Noteworthy in Nola » About Town

Iron lace and shadow

Tess — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:17:35 +0000

In the Garden District…

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Running of the Bulls 2010

Tess — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:05:56 +0000

Last year I missed this event, and honestly, I would have again this year if not for a friend who was dead set on going. So down to the French Quarter we went, along with 5,000 people who’d gotten up before 7 on a sweltering July Saturday for the privilege of being beaten on by plastic bat wielding roller derby girls.

Clearly, the New Orleans participants have rather different concerns than their brethren in Pamplona. While a cocktail might not be the wisest choice before having to zigzag in front of a ton of hurtling bovine, the runners here weren’t so concerned about sobriety. Nearby bars were doing a brisk business in sangria, bloody marys and beer while the Rolling Elvi and lovely girls in bull helmets were arriving on the scene. A big blue bull mascot was doing a rather…uh…interesting dance that highlighted his uncastrated state.

I happened to catch the eye of a woman in running attire. Clearly a tourist and not used to such things at such hours, she’d pulled up short and was walking cautiously up to the crowd, so I smiled and waved her over to join everyone, but she stayed back on the sidewalk, beckoning me over instead. I’m not sure why I thought an explanation would convince her we weren’t nuts, but I did my best. She took the information in, considering.

“You know,” she said after a long, thoughtful pause, “we couldn’t do this in New York. Too aggressive. Someone would bring a real bat, the runners would fight back. People would get hurt for real.” She looked at the size of the crowd and the few cops scattered around. “You really don’t think that’ll happen here?”

I laughed. “No way, and besides- these are roller derby girls! They can kick the asses of pretty much anybody here.” She didn’t quite seem to know how to take that, so I added, “It’s too mellow, everybody’s just out for a good time, no worries.”

“You know, you people should be the longest lived people on the planet. You know how to have a good time, everybody’s relaxed, friendly. It’s not the same rat race, and it it’s not like it is at home- nobody’s asked me what I do, nobody seems to much care how much I make.” She continued surveying the crowd carefully. “There are all kinds of people here and they’re just having fun- it’s all that stuff the doctors tell you to do, stop and smell the roses, all that.”

A group of men dragged their wagon past us, a huge cooler barely wedged inside. A random Elvi sauntered up to them, had a beer planted in his hand and, raising a toast to the donation, he wandered back to his scooter.

“Yeah,” she said. “If you’d all just take it easy on the drink and the fried food, you people would live forever.”

Somebody fell into the cop at the corner, and he took it in stride. They took a picture with him, and life went on. “You have some great policemen here,” she said.

That one made my eyebrows go up- it’s not a phrase one often hears here(shirt on Bourbon St reads: “NOPD: Not Our Problem, Dude.”), and coming from a middle aged black lady it seemed somewhat surreal, but she was completely sincere.

“Very good with people,” she said, nodding. “I’ve been watching them dealing with drunken idiots, and I don’t know how they do it. They’re always in control, friendly, personable. I’ve been amazed.”

“Um, yeah. They have a lot of practice, I guess- we have a lot of festivals and parades, so they really are the best at crowd control. Absolutely.”

By then things were ready to get underway and my new friend scooted out of the way and onto a sidestreet. The “bulls” were getting their instructions- runners would be sent out in a steady stream and every 45 seconds or so an airhorn would blow, signalling the release of a half dozen bulls.

And so it was:

It was hysterical- when the airhorn blasted, everybody but everybody screamed like crazy- and the people were really running… like, RUNNING running.

Running with go cups, true, but hey. Sure, maybe we could be the longest lived people on Earth, but if you take away our food and our drink, maybe you take away the magic.

In the end, maybe it’s best not to tamper with the delicate formula, and just let New Orleans be New Orleans.
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Krewe of Dead Pelicans

Tess — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:02:52 +0000

I know, I know. I’ve got to find something cheery to post about…but this is pretty much New Orleans in a nutshell. Give us something awful and we’ll find a way to bring people together and if that isn’t the definition of ‘lemons into lemonade,’ I don’t know what is.

Beth alerted me to the newly formed Krewe of Dead Pelicans, which was having a Second Line this afternoon in the Central Business District. It wasn’t a protest, exactly, nor a fundraiser… I think it was mostly a chance to have a community outpouring of the rage and despair we’ve all been dealing with.

And the costumes, of course, were amazing, especially since they were just thrown together. A band played, and everyone marched on.

Click to see the larger images:

And a brief video of the beginning of the Second Line:
(again, sorry about the audio- I’m quickly discovering that it doesn’t take much to overwhelm the Nikon’s mic, but once the police motorcycles move on the audio’s okay)

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Mardi Gras day, 1967-style

Tess — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:40:31 +0000

The latest bunch of eBay photos have a few really interesting shots, though most are of your typical floats and such- a couple in from Seattle for Mardi Gras.

There are two that caught my attention, though- the first is just how different Bourbon Street was… hats, coats, kerchiefs… totally civilized. Shockingly so, really:

The other was this one:

I’d love to know where this was, who they were, what the celebration was. And mostly I’d like to know how a couple of tourists who, as far as I can tell, did not stray off Bourbon and Canal got to something like this.

And then I’d like to go, too. Similar Posts:

Deutsches Haus last hurrah

Tess — Sun, 16 May 2010 20:48:59 +0000

New Orleans is about to lose a huge whack of Mid-City to build a massive campus housing new LSU and VA hospitals.

Although no one disputes the desperate need for the new hospitals, how they’ve come about has been a major controversy. The two possibilities were were to renovate their existing hospital – “Big Charity” – a massive 1 million square foot building that sustained only minor damage in Katrina. But LSU fought mightily against this idea, preferring instead a second possibility-paying hundreds of thousands of extra dollars for the privilege buying and bulldozing 27 square blocks full of historic houses to get a shiny new facility. Amazingly, the new site is literally across the street from the existing building, which they’re abandoning in the middle of the Central Business District.

To be fair, this is an area of the city with issues but the neighborhood association is strong and has been working successfully to fight blight and bring people back… only for those people to now see their homes and businesses taken through eminent domain and plowed under.

One of those buildings is the Deutsches Haus, founded in 1928 to consolidate several different German clubs in the city. They host the annual Oktoberfest and celebrate other German holidays, always with lots of food, beer, music, and good cheer. They have photos of what the Haus looked like post-hurricane, and the staggering amount of work that had to be done. You’d never know it now, everything is back and better than before, but the clock’s ticking; this weekend’s Volksfest was the last major event before they have to vacate the Haus.

Unfortunately, it was a rainy miserable sendoff and there weren’t nearly as many people as we’d expected. Sad to see the courtyard so empty:

On the other hand, instead of being overrun by casual visitors the Haus was filled with members and the people who love it most. There were many in traditional costume, and groups of friends met, clustered and danced all around the building.

To find out more about Deutches Haus visit their website here.
To see other buildings in Mid-City that are going to be lost (demolitions begun last week) go here.
To find out more about the fight to retrofit Charity, visit SaveCharityHospital Similar Posts:

Aquarium stroll

Tess — Sat, 08 May 2010 02:50:57 +0000

After thinking about the Gulf so much I decided to I needed a little communing with the the Aquarium of the Americas…

Moving quickly past the smiling sting rays…

and the Lionfish being stalked…

beyond the curious penguins plotting their escape…

and the totally unimpressed white alligator…

the jellyfish were the last thing…

…before I reached my favorite Aquarium exhibit- the Gulf of Mexico. A 17 foot high tank holding 400,000 gallons of saltwater, a faux reef, schools of fish, sea turtles, sharks and other native Gulf fish.

I sat on the benches, just watching these amazing animals swim along, for the first time I really noticed the sign attached to the exhibit, and had to laugh out loud at the depressing damned irony:

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Hair, Fur & Nylon Donations requested

Tess — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:26:12 +0000

So when I heard that you could drop off hair, fur and nylon at (of all places) the Ritz Carlton, I was a little confused. It’s meant to absorb the spilled oil in the Gulf, and while anything that helps is worthwhile, I couldn’t imagine how stuffing used pantyhose with cut up hair was going to help.

Here’s how, and it’s all pretty amazing:

Crossposted to DreamyDreamsSimilar Posts:

Treme filming in Lafayette No 2

Tess — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:30:16 +0000

I was dropping off some Jazzfest guests to the Fairgrounds when I noticed a bunch of filming in the cemetery. On the way back I stopped to check it out, and got talking to the director of live music, a local guy in Saints gear, relaxing on the back of a supply truck in the shade of an oak tree. I was surprised that they were still filming, and he said this is the season finale and he had one last big job before the wrap- another second line.

Uncle Lionel and his Drum on the set of Treme. That drum is famous around town and was briefly stolen earlier this year. A huge outcry followed and coordinated efforts on the ground, Facebook and Twitter got the word out - he got it back in short order.

He told me that his job title was specific on purpose- all the music from the series is caught live, which makes his job interesting, to say the least. The episodes are tivo’ed, but I told him I was happy they’d focused on the second line’s hoopla under the I-10 overpass in the premiere, and he laughed. He’d watched every show and movie about the city and knew exactly what they’d missed- like how the bands let loose in the echo-y concrete under the highway, always a magical moment.

I realized I had video of the actual event- HBO put out a call to recreate this, the first Second Line, post Katrina. There was just no way to duplicate it… it was a magical day.

(a few more pics can be found here.)Similar Posts:

Jazzfest flags over a stormy sky

Tess — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:44:40 +0000

It’s that time of year again- just enough time has passed to get over Carnival and get ready for our next round of visitors- Jazzfest! The first day of the weekend was a washout but Saturday and Sunday weren’t bad. Not that it matters- the rain just doesn’t seem to drive anybody away, they just stay and splash around.

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Spring Wisteria in the Irish Channel

Tess — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:00:26 +0000

Walking home from getting coffee on Magazine Street, we came across this gorgeous bunch of Wisteria:

The day was grey and threatening rain, which would knock the delicate clusters off, so I grabbed the shot while they were still there.

I will admit to a certain amount of jealousy here- we have the stuff in our backyard, but it’s never really bloomed at all, although it spends the entirety of the warm months trying to reach out and strangle anything it can. I swear I’m going to do a time lapse over the summer to show just how fast the stuff grows. I’m constantly wacking it back, and for a show like this it’d be worth it. Around August I’m always wondering if an execution is in order, I’m so tired of it…but hope springs eternal and I always think “maybe next spring- maybe this will be the year!”

At least now I know where I can go for my spring purple fix.

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