NOLA

It's wednesday night in NOLA (New Orleans LA), and I'm sipping a hurricane from a plastic cup. New Orleans is one of the places in the country where you can walk around with booze as long as its not in a glass container, and bars stay open pretty much as long as they want to. This particular hurricane came from Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, one of the oldest buildings in the French Quarter, although I have difficulty believing that the bar was founded by the pirate Jean Lafitte. However, I have come to appreciate the role myth plays in architecture. After all, it is entirely possible that he did found it. Anyway, at this bar, we got into a discussion with two gentlemen who told us that this was in fact the case, and furthermore, that this was the best place to get a Hurricane in the Vieux Carre, and specifically, that one should always drink it through the straw with the least mixing possible. Of course, one of them was a tour guide, and the other was a horse and buggy driver. 

The vieux carre is terrible driving. Every other street is one way, and often streets are blocked off. Which is why, one night coming back from a day of touring, I found myself going the wrong way down a narrow one way street. And of course, with our professor's warning about getting arrested in New Orleans (not advised. They put everyone they arrest in one large room together) we of course are doing this creative driving right in front of a cop. Amazingly, he doesn't follow us or pull us over. We probably just looked like the stupid lost tourists we were. 

The night we got into town, we walked to Cafe duMonde a few blocks away. We split a bunch of beignies and just about died. To call them doughnuts would be profane. Sweet, chewy, flakey, fluffy, warm, and coated with powered sugar, so we all end up with these crazy white powder grins like we're coke fiends. 

We wandered around cemetery one, just north of the vieux carre, and all the elevated mausoleums. What does the XXX signify on the walls of the voodoo priestesses? 

Monday night red beans and rice for dinner one night, take out from the counter at the back of a vieux carre 24 hour corner convenience store. Cheapest meal I've had here, including breakfasts.

Jumbalaya Supreme at Coops, including crawfish, smoked ham, shimp, and sausage. Served with a cold local beer. Wow. Spicy. Delicious. 

We did do one night on Bourbon street. Fascinating street, I don't need to do it again anytime soon. A bit of Vegas on a small scale. I was reminded of the hedonistic town for the boys in the Disney movie Pinnochio. We went to a bar called "The Beach" where there was a rodeo whale ride behind the stage, a fat, annoying dude with a mic wandering around trying to boost booze sales, and $5 bottles of bud light. Bit of dancing. Didn't stay too long.

The hotel is cute, two floors, two courtyards. There's four of us to a room, sharing two queen sized canopy beds. Hotel Provincial. Great location, valet parking, a few blocks from Jackson square. 

Tonight I walked to canal street in the rain, and kept walking looking for a bus shelter from which I could catch the St.Charles st streetcar line. Until I realized that they were marked by small narrow signs on a few poles. The street cars are great. Old clanking bits of metal and wood. Reminds me of the street cars of Lapa in Rio. Wood seats, light bulbs. But so slow. I could probably walk faster than these cars. Oh well, just part of the way of life of the big easy. A massive woman in silver paint, a professional human statue, advised me where to get off to meet Ayumi and Tim, Saori's sister and brother-in-law, for dinner. They took me to eat some good Lebanese food, and then were kind enough to drive me back to my hotel. 

First day, we stopped by a po'boy restaurant. Good stuff. Expensive. Tell me, why does a Poor Boy cost $9? Is it because that's what you are after you buy them. The fried shrimp were dancing out of that po'boy though.

Lectures and discussions by a parade of notable luminaries where the fields of architecture, urbanism, politics, sociology, economics, geological/hydrological history, landscape, and drainage intersect. Where it is crucial to distinguish the difference between hydrology and hydrography. More than a few have offered to buy our acrylic model of the topography of the city of New Orleans. We'd be idiots to sell it.

Pumps. Lots of pumps. Tours of the pumps that keep the city of New Orleans from drowning in rainwater, groundwater, and storm surges. Pumps that are mysterious and silent, pumps that can cripple the city if they fail. 

At New Orleans University, we were threatened with arrest if we didn't climb down from the floodwall by the old lighthouse.