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.

Christmas in New Orleans

Christmas in New Orleans is, in beauty, akin to Christmas in Paris--trade in the snarky locals for totally awesome laid back locals and they are equal in so many more ways than mere beauty.  This being my first Christmas in New Orleans I have tried to make my rounds and experience many of the town's holiday traditions.  Outside of seeing my first black Santa at the Thanksgiving parade down Decatur, my first stop was the Roosevelt Hotel.


 

 

I walked from the dark of night into an orgasmic wanderlust of sparkle and color and thousands upon thousands of lights.  It is magnificent.  It is also a little overwhelming, like a surreal cotton candy acid trip in the North Pole, but it is beautiful.  This has been a tradition of the hotel since 1994, but  the lobby had been decorated for Christmas off and on since the 40's, depending on the owners.  The birth of the version we see now, though it has evolved over the years, started in 2009 when the hotel reopened with a flourish after Katrina.

On Christmas Eve I had the opportunity to see the bonfires along the Mississippi. I'm always down for a good bonfire, add that to Christmas Eve and you've got a beautiful family evening.  Kind of feels like the kinds of things people would do where I grew up in North Carolina.  One of these families kindly brought me in to their bonfire circle and explained to me that the bonfires are supposed to guide Papa Noel, New Orleanian's Santa Claus.

I went to a play on a Réveillon dinner in the Bywater, which, for all intents and purposes, was a potluck. It has been explained to me by my lovely regular Miss. Gloria that when she was growing up the Réveillon dinner was the feast you ate on Christmas Eve that was supposed to ride you through Midnight Mass to Christmas morning. As most traditions the dinner has morphed into an opportunity for special prix fix menus at some of the best restaurants, gala opportunities in Uptown, and most importantly, an opportunity to get together with whatever form of family you have here and feast and drink and be merry.

My final Christmas in New Orleans moment included a walk to the Quarter to see the lights at Jackson Square, a chilly moment with the Mississippi River (this is for sanity, the river is so constant and calming), and a quiet moment along Decatur listening to a loan musician's rendition of Louis Armstrong's "Christmas in New Orleans".  My walk ended with Christmas Caroling at Washington Park near Frenchmen Street.  I had forgone the Jackson Square Caroling because I wasn't really in the mood for all of the people that would involve and knew the Washington Park one would be a good neighborhood activity.

New Orleans' Christmas has been criticized by some tourists for downplaying Christmas over New Years.  I have kind of seen this outside of the above, work hasn't been as busy, it seems like a lot of people went out of town, my neighborhood has been silent except for the random bursts of fireworks.  It would surprise me in no way shape or form if this was actually the case because New Orleans knows when to keep things sacred and when to party. 

Save the party for the eve of the New Year--which is in about 25 hours.

Dodgy Drunks & Pissed up Wankers. 2nd Installment

This morning I locked up my bike a couple of posts from a parked pick-up truck with the engine running.  I thought nothing of it at the time because the newspaper delivery guy drives the same truck and in my groggy 6am head I didn't even see the guy sitting in the front seat, and I didn't put much together very cognitively, I just assumed.... 

Almost an hour later I was bringing the out the patio furniture and was surprised to see this truck still out there, and still running.  After a brief consultation wit the famous Welmon Sharlhorne, whose artwork you can see at the Smithsonian, or here; who just so happened to be walking by, and which went a little like this:  "Can you kill yourself sitting in a running car if it's not in a garage?" and ended with Welmon, who looks like the spirit of the Saints barfed black and gold pimp glitter all over him, and is also one of my most favorite Frenchmen Street people, looking down at me from his lens-less gold rimmed glasses stating pointedly, "Oh, he's goin die".

After my co-worker and I knocked on the window for almost three minutes the man began to move as if coming out of a coma.  What looked like his attempt to roll down the window or turn the car off, I'm still not sure, he went on to run his hand into the radio like a blind zombie.  It was like watching life is slow motion rewind.  Three times he reached toward the radio but with no actual button triggered.  He then found the window lever and rolled it down a half inch and back up.  This guy was so wasted.  All the while he comes off as being completely oblivious to our yelling at him through the window, "Your car has been running for over an hour!" and  "Turn your engine off and sleep it out!".  He was moving around inside the running car with his arms and wobbling head, but denied us any response, much less a turn of the head to even look at us. 
 
Welmon said, "fu*% it, you woke him up.  You tried."  It was time to open the cafe so after a couple more attempts to get him to turn his engine off we went back inside, checking out the window every couple minutes to see if he was still there.  After a couple glances out the window, the truck was gone.  Vanished. 

The moment he was gone I didn't know what I regretted more, waking him up, or releasing this man to the world--in a vehicle. Shoulda called the cops, but it all felt like it happened so fast and even if we did, they would have never gotten there in time.

Fifteen minutes later in walks this sparkle faced, top hat wearing, vaudeville slaps the face of burlesque looking man. He was rather lively, his face was covered in red glitter, and he, being the only other person in the place at that time, went on to regal us with the stories of his night on mushrooms in New Orleans, starting with him in a nice suit and tie, and ending with him in a top hat, a burnt off tie (the knot and neck part still intact, and on him), a dirt covered blazer with matching tattered pants, and ridiculous sparkly red heeled man boots.  He apparently got slapped by a hooker, lost all his friends, found new ones, swapped shoes with a transvestite, rode a bike to the beginning of the Industrial Canal at the tip of Bywater across from the lower 9th Ward, was taken under the wing of Amzie Adams, the famous Frenchmen Street Artist and Spiritual Mentor, whose Art can be seen here, and caught a metal show at Hi-Ho Lounge.

His visit ended with us all dancing in the middle of the cafe to The Temptations.

Dodgy Drunks & Pissed Up Wankers: A Continuing Saga

Opening a Cafe on Frenchmen Street at 6 am on a Sunday is like walking into the Ceasar's Palace suite of The Hangover before everyone woke up meets a really lame zombie attack .   It smells, there is trash everywhere, people are milling about aimlessly crashing, stumbly, drunken and/or coming down from whatever they took the night before.  And there is always an interesting situation that arises when one of them meanders into the cafe to attempt to purchase breakfast or coffee. 

Last week this hipster Brit arrives and painstakingly orders a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.  After much miscommunication between he and the barista the transaction is completed and he takes a half step over and procedes to fall asleep leaning against the counter.  Another customer entered and ordered around him, none are really surprised.  You have to be slighty desensitized to these kind of things here.

After tthe party...trash dat!

I rush his sandwhich, throwing it in a to go bag, no matter what the ticket says, and shoo him on out the restaurant.  This poor cat attempts to eat his sandwich on the chairs outside, this went unnoticed to us inside until I took a box to the trash and find him passed out, slumped down in his chair with the remains of his sandwich trickling from his mouth down his chest where the last remaining bite is resting in a sloppy mess of deli paper and melted cheese.

I wake him up with an abrupt, "Hey dude! You can't sleep here man.  Dude!" After a while he comes to and begins to argue and almost yell at me claiming that he was definently not asleep. 

"Asleep or passed out, you gotta get the hell out of here you pissed up wanker."

After another of these exchanges (I was a little hungover this particular morning and was feeling fiesty) he finally made his exit.  Mounting his bike like a man with brand new legs, and wabbled about 20 yards before literally just falling right over onto the ground.  It's like he just turned to dead weight, whatever happened, he and his bike fully ate it.  He popped right up like he was totally cool, as if nothing happened, remounted, made it to the corner where he tried to stop for a car, and ran into the curb busting his front wheel.  Taking it like a man, or the worthless drunken piece of clay he was at that moment, and vomited his sandwich right back on himself.

Cafe Rose Nicaud

This will be the first of many posts about Frenchmen Street...

Frenchmen Street delivers a cozy Euro-Creole feel to the locals of New Orleans reminding elders of the French Quarter-minus the schnockered rapaciousness and crap gift shops. Walk along the street at night and be tantalized with a string of music clubs, bars, restaurants, tattoo shops, beautiful architecture, and b&bs.

My goal today is Cafe Rose Nicaud, a coffee shop named in memorandum of Rose Nicaud, the very first coffee vendor of New Orleans, as well as an African American slave.  She used what little she saved outside her master's tax to purchase her freedom and open her own coffee shop in the French Market.  She was known for having the best coffee in town.  Cafe Rose Nicaud is also owned by an African American family, one that holds Rose's entrepreneurial enterprise close to their heart.  Just a few short blocks walk and I land on Frenchmen off Dauphine and take in the beautiful Washington Park anchoring Faubourg (neighborhood) Marigny.  Enter Cafe Rose Nicaud and take a moment to relish the smell and the feel of the place, allow that robust aroma to arouse your intelligent senses, god I love coffee shops!  The staff at this place is awesome, they will help you find anything, and if you come in more than once it seems like they have already started remembering your specific drink.

What you get from Cafe Rose Nicaud that you don't get from every other coffee shop is the inviting feel of community.  You've got friends there.  I know that sounds kind of silly, but its very true.  It's the place where locals go, or, where people go to be a local.

Along with an excellent coffee shop they also offer an delicious small menu of breakfast and lunch, along with a varying aray of absolutely delicious tarts, soups, bread puddings, and quiches, that change every day.  There are also croissants, gluten free pies, handmade scones and muffins, biscuits, and bagels-including house-made jams that are to die for.  I had an orange strawberry jam that was delicious!  They also have wraps, sandwiches, and salads for lunch as well as a full breakfast menu all day with yummy rosemary mozzarella grits, and a the now famous Rose Benedict, a layering of grits, biscuits, portobellos, tomatoes, avocado, two sunny side up eggs, and shaved asiago cheese.  The food is quick and consistent and the staff is excellent, make sure you tip them and show your love!