Swing and a Miss: Tennis in New Orleans

I moved here from a town of tennis aplenty.  Free, public, city ran courts were everywhere, and lessons and community outreach programs dotted every other court.  That was North Carolina, and as we planned our move to New Orleans it never even dawned on me to check on that state of tennis in this city.

After two years of searching I'm not much further on my quest.  First, I found free courts in Jefferson Parish (4 courts at a school, at least half an hour drive), Atkinson-Stern in Uptown is nice, it is at least a little cheaper for paid spots at $7 an hour, with seven clay courts, although they can be a little dry and don't expect them to be swept.  I have occasionally seen children's lessons here and they have Mixed Doubles on Tuesdays, woo.

Audobon has seven clay courts that cost $11 an hour.  They offer group lessons and clinics, are ran by four tennis professionals, and have absolutely no information about any other programs they run for juniors or adults on their website.

Now, we move onto the big tennis balls on campus-City Park Pepsi Tennis Center.  I have to say, the facilities are on the whole quite excellent.  There are 26 courts, 16 hard, 10 clay, and they are $12 an hour to play on hard, $15 for clay (also, do not expect these to be swept, but do expect to see remnants of group lessons to be left all over the courts, such as ball tubes, balls, trash, etc.).  They run a Friday night doubles the first and third Friday of the month-laughable.  That is all the information they have on their website for programs available for the public to participate in.

By this point we are already at a piss poor standing as far as programs, availability, accessibility, and outreach, but my friends, I have saved the best for last. We live in the St. Claude area and after searching Google maps for at least an hour looking for public courts I stumbled across the Oliver Bush Playground in the Lower 9th Ward.  The park features four free hard-courts that were just recently resurfaced and reopened in September of 2012 after seven years of dormancy from Katrina.  I visited these courts last week, about 14 months after the park was completely re-done, and they are the worst tennis courts I have ever been forced to play on.  I say forced, because usually if I ever have run into courts this bad, there were always other options, I don't really feel like paying $12 for just an hour at City Park, so we really had no other choice.  There are NO courts nearby.

It began with us canvassing the courts to find the one with the least amount of glass shards, which proved a difficult task.  A Miller Lite forty was smashed between two courts, a Bud Lite box in the corner, lighters, female deodorant, and fast food trash littered each court.  We kicked away the trash and glass, and cleared up a court enough to play.  Within thirty minutes we had five kids sitting on the bleachers asking if we had extra balls and racquets. After an hour and a half we had nine kids show interest in playing, they cheered us on, asked the rules, and all asked if they could play.

It is bad enough that there is such a complete lack of free public courts in a city of this size, but to allow what little we have to go into such disrepair is despicable.  It would take one hour, ten racquets, and a basket of balls to bring a little something special to these courts.  It would take the city not just using the reopening of a park in the Lower 9th as a publicity stunt, but to actually service what they have built to assist the community.  You never know who the next Williams sisters or Roddick will be, and you never will the way things are going in New Orleans.

St. Roch Market: Here's What We Know

If you were unable to attend the meeting at the Charles J. Colton KIPP school on St. Claude tonight regarding the potential plans for the St. Roch Market, here is what we know.

The Market is owned by New Orleans Building Corp to negotiate a lease with a thrid party entity, etc. the city wanted it off their hands, and NOBC started receiving bids from potential leasers.  St. Roch Community Partners, Inc. entered a bid and is led by owners of local businesses, specifically, Faubourg Wines, St. James Cheese Co., Cleaver & Co., Redmellon Restorations and Developments, and Bellegaurde Bakery.  We do not know if anyone else has put a bid in, and this group does not know when they will receive a response from the NOBC, or even what their rent will be.

They hope to create a non-profit organization that runs and manages the market, consisting of a Board of Directors and a Board of Advisors that will have a representative from either one or multiple local neighborhood associations.  Tentatively, at least, these are the fuzzy plans. 

There will be 12 stalls available for rent, under a 6-12 month lease, and each representing a different facet of the market needs.  So there will potentially be a fish monger, a Maitre Fromager (a cheese guy), a butcher, a baker and so on.  Emphasis also being on the knowledge that these vendors can impart on their customers as well as the interpersonal relationship formed with shoppers in general.

The city also built a restaurant in the back of the market, that might be used in a similar since to Cafe Reconcile.  There is space upstairs that they might utilize for community events, and parking is going to be a serious issue that the board will need to addressed, although no solution has been put in place as of yet.

In attendance were members of Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association and the St. Roch Improvement Association.  The St. Roch Association expressed concerns over affordability, which were addressed by St. Roch Community Partners as something they are taking into account.  They responded that although their businesses might be considered 'gourmet', they have a range of products they will offer to meet varying incomes.  They emphasised their concern over the affordability of their products, but until they know if they even got the bid or how much the rent will be we will not see price ranges. 

I officialy live seven blocks from the market, and I must say that I think what these guys are trying to do is great.  They are offering us something we don't have.  I just made it to Cleaver & Co two days ago and I've had a gift certificate for the place for almost a year--I don't leave my neighborhood!  We can't get seafood anywhere close by that I would trust to eat, not even from the Co-Op (and hopefully they will up their game some at the Co-Op). Half the people I see get a lot of their groceries from Family Dollar, Walgreens, Save-A-Lot.  Sometimes you have to put a little more money to get a quality product.  With Circle Foods opening soon we will have another option, and maybe Roberts will decide to get on it sometime soon.  Are we giving them grief because this is our ONLY grocery option nearby?  Maybe once Circle Foods and Roberts open the St. Roch Market will be filling a more fitting niche.

Think about this, we don't even know who else has put bids in, and shouldn't we be a little more fearful of those unknown entities.  This group is really attempting to involve the neighborhood, and I hope they continue to be a strong community gathering place and promoter, and that they keep their word concerning affordable options--that is, if they get the bid.


IF YOU WANT TO HELP SUPPORT THIS BID FOR THE ST. ROCH MARKET PLACE, EXPRESS YOUR SUPPORT TO KRISTEN PALMER kgpalmer@nola.gov

The Joint: Always Smokin'

701 Mazant St, New Orleans, LA 70117

(504) 949-3232

                        Monday - Saturday 11:30 am – 10:00 pm, CLOSED SUNDAY

By:  Amy Thomas

Last night I had the pleasure of dining in the Bywater at The Joint--even passed up Pizza Delicious for it!

I'm from North Carolina originally and BBQ is something we take very seriously, and the great thing about The Joint is the selection of sauce--if you close your eyes you could be eating smoked meat from St. Louis, to Eastern North Carolina, to even South Texas/Mexico with the vinegary Habanero Sauce.  Smoked meat is something I urn for in my sleep...like a sexy man, it satisfies a guttural and primitive desire for me to see dark black coal-like mouth-watering, melt like butter
crust coating the outside, and pink rings and juices seductively revealing themselves inside.

The prices are pretty low, the service is excellent, the atmosphere is great.  I wish with the new bar they were a little more creative with the drinks, lets get some bacon vodka or whiskey, more smoked bourbons, scotches, and beers.

My only other complaint is in the sides.  The cole slaw is hard to mess up, but the macaroni and cheese has always been a little dry, room temp, and bland.  The salad is okay, my smoked tomato dressing wasn't as smoky as I would have wanted it to be, but it was still okay, and then your other choices are baked beans and potato salad, two more relatively uninspired options.

But the brisket, oh...the brisket.  The brisket makes the rest of the world melt away.

Crawfish Boils & Spitfire Nights

By: Amy Thomas


CRAWFISH BOILS & SPITFIRE NIGHTS
Although we have officially lived here for over a year now, this season I celebrated my first crawfish boil.  Crawfish (down here you don't say crayfish) eat like lobsters, aka bottom-feeders, and look like lobsters that were miniaturized with a ray gun.  They are a family staple here, I listen with envy to the stories of family Easters and Memorial Days centered around crawfish boils, because they connect you with the others ravenously hovered and dripping around your table.

My first boil was on the neutral ground on Esplanade at Royal for a friends birthday.  I learned my first 'boil' lesson fast, at a crawfish boil you will always wait.  It will never be ready when scheduled, and that is ok.  You are going to mingle, meet new invitees, and of course, enjoy ice cold libations. During all of this your olfactory glands are being overwhelmed, housing a fight club of incredible, mouth-watering smells.  This stingy, spicy, salt-water scent wafts into the air and creeps into your hair follicles to where you are becoming one with the boil before the red-armored mouth gold even exit the pot.

Traditionally, boils are made with crawfish boil juice which is a mix of vinegar and voracious spices, most people either use Zatarains or Louisiana brand.  Then a mix of whole garlic, lemons, red potatoes, and corn cob pieces, this one also had okra and pineapple in it (we had a chef).

It's time.  You know this because the table is cleared off and lined with newspaper.  The tension builds in the air, you begin to look at the table, strategizing, where am I going to stand...Your mouth begins to water as the pot is hauled over, slowly lifted, and dumped across the table, releasing fifty pounds of bright red delicious, nectariously beautiful, steamy goodness.  I am taught how to eat them, which takes two long seconds, and its on!!

I almost black out until its over.  The shells are hot as hell, I suck the head of each, vacuuming in spicy crawfish stock to the back of my throat, the excess dripping down the sides of my mouth and down my arms--the small bites of meat inside, perfect.  Its so much better than lobster because you have to put so much work into getting to each and every little bite of meat, and the reward is the pay-off.  To me, sucking the head is equally fulfilling to eating the meat, it's like a shot of chanterrelle buerre blanc followed with a bite of medium rare filet mignon with each and every crawfish.


There is a frantic urgency in the air, I spare half a moment to look up to see that everyone is sharing my intensity.  Pick one up, remove the head, suck hard, peel around on the first shell of the abdomen, grab the tale right where it starts, pinch, and pull, eat the meat, throw it down and pick another one up as fast as you can. Do it again.  A banjo is playing in the background.  Friends walking by on the street are called over to join, strangers stand next to each other, ravaging, now we are like brothers and sisters of this visceral moment.

When it's over its like waking up from a dream.  You are covered in juices, you finally feel the sting in every cut on your fingers that you couldn't feel during the ecstasy of eating.  Survey your pile of carcasses and feel proud.  The music starts, the horns, and drums, mixing with hillbilly banjos.  You feel fulfilled, alive, maybe a little drunk, and it feels like you are a part of a low country tribe of vandals, like a gypsy queen of alligators and crustaceans alike.

Icy & Sot Hit New Orleans

R

Just around the corner from Banksy's Raining Girl on Rampart and Kerlerec in the Marigny, Icy and Sot have made their stencil marks in New Orleans.

My First Mardi Gras

By: Amy Thomas

The day after Mardi Gras is filled with trash, glass, puke, possibly regrets, and, if you really open your senses, the traces of an ancient esoteric magic. 

I, Amy Thomas, have just experienced my first Mardi Gras as a New Orleans citizen.

I feel like this statement should stand alone.  It is just as important a saying as I have conquered Mount Kilimanjaro, or I have reached complete happiness, because experiencing Mardi Gras, as a local, was one of the most incredible moments in my life. 

What was so great about Mardi Gras was that it was absolutely nothing like what the rest of the world thinks it is.  It is not about showing boobs, which I never once heard, its not about vomit and one night stands and potential alcohol poisoning, or shootings on Bourbon Street, in which some of our citizens so graciously displayed the complete breakdown in our social system in New Orleans with many young African American males and gun violence, it is about joy.  It's that simple.  It is about being completely unabated, unabashed, and beautiful, it is fireworks and orgasms, it is Christmas and your birthday and all your best friends, and pure joy. 

My day started with a three Mardi Gras Indian showdown a block down my street in the Seventh Ward.  I am not going to describe this scene because it is something you can only witness to truly comprehend, but I can tell you it is steeped and bound with an intense and honorable sense of heritage, strife, and cherished ceremony.  The Chief's feathers are absolutely incredible. It was everything I imagined it would be and I am honored to have been a witness to it.

We had watched the docking of royalty for Zulu and Rex the night before on Lundi Gras.  It is basically the King and Queen of the most esteemed black and white organizations in the city.  The pomp and circumstance is a great counter to the partying idea of Bourbon Street, and an excellent representation of the preservation of history this town breathes and bleeds.

The parades that we've been witnessing have been such an incredible array.  I've seen Babylon, Chaos, Muses, and Endymion where huge tractor pulled floats were stocked with enthusiastic masked throwers of beads, cups, doubloons, coconuts, or whatever, these people are all members of the krewe.  I've seen Marigny parades like Krewe du Vieux and Chewbacchanal which were flagrant and geeky and homemade, so much more my style. I thoroughly enjoyed the Marigny parades out of them all.  Which is why when I was making my walk to the Quarter on Mardi Gras, walking down Esplanade toward Royal, I was stopped by the St. Ann parade in the Marigny and changed course for my sister neighborhood's version of Mardi Gras.

I never made it to Bourbon Street and I don't really care. I will probably take it in one year--for a block or so. But I learned Mardi Gras has nothing to do with Bourbon Street, that is just where you filter out all the tourists. Mardi Gras is about being great, it is about getting it all out before lent in the most lavish, fantastic, and hedonistic way, the last hurrah. And to be honest I have taken it seriously for the first time since middle school, I have actually given up fast food for lent. I am not a Christian, so I really have no religious reason to do this, but the fat of the last two weeks of Mardi Gras, the mouthwatering Cream Cheese King Cake (I got mine from Alois J. Binder Bakery at Frenchmen and Rampart), the alcohol, the food, it is so much after a while that you are ready to give something up by this point. It just feels more worth it.

The costumes, oh my god the costumes.  I started to cry walking around thinking to myself among the throngs of umpa lumpas, panda bears, french royalty, nymphs, and bunnies, that I live here, and that is something special.  That is something incredibly special.  I spent my day taking in the parade, eventually walking in it just so we could get through the streets, made it to the Quarter to catch beads from sweet old lady tourists on balconies, and got to sit on a porch at Frenchmen and take in the crowd.  It was a long day of steadily and carefully drinking, I had to work for a while, made a crapload of money and free booze and more beads, and finished my night following a drum line of eastern Europeans towards my home.

Paradise or Paradise Lost; An Insight into New Orlean's Gray Areas

As a newcomer to New Orleans there are so many different historical and social aspects to take in order to truly understand the town that it can be overwhelming.  This is not an easy town to 'understand' as it were, there being contradicting factions deviating like an ekg line back and forth over the status quo.  Homeless people and millionaires can be seen traversing the same commute by foot, there is all of this joy and energy and happiness flanked with misery, guns, shootings, and murders.  A town fostered by nuns and known for its prostitution, with music notes drifting through back alleys striking the same cords as the struggle of an armed robbery.  

I think on this constantly trying to put it all together. I walk past a condemned a house with ivy coming out of the chimney and meth heads squatting in filth on the rickety remains of a floor, next to a beautifully restored home.  I can be quite difficult to process.

The thing is, sometimes I get lulled into this sense of security or safety here.  I feel comfortable walking to my destinations, and looking someone in the eye as I pass them and attempting to exchange some sort of minimal cordiality.  I am constantly surrounded by intelligent, artistic, goal-driven, and just relatively decent human beings, all drawn or kept here by the same intrinsic need to be somewhere special.  Because no matter how many murders happen here there is still something so special about this place, and the first balance you experience is finding a way to digest this bad and this good.

The second balance is how you feel about being acquiescent towards the bad and what you can do to change it without driving yourself insane.  This is the conflict that has caught me at a stalemate.  There are so many chasms, nooks, divots, and potholes to this problem it kind of feels like imagining the infinity of space. 

I don't know what the solution is.  Maybe if we concentrate on an investment in family's involvement with the educational system and visa versa, as well as the level of education provided for the lower income neighborhoods.  Or we can actually address this culture of violence that reigns like a giant roided bully shadowing over you, menacingly punching his fist into his other hand preparing for cowardly battle, the toleration of violence is a failure of the government, police force, and society.  A half-hearted acquiescence at the sound of gun shots in the night? I think not.

Don We Now Our Feathers and Glitter: It's Carnival Season!

By: Amy Thomas


Carnival Season has officially arrived and as a virgin to all of the Krewes, parades, and festivities I am in full anticipation of the next couple weeks, including Krewe du Vieux, Super Bowl, Lundi Gras, and Mardi Gras, all within days of each other--and I am certainly on the hunt for an Indian tribe.  I lived in Venice for a while and just missed out on their Carnivale, they like to add a little flare to the word, so I am itching to dive into the masked madness.

For those of you who don't know, the various Krewes put on the parades and gala's that make up the Mardi Gras season.  Members pay a range of fees depending on how elaborate, or financially viable, the Krewe is.  Every year Krewes are responsible for electing Rex, Latin for King, of Mardi Gras.

I am fortunate to have been here for almost nine months before the Carnival season. I know the lay of things, I know that I have no idea what I'm in for, but I know where to pee, I know good spots for drinks, I know how to get home. I also know that I will be working my ass off through it, making a lot of money, and attempting to party somewhere in between.

I look forward to updating you on my trials and tribulations making it through the next couple weeks here in New Orleans! Krewe du Vieux is Saturday!

In a Town of Restaurants, Where is the Food??

In a city of this size it is almost unbelievable that someone can live no where near a grocery store or stop-shop with fresh produce or meat. While shopping at Family Dollar today for a plunger I met a lady that buys all of her food there.  She was able to buy some produce at the truck on Claiborne between Pauger and Touro, but couldn't afford the prices at the New Orleans Food Co-Op in the Healing Center at Franklin and St. Claude. 

The only meat she ate she purchased already cooked from gas stations and small neighborhood grills in the area. 

This is a horrendous quality of food for this old woman to be bringing in to her body.  Add shoddy medical treatment, and the general wear and tear of being a low-income old lady and you have a drastically reduced life expectancy.  For what?  For a grocery store.  For an opportunity to treat your body right without having to take two buses to get fresh meat.

In the Lower 7th Ward, our hopes lies in two places:  the historic Circle Food Store and the St. Roch Market, both of which are currently being renovated and scheduled to open around the end of summer 2013, and both of which have remained unopened since Hurricane Katrina. 

A couple concerns arise with these hopes though, and that is the gentrification of these two establishments.  It is widely rumored that St. Roch is going to be a high-end food market similar to the Co-Op across the street.  I can barely afford the Co-Op so I'm not sure how all of the other people in the neighborhood are going to fare. 

I do know that what we the people in and around this neighborhood could use a produce, meat, and seafood market.  A traditional market.  That is all.  Nothing fancy, nothing crazy, just a freaking market.

New Years in New Orleans

It's been two days since New Years and I am in a full state of lethargic body dilapidation, braving my first day off in what feels like weeks.  The weekend proved to be explosive for tourism in New Orleans, bringing in record numbers in lieu of many large travel sights naming the town as the New Years destination spot, as well as the Sugar Bowl taking place today. 

All of this was unbeknownst to me until the pre-Mardi Gras initiation stood in a line out the door for three days in a row, open to close.  I work in a small cafe, we almost ran out of everything.  It was so much work, and late nights, and early mornings, and I wish I could say that the tips reflected the amount of high maintenance neediness that was inflicted upon us by these tourists. It is an ever-present struggle between 'can deal with/some are cool' and 'hate'--I cannot bring myself to define this relationship as 'love-hate'.

Needless to say Jackson Square was jam packed on New Years Eve, with bands and festivities beginning in the early evening and riding the party wave through midnight ending with an incredible fifteen minutes fireworks display at midnight over the Mississippi.  We took part in the festivities earlier in the night, but being exhausted, hungry, and already a little drunk, we stopped through Verti Mart and watched the fireworks from our front porch while dining on almost the best fried chicken po' boy in town (if they used traditional french bread instead of the sesame it would most definitely be the best). 

We had a great view of the river's fireworks, as well as the hundreds, literally hundreds, of fireworks going off around our neighborhood.  Our poor dog was so distressed.  The fireworks went on until at least three in the morning when somehow I finally fell asleep amidst the sounds of a Civil War battle surrounding our house.