NO is a walking city, like Boston, and the appetite one builds by walking through all those scents. Just lovely.
*Yes, the collective noun for a group of sailors, if enlisted, is a riot. If commisioned it’s a vanity. If they’re Marines, it’s either a disaster or an embarassment. :wink:

12

Jazz at The Funky Butt (and I don’t even like jazz, but the atmosphere was incredible). My friend knew the owner.

Hippies (the 21st century kind) sharing a joint with us on the grass by the river.

Countless nights at Café du Monde. They could have charged triple the price they did for those beignets, and tourists wouldn’t have batted an eye, but they never did.

Planting pot seeds in City Park just for the hell of it. Irresponsible? Probably. Fun? Definitely. But then, isn’t that what New Orleans is all about? :slight_smile:

13

July 4, 1983. My parents & I just moved down from New York the month before and were renting a house near New Orleans International (Delaware Ave. & 22nd if anyone cares). One of my sisters came down from Illinois and we all went to the Ponchatrain Beach Amusement Park during its final season.

Mardi Gras, 1984. It was an early Mardi Gras that year, the weather was chilly and it was very windy. The wind cut through my parka like it was just a windbreaker.

House hunting in Eastbank Jefferson Parish in 1984. We looked at several properties with the help of a topographical map so we could have the high ground in case of flooding. My parents narrowed it down to two properties, one with a pool and one without, and asked me to make the final decision. I chose the one that wouldn’t result in fair weather friends, it was also closer to school. Turns out it it had an improperly installed skylight and several dead trees in the yard.

The World’s Fair, 1984. Visited several times with my parents and various visiting relatives.

I joined the Key Club at my new school. For those not familiar with these groups, they’re associated with the Kiwanis. We did community service like volunteering at a Jefferson Parish senior center and a children’s home in New Orleans. We also raised money by selling candy and washing cars, I no longer remember what we were raising money for though.

Senior Dinner at the Royal Orleans Hotel, 1986. I don’t think I was supposed to be there, I think I forgot to pay for it but the organizers let me stay anyway.

High school graduation, 1986. I know it was somewhere in New Orleans but can’t remember exactly where. I do remember one of my heels got caught on the stairs on my way down from the podium and I nearly fell flat on my face.

14

Oh yeah, forgot one: Pat O’Brien’s. I have a photo from a visit in '87, my, one of my sisters, her then-husband, and some drunk who befriended us. The photo was the drunk’s idea. I had been just discharged out of Navy basic training and was still rail-thin. I weighed about 190 at the time. I was drinking a margarita (frozen, no salt) even though I wasn’t quite legal yet.

15

I spent quite a bit of time there as a boy as my dad is from Louisiana and we lived there (Louisiana) when I was small. But I don’t remember much.

Then in '97 I ended up being sent as a last minute replacement to a hotel convention down there. I ran the booth for six hours and had an expense account for the rest of the weekend. I ended up playing guitar with some kids on a corner. They thought Nirvana was a damn stupid thing to want to play in New Orleans but they let me choose a couple. Smells Like Teen Spirit sure sounded funny.

Then in 1999 I took Lady Chance there for a week. We stayed at a B&B on the other side of town from the Quarter. It was August and about 10,000 degrees every day. We were booked for a small room but the woman who ran it gave us the huge attic apartment instead as she had a family with a baby suddenly book and they wanted the downstairs room. So we had this big attic with no AC and five beds. We used a different one each night.

Lady Chance and I that first day decided to walk from the B&B down the streetcar tracks to the Audubon Park and into the Zoo. We about melted.

Then, with neither of us being big drinkers, we went shopping and drinking in the Quarter on night two. Her buying dresses (she still has some of them) and me whistling (with others). We pretty much spent the next 4 days three sheets to the wind. We’d wake up feeling horrible, decline our hostess offer of breakfast (shuddering), head out and do stuff (nature tours in the bayou, the San Francisco house, more zoo, whatever) then take a cab to the Quarter and do more shopping and drinking. Oofah. What a week. I heard my first Ricky Martin and Shania Twain songs that week. Danced to them, too.

One night we stayed out most of the night on a walking ghost tour by a guy called ‘Charles’, I believe. Had a girl assistant who dressed up as Death from the Sandman comics. Cute as all hell. The tour took a break in a place called ‘Highway to Hell’ where I had two Whiskey and Cokes and ended up playing pool with some tough-ass looking dudes. Dropped $20 to them (they spanked me bad) and finally said goodbye by singing ‘Back in Black’ from the door.

And…turns out we forgot something else while we were there. As a direct consequence of our actions and certain forgettery we ended up with, nine months later, our now five-year-old bundle of joy sleeping in the next room here. Simply amazing.

16

When my husband and I married, we planned a Biloxi/New Orleans honeymoon. First we spent two days in Biloxi, seeing the sights and playing in the casinos. We ate the wonderful buffets, and I won $2500 on a slot machine. Lots of fun.

Then we traveled to New Orleans for a five night visit, and stayed at a local bed and breakfast a couple of blocks from the French Quarter in a great old house with a claw-footed tub and antique furnishings. When we got back from our first look around town, they had a bucket of ice with champagne in it and two glasses waiting for us in our room.

We tried to see everything…we walked in and out of many of the little shops and took a vampire tour (creepy and a lot of fun). We ate at the Café Du Monde and at a po’ boy shop that was a local favorite. We saw the aquarium and watched Everest at the Imax. Someone tried to talk me into playing Three Card Monte, but I knew better. We had seafood gumbo and watched the jazz bands. I bought tons of souvenirs with my slot machine winnings.

There was a lot more, but that’s all I can remember right now. We had planned to go back and see more of the sights one day. I hope that we still get to do that.

17

Oh yes, we also toured the Voo Doo Museum, which was very interesting and full of history.

Does anyone else remember the place with the fishnet-clad legs swinging in and out of the upper window? I can’t remember the name of the place but I always think of those legs when I think of N.O.

18

I was born in New Orleans and moved to Baton Rouge when I was five years old. I read earlier today that Cafe du Monde survived and am determined to be there the first weekend it reopens if at all possible. I also hope the French Market reopens, and that Port of Call survived (best hamburgers EVER). We had a family membership to the aquarium and loved the lazy Saturday’s where we spent hours in there.

The best memory of all though, is picking up our youngest daughter. Her birthmom and her family are from New Orleans and we pray they made it out safely so that one day our daughter can reunited with her.

19

Taking <a href=“http://idle-wild.net/images/lamppost.jpg”>this picture</a> while wandering around New Orleans with my then newly-engaged fiance. (We’ve been married seven years now.) My parents-in-law paid for us to spend a weekend in a nice hotel in the French Quarter to celebrate our engagement. It was just wonderful being there. I am still gut-wrenched by the whole thing, massive human tragedy aside, that is a beautiful city with a character all its own, and I just know it will make it back from ruin somehow.

20

Augh. I’m torn up enough to use html when I really shouldn’t, and then fail to preview. It’s http://idle-wild.net/images/lamppost.jpg