Posts Tagged ‘French Quarter’

By all accounts, Satchmo Fest was a big success, but boy oh boy, I bet the drink stands did a hell of a business.

I went before they actually started on Saturday, and it was already sweltering, y’all- in the hour or so I was there, I saw the medics come tend to no fewer than 4 people having problems with the heat.

As great as the music was, the even better news was that they’d opened the old U.S. Mint for the occasion. It’s been generally closed because of Katrina damage, opening only for brief, special occasions. Not only was it blessedly cool inside, it looked fantastic so hopefully it’ll reopen soon.

There were several rooms dedicated to teaching the next generation about Louis Armstrong, including a kids’ movie room, which was showing this really cute video from 1936(link):

When we went to see the fireworks, it was still in the 90s, and if you’d asked if I wanted to drag a tripod along I probably would have brained you with the thing. There was no way.

So, naturally, I ended up with more crappy photos of fireworks than good ones, but a few of them were kind of interesting, like this one.

Maybe this is some sort of bizarre Rorschach test, but I looked at this and thought, “Look, it’s sperm! Travelling up to the uterus, then swimming the wrong way with the egg floating above and behind!”

Okay, so maybe I’m glad no shrink’s going to analyze that one.

Our 4th of July celebration is a pun. It’s no wonder Charlie loves it here.

I’m usually resistant to going down to the French Quarter for the dueling barge displays of fireworks, but off we went- and it was really nice. The heat was oppressive, but at least it kept the crowd to manageable levels. The fireworks were impressive as always, though my photos don’t really cover the scope of them- there was no way I was lugging a tripod down and doing it right, so we’ve got what we’ve got.

One thing New Orleans knows how to do is throw a party, and there’s fireworks at pretty much every big event- and some not so big. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been minding our own business and suddenly heard the booming, and wondered what could be so exciting on a random Tuesday evening that it rated fireworks.

In a market where NPR’s had all kinds of stories about cities who’ve cancelled their displays, it was pretty amazing.

Or, possibly this isn’t an actual, general-purpose drag queen, but just drag for Mardi Gras day.

This came from a big lot of slides from 1964 and thereabouts that did include some Carnival photos, so, even back then, anything goes on Mardi Gras day.

I’ve been down with a cold and in overall recovery mode this weekend, so I sent Ali off to check out the latest big New Orleans festival. She took the camera and when she got home from a day of running around, her semi-bored answer to how it went was: “Oh, you know. The usual. Tons of food. Music. Free. You know- the usual.”

One day she may come to realize just how not-usual all that is.

But that’s for somewhere down the road. In the meantime, the second annual Vieux-To-Do combined three festivals that used to go on seperately- the Creole Tomato Festival, the Cajun/Zydeco Fest and the Seafood Fest, all held in and around the French Market and Old US Mint, at the very edge of the French Quarter.

Food is always front and center in these things, and her pics made me wish I’d braved the heat and the sniffles after all:

That would be a thin toast with a slice of Creole tomato and local fresh shrimp, broiled and looking amazing.

And the Pine Leaf Boys were keeping the crowd dancing even while they sweltered:

So, yeah, it looks like Alison was right. Just another typical NOLA festival.

I think the above photo might have originally been a postcard; all I have is the scanned version and I haven’t been able to locate the original, but if you look closely, you can see a weave pattern that would’ve been consistent with an older postcard.

The building sits at the corner of Bienville & Bourbon, and, built in 1806, it began operating as a coffee house and saloon in 1815. It didn’t became famous until 1874, when their ‘mixologist’ Cayetano Ferrer invented the absinthe frappe.

The drink was favored in particular by artists, and, according the their website:

Many celebrities have been welcomed through our doors in the nearly two centuries since its opening — including Oscar Wilde, P.T. Barnum, Mark Twain, Jenny Lind, Enrico Caruso, General Robert E Lee, Franklin Roosevelt, Liza Minelli and Frank Sinatra.

The place went through a long, rough period, starting with the banning of absinthe in 1912- 8 years before the start of Prohibition. Although the bar was broken into and ransacked, the bar itself was saved and kept in a warehouse, not to be returned to its original home until 2004.

This is another eBay slide, marked as being from the early 1960s:

I love the detail in it- the older people in their hats, the old Bourbon Street sign, the Bus Stop pole (there haven’t been buses in the Quarter in decades). The place has been spiffed up a bit since then, but you can still see the funky charm underneath.

And now history’s come full circle and now that absinthe is again legal, you can go sit at the worn bar and vegetate with a cold Absinthe and watch the world go by outside those huge wooden doors.

I’ve been going through a whole ton of older photos I’ve gotten over time and finally getting them digitized and uploaded. This is one of my favorites, so far:

The 500 Club (home of Lilly Christine, the cat girl!), at 500 Bourbon St, is now occupied by the Bourbon Street Blues Company, Al Hirt’s is now (yet another) cheezy Daquari shop.

Last week, when we went to see the Pyrates behaving badly, we stopped in to a friend works in the recently remodeled Hermes Bar in Antoine’s restaurant.

Antoine’s is amazing- opened in 1840, it’s still a multi-generational family restaurant- and not only for the owners. When we returned on Easter Sunday for brunch instead of going to one of our usual holiday spots, our waiter was 4th generation waitstaff.

Each of the fifteen dining rooms has a unique bit of history attached to it, and we were lucky enough (well, that luck isn’t exactly exclusive; I’m pretty sure you just have to ask) to have our friend offer to take us around and tell us all the inside stories.

It was all really interesting, and the food, of course, was out of this world, but, well, we were sitting in the bar that night, after having been on Bourbon Street for some time already, and I was in a bit of a…uh…well, let’s call it a fugue. And as one does in such states of mind, I found myself fixated on their decanter, lit up on the bar waiting to be used to prepare an absinthe.

Sadly, no one ordered one while we were there, but it was gorgeous anyway, with its special spoons and delicate sugar cubes perched nearby.

Absinthe, being popular among artists and musicians, had been huge in New Orleans, and was still quietly available even after being banned. It’s recently been made legal again, so these decanters are starting to be seen around town once more.

For those unfamiliar with the whole ritual around The Green Fairy, here’s how it goes (complete with French accent, making it all the more authentic):