It's my own fault, really. I'd visited New Orleans a few times, hoped to match here after med school, did, and moved here in 2000. I found the culture and
food--the whole city
really--romantic and historic, and I romanced and married me a beautiful New Orleans lady who was bound on staying. I welcomed the thought.
Things aren't always what they first seem. Well, the wife's still beautiful, at least.
~
I forcibly gnawed the French bread and told myself I liked it. Tried to enjoy the
bread pudding. With whiskey sauce. Without. Hated Bayona. And Galatoire's. Found Jacques-Imo's atmosphere dreadful. Had better gumbo in Jackson, Mississippi. Loved the bread pudding souffle but otherwise thought Commander's Palace vastly overrated. Tipitina's? Drab. The Sazerac cocktail? I've tried and tried--like when I learned to like Scotch--but it's just awful. The weather? (Do I really need to answer that?) And courtesy? Fuhgettaboutit!
No, I'm not Catholic, why does everybody ask me this? (By the way, where the hell was the Catholic Church after Katrina?) And why is no one of Spanish heritage here but everyone has French heritage? Isn't it really the Spanish Quarter? And why are you Granger as in Texas Ranger but she is Granger as in Grand Marnier?
The sales tax is how fucking much?
Please tell me again, why is this bar so cool? Because it's a train bar, whatever the fuck that is, cuz I don't see any trains? Because the roaches--sorry--palmetto bugs in here are big enough to eat the shoes right off my feet? Because the whiskey sour is made with New Orleans bottled sour mix? Or, is it because the walls weep a moldy effluent? And no, I don't want to hear about your ménage à trois again; I already threw up once here last month, thank you, when you pointed out your threesome included the hot bartender with the ultimate package who was actually eating a palmetto bug while the drunken crowd roared.
~
Yes, I'm still crazy about some things here. Barbecued shrimp. The Saints. Muffalettas. Kermit Ruffins. Fried oysters. Snug Harbor (sometimes). And I definitely love me some Abita Amber.
But enough's enough.
The whole city seems to have homogenized itself into a caricature of what New Orleans is supposed to be, to tourists, in hopes in won't go teats up and fold again (especially after The K Word hit) like it did at the turn of the 20th century when it seemed the World was but an Oyster and New Orleans, its Pearl. Instead of offering us and the world something new and something old, something, well, New Orleans-y, it's more Bourbon Street strip clubs and more "Proud Mary" playing in the Quarter than you could hear at a Tina Turner impersonation contest. Everything is fluer-de-freaking-lis. Every restaurant has the same menu. Every party has gristly stuffed artichokes. Every wedding, a second line.
But I thought those were for funerals.
I guess it's understandable. To fall back on what you know and all. But like those Wall Street types say, If you ain't growin', you're dyin'.
To an outsider--and I could live here for 185 more years and become Mayor of the city and I'd still be the Longest Living Outsider Ever in New Orleans--I know that it's the same old same old. Even
pre-Katrina. The same crappy old blues players at Jazz Fest; where I get the added pleasure of hearing them interrupt their set and preach about the good ol' days and all of their dead blues players friends for the 25 minutes I'm standing in line to pee, a jam session (if you can call it that) for the thirty minutes I'm queued up again to get a warm, Louisiana-Proud Bud Light and watching a 15 year-old girl puke and nearly pass out while I wait yet another fifteen minutes for cold crawfish bread that has more wooly bread and neo-glow orange sauce than crawfish and wonder which is worse, the preachin' and singin', the standin' or the amazing food and drink.
Of course, by then it's started to rain.
Earlier in the year, if I'm not excited about Mardi Gras it's as if I'd just told my 2 year-old son and all of
his 2 year-old friends that there's no Santa Claus. Yet Mardi Gras is the same recycled Mardi Gras floats in the same Mardi Gras parades only with different names--Yea! It's Orpheus tonight!--with the same Mardi Gras songs by the same Mardi Gras bands--Ooh, ooh! Move back! Here comes Saint Aug!--and those same really old ladies in the same leopard-print leotards as last year doing the same half-ass high-steppin' to the same chest-thumpin' Whoomp! (There It Is) blaring from the same champagne Chrysler 3000 with spinnin' 24's behind 'em. After each parade, I'm subjected to the same dried-out-is-this-unleavened cake doused in the same grainy, purple, green and Corvette-yellow icing washed down this time with Louisiana-Proud Coors Light, hoping I don't choke on the plastic baby because if I don't eat any it's an offense to all present when all I really want is a place to go wash myself.
Over and over and over and over for weeks.
~
New Orleans, the City that Care Forgot.
Better, the City they Forgot to Clean.
But what's a hick from Arkansas know about great cuisine or important culture, right?
Don't leave it to me. Cooks and crooks--and very often very un-great food--is how world-renowned food writer Alan Richman summarized what New Orleans is most famous for.
New Orleans fell in love with itself and acted accordingly, becoming a
festival of narcissism, indolence, and corruption. Tragedy could not
have come to a place more incapable of dealing with it.
And not simply because of a batshit crazy, racist Mayor who's vagina-friendly, I'd like to add.
But let's not even get into the crime. The corruption. The view on Veterans Highway.
~
Were it not for my son's wonderful grandparents here, my wife's
attachment to this town would be completely irrational. However, I realize that a person's home can make you this way, too. Why, look at the Palestinians and Israelis. They're so torn over losing the places they grew up in that they've been killing
each other for millenia over it.
And I bet they don't even have Abita beer there.
Lately, I often
picture myself in some sort of black-and-white dream, like on the tarmac at the end of
Casablanca, and I'm a sad-but-determined Bogey in a fedora--but at Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kennah instead of Morocco--and I'm shoving my family (Grandma and Gramps, too) onto a shiny turboprop in a dense, stormy night and we fly, heroically, towards sunsets in a land of big yards, low sales taxes, and cornbread dressing.
And Lysol.
And we wouldn't come back for those goddamned parades.