I greet you from my near penultimate email with the happy news that I have found an American city that I really enjoy. Perhaps this is because it prides itself on it’s former independence from the union and has a distinctly out of the way feel about it, though I think it has more to do with the emphasis placed on food, music and drinking. I speak of New Orleans, the big easy, the place that stress forgot. From what I can gather life in New Orleans consists of getting up late, avoiding the heat of the afternoon with a nap, eating some tasty food, listening to some jazz and getting drunk.
That’s not a bad lifestyle in my opinion and comes remarkably close to my own life if left to its own devices. I would consider living in New Orleans but for one thing – it’s the hottest place I have ever been to. In humidity terms it feels like a bathroom in winter after a hot shower and no fan. The mist is palpable in the air and almost seems to take on a yellow hue in the fading light. You have probably never walked around in your steam strewn bathroom for ten minutes but you can take it from me that you don’t want to. I worked up a sweat lying down in the shade. The humidity isn’t as noticeable during the day only because the sun cuts through it with a searing aggression and forces you to take cover. I would need a specially adapted space suit to continuously circulate cold air before I could contemplate staying here for any length of time.
I have the utmost sympathy for the early inhabitants of this city, by all accounts the dregs of French society at the time. They had to force people to come here which is not surprising when you consider that the city is located in swamp land next to the continuously flooding Mississippi. Coming down on the train I spotted a small community living in the swamp on raised houses. One of the cars was parked in a driveway under a foot of water. I suspect that the state of Louisiana remained independent for quite some time simply because the Americans didn’t want it. This long independence gives New Orleans it’s unique flavour – the elaborately decorated houses in the French quarter, the Caribbean and European mixture of the food and the insular nature of the inhabitants.
New Orleans is the only city in America where you are allowed to drink alcohol on the street, not that I was aware that it was illegal elsewhere until I came here. One result of this is that every American tourist wanders around clutching a beer. A far better consequence is the daiquiri shops. Here they have adapted a slushy machine to deliver frozen cocktails in a handy takeaway cup, the sizes being equivalent to McDonalds. A few white russians soon calmed me down but I couldn’t believe it when I saw one lady order a large ‘little bit of everything’. It looked potent enough to kill.
Another speciality of the region is hot sauces. The idea seems to be less about new types of sauce as new names for them. I tried the red ass – red habanero sauce which was a medium. It had a ten second delay on it before the left side of my tongue developed a welt. I decided not to try the hottest sauce which was named ‘Burn in Hell, Osama – Evil Hot sauce’.
I have a feeling that I wouldn’t like the town so much at certain times of the year when it’s reputation as a party town brings frat boys by the thousand to ogle breasts and drink until they feel unwell. Most of the tourist action is centred around Bourbon Street which the locals seem to have employed as a distraction tactic, leaving the rest city relatively unscathed. The city was quiet at the time of my visit. The students were back at school, the festivals were over, and the locals seemed to be enjoying being able to claim their city back until the madness starts again. I mooched from one air conditioned place to another, only braving the heat long enough to enjoy a cigar next to the river while listening to some jazz.
Dave out.
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