Decatur Street, New Orleans, Halloween, 2012
I knew a queen of toil with a crown of silver hair.
Garland of valour and sorrow, of beauty and renown…
—-Robert Louis Stevenson
Yeah, I know the Stevenson poem is about age… and the woman in the photo isn’t old. I still like the crown of silver hair… even if the queen of toil is stumbling through the French Quarter desperately clutching a to-go cup half-filled with some vile alcoholic fruit punch.
Nice boots.
Banjo Player on Royal Street in the French Quarter, New Orleans
(Click for a larger and more detailed image on Flickr)
I only had a dollar left
and I gave it to the
Beautiful Girl
Playing the Banjo
on Royal and singing a simple sweet country tune.
My little dollar joined the sparse cluster of crumpled green in her banjo case on the sidewalk
– I saw there was a kazoo in there too
What else is there to spend your last dollar on?
Except for bus fare home. So it looks like a long walk on some sore and tired feet.
I wanted to take her picture and I didn’t want to do that without leaving at least a dollar.
I would have left more, but, like I said, that was my last. I wonder if it would mean anything to her – the banjo playing girl – if she knew it was my last dollar?
In the St. Louis Cemetery #1 there is a vault that was donated and is dedicated to the musicians of New Orleans that can’t afford to pay for their own burial.
Banjo Player on Royal Street, French Quarter, New Orleans
(Click for a larger and more detailed version on Flickr)
Writing in my Moleskine Journal outside the Mojo Lounge, Decatur Street, French Quarter, New Orleans
(Click for a larger and more detailed version on Flickr)
Plaque on the Musician’s Tomb, Saint Louis Cemetery #1, New Orleans.
I love Mardi Gras in New Orleans but we simply couldn’t afford to go this year. When I’m at a parade, I suffer from “bead frenzy” – where I want to grab those throws, no matter how many tons of cheap plastic beads I have stashed away in the back of a closet. It gets crazy… but that’s the idea. I love grabbing beads, and especially Doubloons… but there is one Mardi Gras throw that I have never caught and always wanted. I wanted a Zulu Coconut.
The Krewe of Zulu – full name Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club – has a long and storied history, intimately intertwined with the racial politics and culture of New Orleans. The legend is that Zulu started out as a satire on and parody of the upper-crust white celebration of Mardi Gras. After its beginings in the first decade of the 20th century, Zulu became the largest primarily African-American parade in New Orleans’ colorful panoply of Mardi Gras Krewes.
Zulu had its struggles over the years. The civil rights movement in the 1960’s threatened the Krewe, but it was able to survive and reformed its image somewhat. Katrina was a terrible shock, both financially and spiritually, but the Krewe fought its way back. Now, the climax of Carnival in New Orleans is on Tuesday, Mardi Gras itself, with the two (arguably) most famous Krewes taking to the streets, The Krewe of Rex, and The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club.
Through all the changes and decades though, Zulu was famous for one thing especially. The most desirous of all Carnival throws – the Zulu Coconut.
In the early days, long before cheap chains of Chinese-made beads, the parades threw expensive glass necklaces. The folks of Zulu could not afford these and decided to purchase inexpensive coconuts and hand them out instead. Over the years these involved into hand-painted and prized souvenirs.
There is an inherent problem, however, with throwing something as hard and heavy as a coconut from an elevated parade float into the middle of a frenzied crowd. A lot of people were getting hurt. In 1987, Zulu was unable to get any insurance coverage and there was a halt to the throwing of coconuts. The legislature had to step in.
Anywhere else in the country, the government would ban the throwing of coconuts. Louisiana is not anywhere else, however. In 1988, Governor Edwin W. Edwards signed Louisiana State Bill #SB188, the “Coconut Bill”, into law removing liability from injuries resulting from a coconut – enabling the tradition to resume. Instead of banning the coconut, they banned the lawsuits.
They did stop throwing – the coconuts are now, more or less, handed out. Also, they started using imported carefully hollowed out ‘nuts that are a lot lighter (though more fragile). They still are all hand-painted by the Krewe members. There are still lawsuits, but the tradition continues. According to most counts, about one hundred thousand coconuts are handed out on Mardi Gras during the Zulu parade.
Still, they are hard to get. I know people that have been going to Carnival in New Orleans their entire life and never had one on their paws. Most folks I talked to said you had to know someone in Zulu and make an appointment to meet them along the route to get a coconut.
I wanted one… wanted it bad.
I was talking about this to my son Lee, who lives in New Orleans and goes to school at Tulane.
“Oh, yeah dad, I get Zulu coconuts every year, it’s no big deal.”
“You’re kidding me Lee. What do you do with them?”
“Oh, I mostly give them to girls. Do you want one?”
“Yes I want one. I really want one.”
“I’ll get you one next Mardi Gras.”
He went on to tell me his secret method of getting Zulu coconuts, which I will not share here. It is ingenious, simple, and foolproof … and something I don’t want to make public.
So, this year, on Tuesday afternoon, while I was staring at a computer screen at work, a text came in to my phone from Lee.
“Got 2 Coconuts 4 U”
He did drop one later (though I suspect he might have given it to a girl) – and he forgot to bring the other one to Lafayette when we drove there for his Rugby Game – but the other day he came home for a surprise weekend visit and brought me my coconut.
My Zulu coconut. There is a sort of a face on the top - but it is where the broken bit is.
It’s not a thing of beauty – simply a coconut spray painted a bilious gold, with some glitter paint pen decorations and two cheap googly eyes glued on. Lee dropped this one too – I glued a piece back on but it still has one busted hole under one eye.
I love it, though. I need to build a little shelf to display it properly… maybe next to my little monster heads in boxes.
I have always wanted a Zulu coconut.
My son Lee, at the Zulu parade, with a new friend.
The grandest ride in America was the St. Charles streetcar. You could catch the old green-painted, lumbering iron car under the colonade in front of the Pearl and for pocket change travel on the neutral ground down arguably the most beautiful street in the western world. The canopy of live oaks over the neutral ground created a green-gold tunnel as far as the eye could see. On the corners, black men sold ice cream and sno’balls from carts with parasols on them, and in the winter the pink and maroon neon on the Katz & Besthoff drugstores glowed like electrified smoke inside the fog.
—– from The Tin Roof Blowdown By James Lee Burke
The St. Charles streecar in New Orleans is one of my favorite things in the whole world. If you have never ridden it, put it on your bucket list. Now.
The best time to ride the streetcar is at sunset on a hot late summer evening. The windows open and the breeze from the motion sweeps the sweltering afternoon away as the purple sky darkens beyond the southern mansions and ancient oaks. You sit on the wooden seats jostling as the machine tumbles down the neutral ground. The lights flicker mysteriously and each new section of track is greeted with a flash of lightning, a clacking cacophony, and a whiff of ozone from under the wheels.
The streetcar becomes a time machine… no… not that… it is a timeless machine. The streetcar is exactly as it was ages ago, the floods, Katrina, countless Krewes from countless parades gone except for the risible plastic beads hanging from the trees, the mansions, the music, the food… all are distilled into a parallel pair of rails and high voltage overhead that lumber from the edge of the French Quarter way out past Tulane and Audubon park.
The streetcar is not only a tourist attraction – you share your ride with office drones from downtown banks, lawyers from big firms, and dishwashers nodding off after a long day – the heartbeat of a city brought cheek-to-jowl together. It isn’t very fast – waiting for riders making change at the old-fashioned boxes, drivers bracing themselves to swing heavy levers, stopping at lights while the cross traffic fights out of the way. You can almost walk this fast. But you get there and the getting is everything.
When we are in town we usually stay in a bed and breakfast on St. Charles not far from Tulane and when I wake up in the morning I always like to lay in bed and listen for the streetcars. When you ride them they are all jangling and jump but somehow, from outside, they are smoother, slick steel wheels and sliding commutator sparking along. A bell at the intersections if the cars don’t move fast enough.
Like all of New Orleans, it’s hard to figure out why there aren’t more fatalities along the route, with the traffic, walkers, runners all thrown together with few signs and fewer rules. But they get along, somehow. They always do.
Inside the St. Charles Streetcar
One of my favorite spots is this unassuming little coffee shop at St. Charles and St. Andrews. I like to sit out front, sip my coffee, and watch the streetcars go by.
When you visit New Orleans for the first time, you can’t help but notice the cemeteries. Because the city is built on a swamp below sea level, you can’t bury anything underground. The cemeteries consist of cities of elaborate above ground crypts and mausoleums instead of grids of tombstones.
Right in the middle of the Garden District, one block off the St. Charles streetcar line is Lafayette Cemetery #1. It was established in 1833, when that part of the city was called Lafayette. I had wanted to take a tour of the cemetery but I wasn’t able to get away until Sunday – and the cemetery was closed on Sunday.
Something to do on my the next trip.
The Lafayette Cemetery #1 was closed, but I still could take pictures from the gate.
Across the street from the cemetery is Commander’s Palace, one of New Orleans’ best and most famous restaurants.
Ferns grow from the ancient wall around the cemetery across the street from Commander’s Palace.
The crypts are elaborate and showing their age. You can see how the legends of ghosts and supernatural come from places like this.
The elaborate vegetation-covered tombs stick up over the wall surrounding the cemetery.
In art – in the life worth living – there is always a struggle between beauty and functionality. I love finding examples that combine the two.
In the Lower Garden District – St. Andrews and Chestnut – Someone is using a beautiful old wrought iron balcony to store a couple of kayaks. I’m not sure why, but I really like that.
It was Sunday and the Saints were playing downtown. The Saint Charles Streetcar was crowded.
Saint Charles Streetcar, beads still in the trees.
Getting off the Saint Charles Streetcar in the Garden District.
(Click To Enlarge)
Everywhere else, the space between the two lanes of traffic on a divided road is called the median. In New Orleans it is called the Neutral Ground. The legend is that it is called this because in the early days when the French lived in the Quarter and the Americans lived in what is now downtown and beyond they would meet in the wide median of Canal Street (named because there was going to be a canal built there – that is why the street and median is so wide – but it never was built) to resolve their differences.
Now, all medians in the city are referred to as the “neutral ground.” This is especially important during Mardi Gras, where a lot of people watch the parades from the neutral ground. If you are waiting for a certain person in a Krewe they will tell you if they are on the street side or neutral ground side.
Along Canal Street, Saint Charles (where this picture was taken) and Carrollton Avenue, the streetcars run in the neutral ground. I’ve got some pictures of the Saint Charles Streetcar (one of my favorite things in the world) that I’ll be putting up here. The Saint Charles neutral ground is a wonderful and popular place to go running in New Orleans.
It’s hard to take pictures in Jackson Square – the walls are all covered in Artworks for sale with signs asking for no photographs. You have to angle yourself so they don’t appear. I took these two photos at the same time I shot the photo shoot in Pirate Alley – I’d turn one way to get the guy playing the fiddle, then turn and take a picture of the photo shoot.
In the background, you can see a Lucky Dog hot dog vendor cart. These always remind me of Ignatius J. Reilly, who had a (fictitious) terrible time as a hot dog vendor in New Orleans.
(Click to Enlarge)
The kids at Tulane are so lucky (in many different ways) – and I’m not sure they realize it fully. Can you imagine going to college in that city? Being young and having that much history, music, and soul around you all the time would be an unbelievable experience.
All I had was bad disco.
After driving to New Orleans we were able to catch some of the homecoming festivities on campus. The Stooges Brass Band was set up on the Quad in back of the student center – though most of the kids seemed more interested in lining up for some free food.
The Stooges Brass Band
The Stooges Brass Band
The Stooges Brass Band
I really liked The Stooges and wanted to stick around for the next act, Big Sam’s Funky Nation, but Lee had to work. He has a very important job. He works the door at The Boot. He said he was scheduled to work happy hour. We asked how long that was and he said, “Six to Ten.”
Great Music, Great Food, a Great City, and a four hour long happy hour.
Lee working the door at The Boot. You can see his face on the right of the pipe sticking up.
It was a big Friday Evening Happy Hour Homecoming crowd at The Boot. Lee says it's always like that.
Bill Chance 