New Orleans

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Train and Truck at Press Near Burgundy

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I woke up too early but early enough to meet M., D., and J. For a pre-brunch coffee and muffin. It was just after 9:00am on a Sunday, so the streets were empty, the air smelling a bit like somebody had a “good” time last night. I pedaled over to St. Claude to pick up the bike lane, but I got stopped by another train on the tracks at Press Street. Yep, the same Press Street where Plessy tried to take a seat, but now it’s where we regularly get stuck waiting for a train to roll up and down the tracks, switching rails, but it’s still Plessy’s street just the same. Most folks know to take a right here and beat the train at Chartres, but I was in no mood to race, happy to settle in and watch the thing rock back and forth, back and forth. But then cars were making their turns and going around the train, and I felt like some kind of rube, standing there waiting with my bicycle like I didn’t know I could go around. I gave in to the phantom peer pressure and went on my way, stopping to take a picture of train at momentary rest with yet another vehicle going around. it is rather amazing to me sometimes how much work I have to do to make myself stand still, and I wouldn’t have minded standing still a little longer this morning. And then I rolled up to the cafe just as M. and D. did, and I was just happy to see them. I am going to miss some friends something fierce.

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People Shopping for Records at Siberia on St. Claude & Marigny

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Today’s bike ride took me Uptown for brunch with N. and the visitation with my cats, currently ensconced with former students/cat ladies. The weather was a typical New Orleans summertime thing: gray skies, then sun and coconut clouds, and finally a return of that steel blue and a total downpour. But the rain didn’t start falling until after I made it back down to the Marigny to meet S. for a ride to the Record Raid at Siberia, another place that could seriously use some nike racks. I don’t own a record player, nor do I ever really wish I did, except on afternoons like this, watching people sift through the boxes for music they didn’t know they wanted. It took me about two minutes of shuffling to find a copy of Bruce’s Born in the USA. My sister and I used to listen to that album at our dad’s place, on near-constant repeat when no one else was home, that and a Los Lobos album. I remember the day we scratched it, by accident, of course–probably resetting the needle for the title track. I was so scared I was in big trouble, but more than that, I was scared the fun was over. Thing’s have turned out better than expected. Still love that record so much. I sat on a stool, had a drink (Crown Royal, something else that reminds a kid of her pops), watched other people shop, and listened to another monsoon. What a nice way to end the day.

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Margaret Haughery Statue at the Intersection of Prytania & Camp

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It was another gray and rainy day and it was still sprinkling when I headed out on my bike for an errand or two. I pedaled Uptown to visit a video store–look it up–and then back downtown for a trip through the Ogden. I stopped at the intersection of Prytania and Camp to snap a picture of this statue of Margaret Haughery. It’s the first statue of a woman erected in the U.S., and it’s right there, and it took reading a book about Civil War memory for me to learn about her. Anyway. She was born in 1813, her parents died, she was adopted, those parents died,and she was all alone in the world. She worked hard, moved her way up some kind of ladder, and became a rich baker. She distributed free bread to the needy, gave away most of what she had to provide for the (white?) widows and children of New Orleans, and seems to have been generally incredibly generous and supportive of the community’s poor. Maybe we should trim some of those trees and remind people of some alternatives to the way the vast majority of those of us with economic privilege act now. I rode to the museum, watched that Benny Andrews video again. Art can do something special, for sure. It was a good ride.

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Empty Lot For Sale at Prytania & Josephine

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Today’s ride took me up to the office and back, with a couple stops along the way. It started with sun, but by the time I got Uptown the skies had that steely blue thing going on, and I could mostly just think about my car down on Frenchman, parked in a spot still wet from earlier in the week, and you know what that means. I wonder what it’s like to live in a place with an infrastructure you can trust not to flood in a hard rain. Those places exist, right?

Anyway, I wrote a couple of recommendation letters and threw the rest of my office stuff in to one more box before pedaling home as fast as I could to beat the rain. Annnnnd the clouds were breaking up. Phew. I slowed my roll to enjoy the ride and stopped to take a picture of this lot for sale at Prytania and Josephine. There was a beautiful old church here until January when the place burned down. It had been empty and for sale since Katrina, but I guess there’s not much of a market for a church. The fire was intense, but walls and rubble were left strewn about the place. That lot was cleared in record time, and now here it is, just the ironwork sign and a leaning tree on empty land. Sometimes the bulldozers move quick; we’ll see if the property does. I continued on my way, happy for a day without rain.

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1929 Educational Film Still at the Presbytere at Jackson Square

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The sun has come out, the sun has come out! I wheeled my bike out of the apartment this morning and was shocked by how different everything looked in sunlight, and by the immediate need to put on some sunglasses. I pedaled to the Lower Garden District for a lovely brunch with A. After a quick stop at her place to see her cats–we are both resolute cat ladys and proud of it–I rode back down to the Quarter. I’m a Friend of the Cabildo (pardon my brag), so I decided to stop in at the Presbytere to avail myself of my membership privileges. After waiting behind some Swedish tourists, I got my free member ticket and headed into the Katrina and Beyond exhibit. I have been to this one before, but it definitely deserves multiple viewings; it is a really tense experience. Today I watched the entire 1929 silent film about New Orleans pout out by the Eastman company. It is all about what a beautiful place New Orleans is, the romance of our sultry air and elaborate ironwork, our outdoor restaurants and eclectic architecture. It showed our prime spot as a port, with easy access to the Mississippi, over 40,000 miles of railroad tracks, and a direct route to markets in the U.S. and around the world. And there was, of course, video of Mardi Gras parades. The last words of this silent film were, “Romance, work and play combine to make the charm of New Orleans.” True that. The rest of the exhibit makes claims not unlike this old movie, and the new film installation at the end of the exhibit echoes many of these scenes (though the 1929 movie didn’t make me cry). We are not telling new stories, though the old one about how great MRGO is doesn’t quite resonate anymore. Yes, world, New Orleans has a right to exist. I checked out the photography exhibition upstairs, but the Mardi Gras stuff just seemed out of place with the mood I was left in, so I headed home to work out of the sun before a longer ride tonight. If only they’d figure out how to put some bike racks in Jackson Square. Seriously, folks, we can park bicycles without ruining the historical look of the place, right?

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Post-It Note At Desperado’s Pizza on Frenchman

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And now for a guest post from the world of pedestrians! I stayed off my bike today, and off the wet roads. The sun finally came out in the late afternoon giving the sky an odd glowing feel. I am staying in the Marigny this month, so when S. invited me over for dinner at her place in the Treme I told her to just pick me up on her dog walk, and we would walk back to her place. Dinner was good and the lazy conversation better and then it was time to head home, and I had to walk. Gasp. After assuring S. that I did indeed know how to walk, I headed over to and down Esplanade. I walked by a mass of flowers that smelled downright sultry before stopping in the minimart that had a whole different kind of sultry going on. I picked up a candy bar and a bar of soap and waited on line as a guy bought vodka and mixers while two young men nervously fidgeted behind him, following the guy’s drunken orders, “or I’ll drink that whole bottle by myself, if you can’t carry it.” All kinds of exchanges happening out there tonight. I wandered down Frenchman, listening to the music and smelling the smoke, stopping to take a picture of this tiny post-it note on the pizza place’s door. When I was moving into the neighborhood I looked around–minimart, coffee shoppe, pizza–ok, that’s pretty much everything I need. But no pizza! I’ve ridden by this door dozens of times, but on a bike you are moving way too fast to read it. Apparently, this company still has some rental goods inside there. D’oh! Looks like there’s no pizza for me on this corner any time soon. That walk was short but highly pleasurable–sometimes it’s good to just slow your roll.

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504 Fashion on St. Bernard & N. Johnson

So I’m stuck in a rainstorm after a most lovely sunny ride to brunch with E. and then along the new Broad Street bike lane to the Gentilly bike lane and then back. Oh, do I love a new bike lane! Broad’s is super-wide and the asphalt isn’t piled with loose gravel and sticks yet, and in the whole ride, only one car was parked in it. For the commuter cyclist, that’s just heaven. And connection between Orleans, Broad, and Gentilly? Be still my heart! I thought I would make it back to the Quarter for women’s World Cup soccer before the rains, but alas, it wasn’t to be. But I needed a ride, and I got one, and there’s a dry spot under this church overhang and 504 Fashion just across the street and eventually I will just wade out into it, but for now I will stand here and mop off, composing another love letter to another bike lane.

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New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling at the Rusty Nail Under the Expressway

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If I had gotten out of bed at a reasonable hour I maybe would have gotten a good ride in–which I really, really need–but I was too busy reading about somebody else going for a walk in Baltimore (wow, that’s not how I saw those streets) and the new local paper (Jesus Christ, Frederick County-really?) that by the time I was ready to leave the house, the rain had started again. Bah. I was in my car, craigslist-dealing this, picking up S. at the airport (thank goodness S. is home again!) Until it was time to ride over to the Rusty Nail for another session with New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling. I wasn’t much in the mood for crowds, but I knew I would see most of my friends there, and it was raising money for BreakOUT!, one of those groups just plain doing good stuff. I snapped this picture of a bout and also of other people taking pictures of the bout. NOLAW is getting to be the kind of thing that you’ll want pictures of. That’s mine, and I need a much, much longer bike ride to say more than that; I’m not myself without my miles. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

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Domino’s American Legends at Common & Carondelet

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Warning: this blog will expose some of my latent angry lesbian feminist tendencies. I spent most of my day inside, cursing the vicious rains that are keeping me off my bike. Damn you, Nature! But it is what it is, and I managed to get quite a bit of work done, so, meh, good for me. I was working on my Introduction to Gender and Women’s syllabus for the fall semester, so that’s where my head was at when I headed out for the Britney Spears/Nicki Minag Femme Fatale 2011 tour at New Orleans Arena. I have liked Brtiney since she was a little girl. I wrote my master’s exams to her second album on repeat. I showed clips of Crossroads in my first Intro to Women’s Studies course in 2002; it really does offer a rare representation of class politics, plus, when Brit sings “I Love Rock and Roll,” well, um, I just really like that part. Every semester I talk to students about this quandary, where women’s  sexual power and pleasure is an essential feminst right and fight, but also the way that the narrowing of women’s power to the sexual realm is dangerous, especially for women who have long been imagined as always already hypersexual. So, I ask my students, is Britney (or Nicki or Beyonce or Lady Gaga) a feminist figure, or is she just playing up to old damaging tropes of women’s sexual availabilty? Thing is, it’s both and neither and all of that. Nothing is either revolutionary or not, subversive or not. It depends on who’s doing the looking, what the one being looked at is putting on display, where it’s happening. It depends on the rhetorical situation. Tonight, watching so many women hobbling in heels they couldn’t trust and wearing skirts they couldn’t sit in, it just didn’t seem like the kind of feminism I want us to be fighting for, even if Britney’s show is all about her “power” as a femme fatale. It seemed like feminism as just another consumer choice, and it reminded me of this sign outside a Domino’s I passed as I pushed my bike through the rush hour crowds, America’s legends reduced to pizza with ham and pineapple on top, politics reduced to what you buy or wear. And that’s not even to touch the weird Orientalism, the “sexy” prisoner/guard motif, how we all know nobody’s actually making music but we don’t say anything,  the endless dance fighting, white versus black, good versus evil, and so on. But that’s just how I read it tonight–we’ll see what I think about it in the morning. What I am sure of is that the bike is the way to get to a giant show. from the grossly underused rack and whizzing by all those suckers sitting in their cars in traffic. Ride a bike, people!

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Men Moving a Freezer Into the Soda Shop at Magazine & Andrew Higgins

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I swear, you go out of town for a week, and they’ve added something else to the ever-expanding empire of the World War II museum downtown. After a day spent dodging rain, writing emails, and looking work in the face, I hopped on my bike and headed Uptown to meet A., C., and L. for dinner at the Ethipian place. On a similar ride last month I noticed the new “preservation pavillion” added to the complex–a big glass box of a building where some kind of ship or somesuch is being rehabbed. Today I noticed folks moving things into the Soda Shop, another nostalgic addition. I wonder if the audience for this museum will persist, if the nostalgia can be inherited on down the line, or if we’ll have a giant museum to remember our war in Iraq, a special building just for the Navy Seals who took down Osama bin Laden, a retro coffee shoppe serving Grande Light Mocha Frappucinnos. This museum is a huge tourist draw aside from just being an exercise in collective memory, which means there’s the money and the will to build, build, build. I wish we could extend that will to the neighborhoods of New Orleans, an exercise in collective memories of Fazendeville or the 7th Ward or West Baltimore. But those aren’t memories, they’re living communities, but I wish we could have the will to build there too. I continued my ride Uptown, then back downtown throught the Bywater, and home again. It’s good to be home.