More memories of the Quarter

More observations from New Orleans…

1) It’s fitting that I talk about the D-Day museum today, on the sixty first anniversary of that event. It is, without a doubt, one of the best museums that I’ve ever visited. From the introductory film, which could be a sufficient museum in itself, to the exhibits that take you from the build up of the American forces to the tactics and strategy to the amazing bravery of those first soldiers who stepped off the Higgins boats knowing that the odds were against them but they did their job to ensure that the next boat would have an easier path, it is a place that takes your breath away. I’ve never found a place that gives you a sense of how brutal the fighting was in those days after the invasion. They have a mock up of a hedgerow and you walk by and look back to see several gun barrels pointing at where you were just standing. Even if you were looking for them you still can’t find them. It makes your heart stop. They’ve also added a section on the war in the Pacific, including a somber and sobering section on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I know these are not topics that always come up when you think of when you envision New Orleans but if you visit the town you owe it to yourself to visit this place.

2) That said, I have a personal reason why I find myself drawn to the museum. It was the brainchild of Stephen Ambrose, the great historian and professor at the University of New Orleans. A school that offered the sixteen year old version of me the chance to attend on a full scholarship and send me to Europe one summer, where I later found out I would have studied under Dr. Ambrose. I have always said that I keep very few regrets in my life but I will always wonder what could have been if I had decided to study history in New Orleans as opposed to engineering in Champaign.

3) It had been four years since I had been to New Orleans and for the most part, the city hadn’t changed. I was upset to find that my favorite bookstore, this massive independent store with a huge section of New Orleans writers, had disappeared and been replaced by an Urban Outfitters. I like Urban Outfitters, I have more than my fair share of post modern ironic t-shirts, but I really miss that bookstore.

4) Of course, the Hooters is still open in the French Quarter. I am still amazed by this because if there is any place in the country where a Hooters shouldn’t make money it is New Orleans. Because from both a food perspective and the, uh, entertainment side of the equation there are dozens of places within three blocks that are better choices.

5) Sight that will make its way into a story of mine some day: Peering into the darkness of Jackson Square late one night and making out the shapes of a number of cats holding court near the statue. In a town where the supernatural is all around you it is sights like that which make you wonder what really constitutes reality.

6) I am pissed that one of my favorite places in the Quarter is now being written up in every guidebook in every hotel. Port of Call, which is on Esplanade at the far end of the Quarter, has the absolute best hamburgers in the city served with a huge baked potato and trust me, it really helps you to recover from whatever happened the night before. Well, it used to be this hidden place that only some people knew about. Now it is being packed with tourists and while I am happy that they are having great business, I really wish that it was a place that only I knew about.

7) Saw in one of the stores on Bourbon Street Mardi Gras beads that featured the Notre Dame logo so I had to pick them up. I swear to God, within a block I had people asking where in the world I got them and offering to buy them off of me. So for anyone looking for a riskless arbitrage opportunity in the future, there you go.

8) I’m going to close with a quote from one of my favorite New Orleans writers, Andrei Codrescu (who is originally from Romania but escaped from communism, bounced around the U.S., found himself in New Orleans, and never left). He explains what I love about the city better than I could

“New Orleans is a small city, but it seems spacious because it is always full of people… like a crowded barroom at night. At dawn, a deserted barroom seems small beyond belief: how did all those people fit? The answer is that space and time are subjective no matter what the merciless clock of late twentieth century America tells us. And there is more subjective time and space in New Orleans than almost anywhere in the United States. Which is not to say that the sad ironies of dehumanized commerce and violence do not touch us here: they do, as Walker Percy’s Moviegoer or John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius O’Reilly amply prove. But the city puts up a fight, a funny, sad fight composed sometimes of sly stupidities and Third World inefficiency. The city can drive a sober-minded person insane, but it feeds the dreamer. It feeds the dreamer stories, music and food. Really great food.”

(Taken from “Se Habla Dreams” in the essay collection “The Muse is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans”)