A walk on the wild side
I arrive in New Orleans after an easy three-hour flight that only costs me two because of the one-hour time change in my favor. After exchanging a few keywords with my non-English speaking cab driver, he points his oversized, under-maintained Caprice in the general direction of the French Quarter. The drive in from the airport gets uglier every time I make it. New Orleans has its strong points – the food, the drink, the music, the sexy street scenes, the old style charm – but much of the Big Easy is decrepit and violent and off-limits to anyone with an instinct for self-preservation. It’s a great city to visit for three or four days; after that it becomes a great city to bolt from.
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My hotel is on Dauphine Street, one block up from world-famous Bourbon Street. The hotel, which I have stayed at many times for business, is packed with the advance wave of revelers who have come here for Marti Gras. There is an energy level in the air that makes me think of those balsa wood airplanes of my youth, the ones with the rubber band propellers that you could wind really tight. Let the plane go and it flutters haphazardly, bouncing off the walls, then crashes and burns in magnificent fashion. I have a bad feeling even before I have checked-in. When I get to my room on the street side of the third floor, it is obvious to me that the Marti Gras airplane is already airborne. The doors to all the hotel rooms surrounding mine are propped open and people are stumbling drunk from one room to the next, beers in their hands, tangles of beads around their necks, hooting and hollering, slurring stories that no one will remember even five minutes hence. It is 4:15 in the afternoon on a Monday and Marti Gras is still eight days away.
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I have a breakfast meeting scheduled for 7am on Tuesday morning. It is clear to me that there will be little sleep this evening unless I get some earplugs to drown out the sounds of the party next door, well, that is, the party all around me in the hotel rooms, out on the balconies, down on the street. I know of an all night drug store just outside the French Quarter on Canal Street. When I finally find them in the back of the store, it turns out there is a large selection of earplugs and I spend considerable time researching the best pair. I am looking for guidance on the packages, something like “Look no further: These are the earplugs for noisy New Orleans hotel rooms.” In the end, I go with the squishy foam variety. But even those come in different shapes and sizes. I choose the one with the highest noise reduction rating. The cashier rings me up with a smile and wishes me a good night sleep. She knows the odds are stacked against me.
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Outside on Canal Street there is a commotion. It is 11pm. I am nearly run over on the sidewalk by a hustling team of workers wearing official “City of New Orleans” t-shirts. Each worker has an oversized rake-like tool that he is using to vigorously shovel trash off the sidewalk and onto the street. They are a synchronized squad of whirling trash dervishes working their way upstream in a race against time. Suddenly there are sirens and flashing lights. Out on Canal Street heading north is a phalanx of police: cops in squad cars, cops on motorcycles, cops mounted on horses. Having lived in Washington, D.C. for several years, these police convoys often precede the Presidential motorcade. All told, the frontline of this police escort stretches a city block. What follows is not the President or some foreign dignitary, but a massive rolling wedge of street cleaning trucks: monster trucks, all with flashing yellow lights, warning you in all seriousness to get the fuck out of the way. The lead trucks have powerful vacuums that suck up the trash that the dervishes have raked into their paths. Following closely behind these sucker trucks are more trucks that spray water onto the street and behind them scrubber trucks with enormous brushes on the underside. Bringing up the rear is another row of police vehicles. This is quite a spectacle. I can’t help thinking it is as much show as effect. Nevertheless, the street does have a nice squeaky-clean feel to it when I walk across.
Ironically, in just a few hours, thousands of drunken partiers will stumble out here and cross Canal Street to get to the parking garages and hotels that line the wide street on both sides. They will flow forward from Bourbon Street, fanning out in all directions, like a microcosm of the Mississippi delta itself, disgorging strands of beads and empty hurricane cups, puking into the gutters, peeing on light posts, shedding miscellaneous items of clothing -- thong panties, bras, socks, a single spiked-heel shoe -- that have somehow come loose (?); all of this combining to form the sediment layer of just one night of decadence in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Tomorrow the parade of street-cleaning trucks will come again and wash it all away, leaving not a trace. This cycle of excess knows no beginning or ending.
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The entrance to the French Quarter on Bourbon Street from Canal is underwhelming at best, downright scary at its worst. The intersection is poorly lit and there are plenty of unsavory people hanging around who would gladly part you from your wallet or worse, your life. There is a proud tradition of elegant architecture in the French Quarter, but there is no evidence of it here. Decaying brick sidewalls of souvenir shops that open on Canal Street line the entranceway of Bourbon Street. There is a smell of urine coming from the brick walls and walkways that just won’t quit. Some spots are so dark you can barely see the ground below you as you walk, which is doubly dangerous because of the numerous open utility holes in the sidewalks with no covers ready to swallow up your ankle and cut short your stroll. The uneasy tourist is not greeted with a good first impression.
But that’s only the first half block of Bourbon Street. It gets better or worse, brighter or darker, more intriguing or unthinkable, heavenly or damnable, as you move along – it’s all a matter of who you are and why you’ve come here. One thing is for sure, on Bourbon Street, on any given night, you are guaranteed to see something you have never seen before. Now, whether you are emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually prepared to see that something, well, that’s another matter altogether.
To be continued...
9:27:41 PM  Stories
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