Moved to a new location

This is the final entry of my blog "From The Jersey Shore to the Big Easy." It covered a little more than the first year after my move from New Jersey to New Orleans. My first impressions of the people and the city, my challenges and victories. In Sept of 2011 I finally achieved the goal of moving into the heart of the city, the French Quarter.  So as this latest chapter of my adventure in the Big Easy unfolds, I will be sharing it in a new blog, "Life as a Quarter Rat"

If you are a new reader be sure to go back and check out the old blog by subject or dates. If you have been following my exploits, this next chronicle should really keep you entertained. I hope to focus more on the people that I meet every day within the 70 square blocks that are now my world. Less politics in the writing, more adventures I hope.

Grab a bar stool, and let me tell you what happened to me today......

Life as a RAT

Tonight I went on my paper route. Started out working on August's cover at the Internet Cafe on Toulouse. Met with the editor Otis at Molly's  for a couple PBRs and talk about how we can take this rag to the next level. I ended up walking around the Quarter dropping off the next fistful at all of the drops. After doing web graphics for so many years, it's great to finally get to see the reactions on faces to my work. The ego digs it.

AUGUST'S COVER

Zipping in behind Otis as he darted between bewildered tourist looking around as if they just found themselves beamed aboard the Mothership of debauchery. For us it was like running across our backyards to deliver newspapers. Bartenders beamed as a new stack was dropped on their cigarette machine. Bouncers and doormen snatched them from our arms with huge grins like teenage boys who just found their Father's Playboy stash. My artwork has hung in a few nice galleries back in New Jersey but leaving a copy of my latest work clenched between the butt cheeks of a stripper on Bourbon has been the high light of my career.

We dropped a couple of cases at Molly's while we hustled around hundred of copies. Hitting Bourbon and our busiest side streets, we ended up at the Dragon's Den for a final round. Back up to the Canal Street end of Bourbon for the final drops and parted ways at at the streetcar stop. At the end I commented on the wheelchair rims on a metallic lime green Jag. I stood there having a smoke waiting for a Streetcar named DELAYED. When over my shoulder on Bourbon I hear "POP, POP, POP."

By the third pop I was on my hands and knees behind a relay box for the traffic lights. I always make it a point to stand next to heavy object while 6 lanes of drunk drivers surround me.  On the second pop while dropping I could see a muzzle flash from Bourbon next to the sneaker store. Kneeling behind the three foot high metal box I was also protected from being trampled by a thunder of baggy pants and sneakers.

About five to six shots were fired, large caliber, or maybe it was just an echo from the buildings that made the shots sound even more menacing. I looked over at the passengers waiting in the glass streetcar stop laying on the ground. Ground which by the way will make you ill if you stare at it too long.



Fifteen seconds or so after the last shot I peered around the side of my bunker half expecting to see some one who just reloaded after clip one. The only ones standing out in the open were a tourist couple standing on the corner with cell phones taking video. Turned out the driver of the lime green Jag was involved.

"You two are both the luckiest and dumbest mothers fers in the French Quarter." I thought, almost wanting to see these two idiots taken out of the gene pool. The first two cops on scene were mounted on horseback on a Bourbon beat. To see mounted cops riding up Bourbon Street with weapons drawn is better than any fuckin parade I've seen since I've been here.


That was my day at work, I am a Quarter Rat.

NOLA.com  New Orleans police investigating shooting on Bourbon Street

I quit

I've been extremely busy with house painting, working on the Quarter Rat publication and website plus graphic design work. I have to quit something so I am ending may career as a background actor. Please don't try to talk me out of it, my mind is made up. Here are the reasons that made me decide to drop that vocation.
• The pay. Right now the average rate is $80 for ten hours of time. Just about minimum wage. In those same ten hours I can make much more as a house painter. My graphic design fee is $400 for ten hours. Not a hard choice.

• The co-workers. This is the main reason, the recent production that I have worked on and from what I hear from friends who are background actors is that the casting companies are desperate to fill space with anyone they can. One buddy was working a shoot a few weeks ago and said the van ride to the location was unbearable. The van was packed with extras most of which hadn't bathed in weeks. "You know those guys we see under the over pass holding the cardboard signs asking for money? THEY were hired as background. I thought I was going to vomit from the odor. Every other word out of their mouths was a profanity."


• Food. One of the perks that compensated for the low wage was that they used to feed you pretty good. PROFESSIONAL background actors would take reasonable helpings and be happy. The barrel scrapings that have been getting hired lately, they pile the food onto their plates like they haven't eaton in weeks and go back for seconds. I have witnesses an obese old lady stuffing food into her purse from the crafty table. Gee, and I wonder why the next day all we get served is red beans and rice with a slice of watermelon.

• Double standard. Those of us who treat this as a profession and try to do our best dress as we were instructed, stand where instructed and conduct ourselves professionally. However the casting companies just want to meet the numbers required and bring in anyone who answers an E-mail. 


If the scene being shot requires "Casual dinning" street thugs come in with logo em-blazed t-shirts and jeans hanging off of their asses. The wardrobe people don't say shit because they are too scared to. Those extras are placed in deep background out of focus or frame just because no one wants to be the one to tell them to go home because they obviously can't read or don't bother to read the requirements. Meanwhile I just lugged 40 pounds of clothing with me to the holding tent just in case they didn't like my first choice. For $80.


I'll be standing on my mark doing exactly what I am told in the hot sun to look over and see a group of guys sitting in the shade enjoying the bounty they just looted from the crafty table. The Production Assistants eyeball them, but say nothing. 

Now the casting companies whine that they can't get background actors to come in to work. How about this, next time you need bodies, just go down to Poydras and Claiborne with the van, wake up the people sleeping with the cardboard signs and say "Want to be in a movie?"

No place like home...

Back in New Jersey, the number one thing people like to complain about is New Jersey. Too crowded, too expensive, too corrupt, too hectic. If you interrupt their tirade about how Jersey sucks to ask them why don't they move they respond "What?? Leave Jersey?" Residents there have a dysfunctional relation ship with their abusive state spouse. Don't let another state make a joke about it, no matter how true it may be.

When I first moved down here a year ago, I was pretty much jobless, penniless and homeless. Still I felt more at home, more at ease and happier in New Orleans than if I had been given a mansion back in the Garden State.  I have yet to hear a resident here bad mouth the Bid Easy, instead you hear everyone rave about their love of the city like newlywed on a honeymoon.

A new Facebook friend who is serving in the military overseas has been sharing his love story with New Orleans with me. He sent me this Mark Twain quote:
It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.
- Letter to Pamela Moffett, 9 and 11 March 1859 

Well I hope I don't make him too homesick, but I'll send him a little Dr. John in return. Stay safe Franklin, I'll treat you to a beer when you get back home.

he's dead

Back in the late 1990's I drove commuter bus for Academy Bus Lines up the route 9 corridor to Wall Street. Two of my stops every morning and in the evening was the World Trade Center. In the morning after my run, we parked the buses a few blocks away on a pier literally in the shadows of the twins. I spent many an afternoon in the plaza beneath them, listening to classical musicians play as I downed a dirt water dog for lunch.

My older brother took me up to the top of the towers back in the late 70's after they were constructed.  I never failed to be in awe of them regardless of how many times a day I looked up at them.  When driving charter buses in and out of the five boros of New York City, I could always find my way back to New Jersey by using the towers as a navigation landmark. Magnificent to see at night.

In September of 2001 I was working in north Jersey for a sign company. Driving to the job site on Route 18 we listened dumbstruck to the radio news reports. From the job site, we could see the smoke on the horizon, by mid afternoon a sickening electrical fire smell filled the air. On the ride back to the shop, I tried to remember the faces of my passengers that got on and off of my bus years before.

Things changed for the entire world that day. In the years since bickering has taken place over conspiracies and motives. Does it really matter? Innocents are dead, soldier have died, billions have been wasted. I don't think anyone wears a white hat in this world anymore. No soldiers are coming home today, billions more will be spent and new theories are popping up on the internet.

It's an "US or THEM" world today, I'm happy to be an us.

The view from work

 Pontalba building

I spent the past week or so working on an apartment in this very historic building. From the balcony I was literally a stone's throw from the Cabildo building where they signed the Louisiana purchase. During my smoke breaks I could walk out on the balcony and listen to the musicians as tourists milled about below me.

Beats driving a cab in Jersey.

 The Pontalba Buildings form two sides of Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

These are matching red-brick block long 4‑story buildings built in the 1840s by the Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba. The ground floors house shops and restaurants; the upper floors are apartments that are the oldest continuously rented such apartments in the United States.

In the short story Hidden Gardens, Truman Capote describes the Pontalba Buildings as "...the oldest, in some ways most somberly elegant, apartment houses in America, the Pontalba Buildings."

They were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974

The Upper and Lower Pontalba Buildings, which line the St. Ann and St. Peter Street sides of Jackson Square, were built in 1850 by the Baroness Micaela Almonester de Pontalba, the daughter of Don Andres Almonester y Roxas, the Spanish colonial landowner associated with the neighboring Cabildo, Cathedral and Presbytere. Inspired by the imposing Parisian architecture the Baroness favored, the distinctive rowhouses were intended to serve as both elegant residences and fine retail establishments. In 1921 the Pontalba family sold the Lower Pontalba Building to philanthropist William Ratcliff Irby who subsequently, in 1927, bequeathed it to the State Museum.

We finished up the apartment. Yesterday early start, long lunch then worked until 4 am. I slept for a couple of hours on a pile of drop cloths on the balcony over looking Jackson square. 

A lone saxophonist down by the river sung me to sleep in the moon light. Homeless guys fighting over the last swig woke me up.

Wm C. Cayle House 1862

It's been a while since I've blogged. I've been too busy with a paying job, painting houses.  A few 14 hour days amongst the past sixty plus days of no days off. I've been surprised with the size and status of some of the work Pride Improvements has been getting. I thinks it's that Jersey work ethic we brought down with us. No offense to the locals, they just have a different approach to work. "Good enough when we get around to it." Back in Jersey contractors had a lot of competition, others always willing to do it for less money, so you have to always do it better. 

Here are some photos from  the Wm C. Cayle house that we have been   working on for the fast few weeks.

Back in Jersey we were use to the burden of restrictive building codes, permits, inspections, bribes,    pay-offs and the occasional union workers slashing tires of non union workers. I won't say what work my boss managed to step in, but was surprised that it didn't go to a local good ol boy. Again, I think it has to do with standards. Most of the new work comes from referrals.

About six months ago I was doing some work for a man. One morning I asked what was on that day's agenda. "This morning you're putting  a new roof on the garage." 
"New roof on the garage? This morning? By myself? That's kind of a big job for one person, besides, I really don't have any roofing experiance..."
" NO you goddamn moron! I bought a new blue tarp at Walmart for the roof."

Oh yea, the blue tarp, the Louisiana state flag. Covering the remains of a garage were about five layers of blue tarps, each one in a worse case of decomposition than the one on top of it. Seeing this I came to the conclusion that it was one more example of the Gulf Coast residents being neglected and pushed aside.

I inquired "What  happened, didn't the insurance company pay for a new roof after the storm?"
"Sure they did. I spent the money on a new lap top so I could watch porn in the privacy of my room.  I just have to buy a new tarp every year.  Now don't be doing something stupid like falling through the remains of the roof while you're stringin it up, I don't want my insurance to go up if you get hurt." 
"Aren't you going to give me a hand? It's getting kind of windy."
 "Hell no, I'm going inside to look at a new web site I found,  justturned18titties.com. When you're  done installing the new roof, I want you to rewire the living room electric. The new extension cord  is  in the Walmart bag."

As the screen door slammed behind him,  I said to myself "Welcome  to Louisiana."

Audrey Elizabeth Styles 1920 - 2011

I think the one thing mom gave me besides a best friend of 48 years, is a connection to history. I wish now I had taken notes. Born in rural Pennsylvania during the depression and a war bride.

She loved this bridge. It is known as the Tunkhannock Viaduct built between 1912 and 1915. It held the title of the largest concrete bridge for 50 years. Audrey's father help build it. Rex Holley worked as a steam shovel operator for coal mining in West Virginia. He moved to Pennsylvania to work on a large railroad construction project that ended up making the record books. While staying at a boarding house he met my Grandmother working as a house keeper and by 1920 they had a second daughter, Audrey. Mother always said that if not for that bridge, she wouldn't be here today. I guess neither would I or her granddaughter.

Audrey attended secretarial school admittedly to avoid getting a job right away. After graduating she moved in with her older sister and her new husband who had settled in Point Pleasant NJ. I'm trying to picture Mom as a college girl in the 1940 version of "Jersey Shore." Audrey met a local young man and got married at the age of twenty. She was widowed at the age of twenty one.  Her husband John R. Carleton was killed in the Battle of the Bulge.

 

Now being a war widow, the Department of Defence gave her preference hiring for a position at Naval Weapons Station Earl in Colts Neck NJ. She worked there for many years and met her second husband, a WW2 navy veteran. Audrey married him and gave him two sons a year apart. Within a decade that husband died of a stroke. Widowed again this time with two young boys and a mortgage.

 

About 1962 she met another sailor Frank Styles, I guess she had a thing for men in uniform. They married and had me in '63, he went to Vietnam in '64. Their rocky marriage ended 13 years later when he died leaving her with a rebelioness teenage boy. Widowed the third time. I could write pages about her humor, wisdom and strength. Tell all of you about her tough farm girl attitude, and a mean right hook that could drop a 15 year old boy where he stood. I remember one time she was staring off into space and I asked what she was thinking about. She tearfully replied "I bet if he hadn't died in the war, we would still be married."

When asked about marriage: "My cooking has already killed three, no more."

View of the bridge from my Grandparents grave.

Cover 21

Last week at the Moulin View, I was discussing New Orleans with Andie. She was telling me how this town lets you know if you belong here or not. Andie said she has known people who move here only to be driven back to where they came from. Jobs lost, cars stolen or bad vibes roll up the welcome mat. For those who belong here the city opens herself up for the embrace that keeps you for life. You still have to earn it, you still have to prove yourself for the lady's approval.

I've been here a year and things are looking better each day. There's been some challenges, some downfalls but I think New Orleans likes me.  Here is my third cover for the Quarter Rat, enjoy.

Inflict Pleasure

New Orleans is an eerie place at night. It might be the old buildings rumored to be the most haunted in America. No wonder so many films are shot here. I was invited to a fetish party Friday night at the Moulin View. Perfect night for it, a freakishly large moon hovering over the river as I stepped off of the Streetcar to walk to Lower Decatur. Warm weather and liquor filled the air. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I need to get past the touristy sections of town and find out what the natives do for fun.

A rather non descript black and white sign with three skulls marked the door to the dark club. Lower Decatur is kind of lurid to begin with. This is where the locals go. A bartender on Bourbon Street finishes his shift and need to tie one on with civil creatures that arent wearing beads and silly hats goes to Decatur. An imposing but friendly doorman greeted me and pointed out the hostess after I introduced myself. She was not what I expected, I don't know what I anticipated but it wasn't Andie.

She knew I was there to write and draw about the alternative scene in NOLA. Andie greeted me as if I was at an open house for a condo sale. Extremely bright, articulate, professional speaking college age woman who enthusiastically started to tell me about the purpose of the monthly gatherings.  From the spectating novice who are curious to the experienced players were welcomed. Apart from emotionally painful relationships, I would fall into the novice spectator.

Andie put me at ease, if everyone was as cool as her it should be a fun night. It wasn't nearly as bizzare as my mind had envisioned. Gothic dressed ladies from early twenties up to their fifties. Most of the men didn't put much effort into wardrobe, a few did. The theme this month was 'Gender Bender,' Gothy girls in corsets, ropes and men's dress shirts danced on the bar for most of the night, not for tips, but apparently for the fun of it.I wasn't sure if tipping was desired or would've been taken as an insult.

Interesting people, a fun feeling made it a very hip spot to be. Unlike Bourbon Street where sexuality is a commodity, on Lower Decatur it's an art form. The wait staff was extremely cool. drink prices the best I've found in New Orleans. Too good, by two AM I was plastered.

The festivities ended at five. I wondered out into a heavy river fog creating an atmosphere in the Quarter worthy of a vampire film. Unsettling to anyone with as little motor skills as mine. I was an easy mark for anyone who wanted to roll me for an empty wallet. I managed to stumble into the Clover Grill for safety and the perfect greasy breakfast to help me continue onto the streetcar line for the ride home. As I sat at the counter the cook kept turning around and glancing at me.

"Hey, aren't you the cartoonist for the Quarter Rat?" "Huh? Uhm, yea, I think so..." "I saw your photo in the Mardi Gras issue." I don't know if I like being recognized, I always thought that would be cool. I'm not sure now, if I make an ass of myself it might come back to bite me in the ass. By six am I was wading through knee deep garbage, slipping on the sidewalk covered with spilt drinks and vomit heading towards Canal.

I had escaped the darting silhouettes in the fog, for tonight.

it’s a rough planet

Today was beautiful weather as I started to prep a house in St Bernard Parish for painting.  St. Bernard was hit hard during Katrina, in fact the house I was working on like many on the street still bore a spray painted X on the porch marking that it had been searched for bodies after the storm. The radio next to me was reporting on the devastation in Japan.

The contractor that I am working for has been getting a lot of work correcting repair work that was done in the months following the hurricane. Shoddy work done by fly-by-night contractors who flooded the city after the storm waters receded. Paint jobs that should have lasted 10 to 15 years starting to peel after 5.

I needed at lunch to find coffee and cigarettes. I walked block after block finding the same patterns, a recently renovated shotgun house, a couple of vacant lots with just concrete slabs, another recently renovated shotgun and an occasional vacant house covered with vines. One gutted home had PLEASE BULLDOZE spray painted on the front.  I had to walk a lot father than I anticipated, most of the strip malls that we passed on the way in, turned out to still be abandoned.

Like the rest of the world who watched the tragedy unfold on the news channels, we could not imagine what it was like for the residents. I’ve heard many recountings from those who were here. I often wonder how I will respond when and if I am forced to. Will I stay or evacuate and will I suffer the post traumatic stress of seeing my adopted city ravaged by nature.

Often we hear astronomers speak of how Earth is nestled in just the perfect location in our solar system. Any closer to the sun and we’d burn, any farther from the sun we’d freeze.  How incredibly perfectly located we are in the big picture with enough oxygen and water.  Listening to the radio reports of how many thousands may have died do to the earthquake and the following tsunami while wire brushing a Katrina X I thought about this planet. It’s not nearly as friendly as the travel brochures make it sound.

99 percent of the time it is pretty decent, but now and then the atmosphere decides to it’s time to fuck with us by slamming humanity with unlivable conditions. At times the most stable thing in our lives, the very plant itself becomes violent and our seas desire to show that they are in the majority and land is the minority.

It can be a rough planet to live on at times.

Bourbon Street Parade

A year ago I rolled into this town in a 95 Ford Escort with less than $75 in my pocket, no job lined up and only Waffle’s floor to crash on. At least I was out of New Jersey. I never felt at home in Jersey, regardless of what town I lived in. The first morning that I woke up in New Orleans and strolled down Magazine Street in search of coffee and smokes it felt right. I can’t explain it other than it felt like I was home. There has been a lot of rough times in the past year, but never once did I ever consider returning to Jersey. A few times I did consider cashing in my chips off of the Crescent City Bridge.

New Orleans talked me out of it. The reputation of this city through out the world is one of indulgence and debauchery, a decadent drunken harlot catering to carnal pleasure. Babylon on the Mississippi. Like the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold she welcomes the creative, the outcast and those who feel at home nowhere else. That has been her turbulent history. The flags of Spain, England, France, America and the Confederacy have flown over her, yet she is still individual and defiant.

Cajun refugees from Canada made their way down the river to find a new home here. Slaves from Africa were forced to make New Orleans their new home and Pirates had their mail forwarded here. Vietnamese refugees have come here as boat people only to become some of the finest fisherman in the world. Where else could Pirates become heroes and descendants of slaves become celebrities. A city whose not known for making steel or autos, not seen as a center of financial power or commerce. Instead is associated world wide for music, food, writing, art and individualism. Perhaps this is why I immediately felt at home here.

Today, a year later I am working as a house painter and optimistic. I took a break from painting French doors in a former slave’s quarter on Esplanade turned into a condo. I walked up Bourbon Street to a strip club to collect money for artwork I did. There is a change in my life, walking out of a strip club with more money than I walked in with. On the way to the club I stopped and jotted down a phone number to an affordable apartment on Bourbon for rent.

Kicking back down Bourbon Street I glanced into a window of Skully’s record shop. Posted in the window was a poster for “Bourbon Street and Beyond, illustrated by Eric T Styles” On the counter sat several copies of the book I worked on for the past few months. With a stupid grin on my face walking back to Esplanade I spoke to myself “A year ago I rolled into this town in a 95 Ford Escort with less than $75 in my pocket, no job lined up and only Waffle’s floor to crash on…”

Reputation is everything

On a dark note...

A friend who I worked with doing background just posted from the ER. Apparently she got mugged and roughed up pretty bad.  The thugs took all of the money she had earned working the past 24 hours. As she laid on the ground dazed and bleeding, herds of revelers just stepped over her. Another girl from Tulane was shot tonight.

I'm sure tomorrow the news will be filled with gruesome stories of shootings, robberies and rapes. The lesser crimes will be so numerous that they probably won't even make police reports. One of the reason I don't mind staying in from the festivities that so many travel here to partake in. This city can turn vicious at the drop of a jester hat. Halloween night an Iraq war veteran was walking down Bourbon with his wife when a group of guys made a comment to her. The Marine of course defended his wife's honor. He was stabbed to death.

Thanksgiving day a popular bartender in the French Quarter had just finished a long grueling shift. While leaving the Quarter he had an altercation with a group of teens and was shot to death. As much as I praise the city I will not deny the ugly, vicious dark side of NOLA. For hundreds of years cutthroats, thieves and scum have roamed these streets in search of victims.



My friend who was cruelly attacked tonight was sober but tired after working for so many hours. She was lucky to have escape with her precious life. Many victims tonight can blame only themselves for not knowing the area and being an easy drunk mark. Tourists and money are like chum in these shark filled streets. 

I don't work on Mardi Gras

I knew a guy who made that statement anytime he applied for a job. Needless to say he never really worked. The painting company I am working for is swamped with work, in fact a few extra people have been hired on. So today we started off to work and gave up on the one job site on Esplenade in the Quarter. Thick sluggish traffic being detoured around parade routes and streets cluttered with  float traffic and dim witted drunks stepping in front of cars without even glancing up. The only way I could describe the entire City of New Orleans to New Jersians would be imagine Seaside Heights on a Fourth Of July weekend.



Beneath the overpasses on Claiborne large crowds flowed towards countless Bar B Qs as the music took on an eerie sound echoeing under the traffic of I-10. Every route that we tried to navigate was lined with brightly costumed groups of liquored up revelers who obviously don't work on Mardi Gras either. We were trying in vein to get caught up on jobs. Deciding that working in the French Quarter was out of the question today, we slowly headed to a painting and siding job uptown. While working, a surprised home owner stuck her head out and proclaimed "Oh, your:e working TODAY? It's Mardi Gras..." "Yea, well, we're Yankees, so here we are."

There are many people who are working today in New Orleans, bartenders, servers, cab drivers, cops and emergancy workers.  I know what they are going through having driven cab on the Jersey Shore for five years. Tomorrow they will wake up exhuasted, aching and with a hatred for humanity.

We were going to run an errand to the Post Office, but they don't work on Mardi Gras either. 

My first Mardi Gras Parade

Tonight I return from my first Mardi Gas parade. After hearing about it for the past 12 months and seeing how this city and it's population are dependent on this season, I had to go. Like a drunk working til Friday every year, New Orleans can finally cum on itself.  Three parades on right after the other tonight.

Bobby and I were joking today about the ladders. There are some die hard parade fans who make it a family event. One tradition is a small open sided box mounted on ladders. Parents bring them along to the parade, and set them up along the parade route. They place very young children into the boxes above the heads of the rest of the crowd so their two year old can catch the best throws.

Bobby commented "Let's see, you're going to place your toddler in a box, nailed to the top of an eight foot ladder, on an uneven sidewalk surrounded by drunks..." I added "THEN you encourage drunks on floats to throw a handfuls of plastic beads at your kid's face. Might as well just put the kid over a dunk tank with a toaster in his lap." Perhaps it's just us being from Jersey, we think this way.

To be honest, I've been dragging heals about going to a parade, it's just me. I hate crowds and dislike drunks, add a lot of walking and spending money to that combination to see why I put it off. Today I had a business meeting in the Quarter and a parade got in the way. So for the sake of this blog and being able to say I went to a parade, I went. I don't drink, however while on Bourbon Street I got downwind of "the wrong crowd."  Second hand smoke, I swear. Really. I was down wind of them from Toulouse to Canal. Caught a buzz. Anyways, that made me want to see a parade. I walked along the St Charles line looking more at the crowd than the parade. It was like watching the religious holiday of a shoe fetish cult.

How did I like my first parade? It was ok.

PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND

Coming soon

I've been commissioned to revamp quarterrat.com, look for it in a few days. Humor, stories and links to all of the great spots in New Orleans from the point of view of locals.

A few problems with my Mac, I had to up grade the OS from Jaguar to Tiger and that put me behind deadline. Once it's up on line you will be able to purchase quite probably the the funniest book of the year.



The publisher has been dropping off copies all over the French Quarter. At one location two copies were instantly bought by the store's employees. A tourist couple watching the employees flipping pages and laughing out loud inquired "What do you have there?"  The seasoned service industry workers responded "A book that makes fun of you guys." The elderly tourists from the Midwest asked to see a copy, examined the the front cover and read the introduction. They handed the publisher $20 and said "We'll take one."

Three copies of "Bourbon Street and Beyond" sold in as many minutes.  If we continue to sell one copy per minute, I will be able to pay off all of my outstanding stripper debt in 11 days, 14 hours and 9 minutes.

Locals can find copies throughout the French Quarter and along major parade routes. Give me a few days to get the new web site up and running and the rest of the world can enjoy The Quarter Rat.

"We're Everywhere"

Audrey

A year ago when I was deciding to move from New Jersey to New Orleans the toughest element of the decision was leaving my 90 year old mother in her nursing home.  Being the youngest of three boys I was always her baby. We lived together for many years and over the course of my life I had gone from being taken care of to being the care giver. After she was admitted to the nursing home six years ago,  I would bring her her coffee and cigarettes with an hour of time twice a week. Eventually just once a week.

She surprised the doctors and family by her resilience to strokes, falls and Alzheimer's. Seventy eight years of smoking hadn't even slowed her down. In fact, going outside a few times a day to have a Marlboro was the highlight of her day in an otherwise bleak existence.  Imagine a very bundled up Ruth Gorden outside in a wheelchair slinging profanities as she attempted to light her next smoke in the wind.

I recent months her health has declined sharply and it looks like she soon will be leaving us. So the final posts of my year long blog about my move down here will probably be a lot of my memories of her. Bare with me during my grieving period. To be honest, the grieving period started years ago as her mind started to fragment like an old hard drive. Dying are the ninety years of memories from an incredible and fascinating life of a strong, bright and independent woman.

Recently my friend Robert introduced me to the film "Curious Case Of Benjamin Buttons" Uncanny timing.  The film has allowed me to deal with emotions and feelings that I would've done my best to avoid with self medication and distractions of daily existence. I have loved ones in NJ, my mother whose life is coming to an end, and a fourteen year old daughter whose life is just beginning.  This is the first time in the past year, I wish I was there.

Wait until I tell you about Audrey, you guys will love her.

Putting a face on Mardi Gras

If I had to describe Mardi Gras to the folks back in Jersey, I'm not sure I could. The entire Gulf Coast celebrate this season with passion and reverence as the Jersey Shore does with the start of summer. Imagine Memorial Day, Labor Day and Christmas all with in a couple of months.  Locals are a tight group down here, all share the joys of Carnival season and the fears of hurricane season. Someone tried to explain to me how the season starts and ends each year, all depends on when Fat Tuesday falls. 

This Mardi Gras poster is by artist Peter O'Neill who has completed several Carnival themed paintings for his New Orleans gallery. Peter says he enjoys painting for his NOLA gallery. I look forward to his Facebook postings of his latest work, great stuff. Mr. O'Neill said he's going to take four weeks off after I commented on how prolific he has been in the past few weeks.  Here is his web site to view more of his work, or to order a copy of his Mardi Gras poster.

www.oneillgallery.com

Enjoy your time off Peter.