Blue Devils
Lots to mention today:
First off, New Orleans is one FUCKED UP place (and a special hello to any Manlius Pebble Hill students referred here by Delia Temes!!! That kind of grownup language is considered inappropriate at MPH, so make sure to tell them you learned it here.). I'm not kidding. After Game 1 of the Series the other night, we walked over to Bourbon Street. I figured since it wasn't Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, it might be a lively but fun drinking neighborhood comparable to say, Rush Street in Chicago. Uh-uh. It's the same puke-and-piss riddled place it was when I was here ten years ago, just with several thousand fewer people.
Eating dinner on the balcony of a Bourbon Street restaurant, we were treated to a panorama of drunken stupidity that unfolded over two magical hours that no one will ever forget. On the opposite balcony, at least a hundred guys were there, swaying back and forth dangerously. It had all the makings of a Deer Creek/Grateful Dead fiasco (two hundred year old building + notoriously corrupt building inspectors + drunken overweight frat guys and eye surgeons=the lead story on CNN). The guys were holding Mardi Gras beads out to women yelling the obligatory "Show us your tits!" And the women--get this--were showing them their tits! And it's October! You want to grab these people by the ears and tell them that the missed the party by EIGHT MONTHS!! Come back in February and "show us your tits" will have the appropriate context it so richly deserves.
It seems to me that New Orleans has a totally unique heritage and architecture at this time in America. They're our Quebec City--an anomaly that, completely by luck or accident, has survived with a singular character and personality. Rather than treat it with respect, they've taken one aspect of their rich history (DUDE!! PARTY!!!) and whored themselves out for the tourist bucks with unusual enthusiasm. You only need to look in the eyes of a NOPD officer driving through the Bourbon Street crowd to see that there's something really wrong. It's clear there's something he wants to do to make his city a better place--arrest these idiots. And he can't. It's very sad.
On the drive north into Louisiana today, we saw a lot of signs posted along the roadway. There were in blue and had DUKE across them and they would be oh-so-easy to blow off as basketball posters until you realize you're not in North Carolina, you're in Louisiana and those are signs someone has posted to elect David Duke to Congress. You may remember David Duke as the formerly imprisoned head of the Ku Klux Klan who came dangerously close to being a legitimate politician here a few years back. Anyway, the signs weren't for this year's election, but you would think somebody would look up, see that their highway was still covered in Neo-Nazi paraphenalia and be..oh, embarrassed. It might occur to that person to take the shit down and try to forget it ever happened. Not so in Louisiana. So we drove by the signs and made our way up to McComb, Mississippi.
McComb, Mississippi is a town of about 13,000 people near the Louisiana border. It has a Wal-Mart and a bowling alley and a historic downtown district that is "historic" because the word "decrepit" does not make McComb eligible for the state's revitalization program. We stopped for lunch, in an act of pure optimism, at a place called the Broadway Deli. Trust me, we were very hungry. The menu was spelled out in the usual peg-board letters popular in actual delicatessens in places with actual Jews. Anyway, at the top of the menu, below "Welcome to the Broadway Deli" were the words "It's all about Jesus."
How, you may ask, is this possible? Wouldn't the laws of physics prevent the words "Deli" and "Jesus" from appearing on the same menu at the same time? Don't they automatically cancel each other out, possibly creating the kind of space/time wormhole that would take care of McComb, Mississippi permanently? Apparently, that is not the case, so my friend and I spent a half-hour eating our sandwiches and asking ourselves, "What would Jesus tip?"
We drove back through Kentwood, Louisiana--the hometown of Britney Spears. The sign was, as you would expect, understated and tasteful. We also saw Hammond, the home of Southeastern Louisiana University. Hammond, in a word, rocked. Love Hammond. Hammond was like the cool Louisiana town that seemed to want to learn something from the rest of the world. Cool coffeehouses, restaurants, and bars. Amazing old preserved buildings put to new use without being destroyed. A downtown district that was decidedly not dying or dead. I know nothing about the people or the university or the history. They could, for all I know, be David Duke's core constituency. Hammond gets two thumbs way up from me.
Now, a thought from the town of Covington, at the north end of the Lake Ponchatrain Causeway. The Causeway is a 24 mile long bridge that spans Lake Ponchatrain that was, until the Big Dig in Boston, the largest feat of civil engineering in America. It is a testament to man's ingenuity and, due to the total lack of any overhead lighting, his faith. Anyway, in Covington is the huge strip of national brands that I've seen in every medium-sized town with a mile of formerly cheap land. You could probably drive twenty minutes from wherever you are and see the exact same lineup in almost the same order. Say them with me now--Wal-Mart, Home Depot, TGI Friday's, Outback Steakhouse, Ruby Tuesday's, Applebee's, Kinko's. The people in Covington have a genuinely historic district where they can go for alternative, locally owned businesses and theatres. Thanks to the Causeway traffic, their downtown won't die and they'll never lose this little gem unless they want to.
In the window of one of these stores, amongst boutique clothing places and art galleries, lies an old holdover from Covington's "historic" days. In crumbling yellow paint, the window reads:
Roy's Knife and Archery Shop
...And We Do Sell Guns!
Isn't that great? Knives and bows and arrows...but they DO sell guns! They don't OVER-diversify their stock, keeping it firmly within a tight range of lethal weaponry. But, they don't want to alienate customers who like to shoot--but not stab or bowhunt. Voila, compromise.
That's it for tonight. Tomorrow in Baton Rouge.
A special congratulations to my mother Toni, who tomorrow receives the Hannah G. Solomon award for Public Service from the National Council of Jewish Women. If you see her, make sure she's incredibly embarrassed by all the attention. She loves it, really.
Really.
First off, New Orleans is one FUCKED UP place (and a special hello to any Manlius Pebble Hill students referred here by Delia Temes!!! That kind of grownup language is considered inappropriate at MPH, so make sure to tell them you learned it here.). I'm not kidding. After Game 1 of the Series the other night, we walked over to Bourbon Street. I figured since it wasn't Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, it might be a lively but fun drinking neighborhood comparable to say, Rush Street in Chicago. Uh-uh. It's the same puke-and-piss riddled place it was when I was here ten years ago, just with several thousand fewer people.
Eating dinner on the balcony of a Bourbon Street restaurant, we were treated to a panorama of drunken stupidity that unfolded over two magical hours that no one will ever forget. On the opposite balcony, at least a hundred guys were there, swaying back and forth dangerously. It had all the makings of a Deer Creek/Grateful Dead fiasco (two hundred year old building + notoriously corrupt building inspectors + drunken overweight frat guys and eye surgeons=the lead story on CNN). The guys were holding Mardi Gras beads out to women yelling the obligatory "Show us your tits!" And the women--get this--were showing them their tits! And it's October! You want to grab these people by the ears and tell them that the missed the party by EIGHT MONTHS!! Come back in February and "show us your tits" will have the appropriate context it so richly deserves.
It seems to me that New Orleans has a totally unique heritage and architecture at this time in America. They're our Quebec City--an anomaly that, completely by luck or accident, has survived with a singular character and personality. Rather than treat it with respect, they've taken one aspect of their rich history (DUDE!! PARTY!!!) and whored themselves out for the tourist bucks with unusual enthusiasm. You only need to look in the eyes of a NOPD officer driving through the Bourbon Street crowd to see that there's something really wrong. It's clear there's something he wants to do to make his city a better place--arrest these idiots. And he can't. It's very sad.
On the drive north into Louisiana today, we saw a lot of signs posted along the roadway. There were in blue and had DUKE across them and they would be oh-so-easy to blow off as basketball posters until you realize you're not in North Carolina, you're in Louisiana and those are signs someone has posted to elect David Duke to Congress. You may remember David Duke as the formerly imprisoned head of the Ku Klux Klan who came dangerously close to being a legitimate politician here a few years back. Anyway, the signs weren't for this year's election, but you would think somebody would look up, see that their highway was still covered in Neo-Nazi paraphenalia and be..oh, embarrassed. It might occur to that person to take the shit down and try to forget it ever happened. Not so in Louisiana. So we drove by the signs and made our way up to McComb, Mississippi.
McComb, Mississippi is a town of about 13,000 people near the Louisiana border. It has a Wal-Mart and a bowling alley and a historic downtown district that is "historic" because the word "decrepit" does not make McComb eligible for the state's revitalization program. We stopped for lunch, in an act of pure optimism, at a place called the Broadway Deli. Trust me, we were very hungry. The menu was spelled out in the usual peg-board letters popular in actual delicatessens in places with actual Jews. Anyway, at the top of the menu, below "Welcome to the Broadway Deli" were the words "It's all about Jesus."
How, you may ask, is this possible? Wouldn't the laws of physics prevent the words "Deli" and "Jesus" from appearing on the same menu at the same time? Don't they automatically cancel each other out, possibly creating the kind of space/time wormhole that would take care of McComb, Mississippi permanently? Apparently, that is not the case, so my friend and I spent a half-hour eating our sandwiches and asking ourselves, "What would Jesus tip?"
We drove back through Kentwood, Louisiana--the hometown of Britney Spears. The sign was, as you would expect, understated and tasteful. We also saw Hammond, the home of Southeastern Louisiana University. Hammond, in a word, rocked. Love Hammond. Hammond was like the cool Louisiana town that seemed to want to learn something from the rest of the world. Cool coffeehouses, restaurants, and bars. Amazing old preserved buildings put to new use without being destroyed. A downtown district that was decidedly not dying or dead. I know nothing about the people or the university or the history. They could, for all I know, be David Duke's core constituency. Hammond gets two thumbs way up from me.
Now, a thought from the town of Covington, at the north end of the Lake Ponchatrain Causeway. The Causeway is a 24 mile long bridge that spans Lake Ponchatrain that was, until the Big Dig in Boston, the largest feat of civil engineering in America. It is a testament to man's ingenuity and, due to the total lack of any overhead lighting, his faith. Anyway, in Covington is the huge strip of national brands that I've seen in every medium-sized town with a mile of formerly cheap land. You could probably drive twenty minutes from wherever you are and see the exact same lineup in almost the same order. Say them with me now--Wal-Mart, Home Depot, TGI Friday's, Outback Steakhouse, Ruby Tuesday's, Applebee's, Kinko's. The people in Covington have a genuinely historic district where they can go for alternative, locally owned businesses and theatres. Thanks to the Causeway traffic, their downtown won't die and they'll never lose this little gem unless they want to.
In the window of one of these stores, amongst boutique clothing places and art galleries, lies an old holdover from Covington's "historic" days. In crumbling yellow paint, the window reads:
Roy's Knife and Archery Shop
...And We Do Sell Guns!
Isn't that great? Knives and bows and arrows...but they DO sell guns! They don't OVER-diversify their stock, keeping it firmly within a tight range of lethal weaponry. But, they don't want to alienate customers who like to shoot--but not stab or bowhunt. Voila, compromise.
That's it for tonight. Tomorrow in Baton Rouge.
A special congratulations to my mother Toni, who tomorrow receives the Hannah G. Solomon award for Public Service from the National Council of Jewish Women. If you see her, make sure she's incredibly embarrassed by all the attention. She loves it, really.
Really.
posted by Matthew at 4:05 PM
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