New Orleans Jazz Fest

Thursday - Early morning black, a bag a piece, obligatory coffees. In Seattle we meet up with A&S and together we're highway, shuttle, watching the bony, ring-adorned fingers of an older woman clack on a large acrylic painting of the virgin mary as her son, a western gothic, laughs demonically over a possible Revolution. It's fear & loathing in las vegas reincarnate in shuttle. Flight. The luxury of a rental car. Within minutes we're in Kenner, with frosty beers at the fish market. 2/$4; the cashier pops the caps, and in hand, outside, beneath the awning, we're waiting in line at Harbor Seafood. Inside, the accents are thick and the tables are cafeteria blue. Our first taste: boiled cajun potatoes, corn and crawfish by the pounds and a couple dozen oysters over a pitcher of Abita. Then to watch the draft picks at Cooter Brown's, where I was buried deep, not in the coming of men, but of etchings in wood, the graffiti of the drowsy.

A&S had found us an incredible uptown home off Morengo St. to rent for the week, off the east bank of the Mississippi, close enough to the French Quarter and the Jefferson Parish line. Car rides were always windows down, head out, hoping for pure memory. Our home: in back of mansion, grand mother-in-law with parlor, floor to ceiling windows, big open kitchen with cupboards in moss green, a 6-pack of Abita waiting chilled, a master with bath, laundry rm., Red & I's roost on the top floor, reached by wrought iron spiral staircase, a wall full of large windows and wooden shutters. Outside: a garden patio with breezy curtains, leafy fronds, and a wandering black lab.

Later that evening we went to Le Bon Temps Roule, where for $15 we saw The Soul Rebels. It was a throw-you-in kind of initiation, muggy, smoky, with too-tall patrons who possessed a sense of spacial-entitlement. Rats circled the feet of the smokers smoldering outside. We took a break to cool by walking to Igor's, where there's a laundromat, free condoms, a stripper pole, karaoke and a library. The bartender there poured well. We enjoyed her.

Friday morning - Red & I woke early and walked Magazine St., a thoroughfare that follows the curving course of the Mississippi; stopped for breakfast: cafe beignets with apple marmalade, smoked sausage, eggs and lattes. Our waitress was a button; drew pink faces on our to-go cups. We picked up some bottles of rosé, checked out a few thrift shops and walked home on uneven, uprooted paths. A is a local, born & raised, and if it weren't for him we wouldn't have experienced such sensations, such places, so well. Together, piled into the car, we sought sights in the garden district, the central business district, and into the french quarter. Taking in the rich moss, vines, greens, fronds, flowers, saturated jasmine, beads in every tree, on every lamppost, the sheer magnitude of the limbs of the trees, hot dog shaped weenie carts, washington artillery park, tripping up stairwells, street musicians, jackson square, St. Louis Cathedral, parrots, street performers, tap dancing. 

There's no amount of words to describe how I feel about the architecture: the doorways, fences, windows, balconies and porches. Down Preservation Hall to Pat O'Brien's, where the gents wear all white with green aprons and seem happy; where we savored hurricanes and frozen fruity bevs. Stopping in doorways to bars to dance, pot-mobiles selling wicked treats off Bourbon St., hungry for Galatoire's. Stopping in at Felix's for some of A's favorite oysters. Perusing the carousel bar within Hotel Monteleone, a bar "immortalized in the writing's of Ernest Hemingway," the Monteleone, a 64-room family-owned-and-operated hotel since 1886, the ceilings alone, orgasmic.

After that first light-saturated french quarter tromp, we drove through the 7th and 9th wards. Into Bywater at Mimi's in the Marigny for drinks, a neighborhood which hosts Crime Suppression personal vehicles or personal identities. Met up with A's parents in West Riverside at Frankie and Johnny's (orig. opened in '42 for dock workers & merchant men who worked the river): boiled shrimp, oysters, fried catfish cajun balls, pounds of craw and a sweating bottle of Pierre Olivier Blanc de Blanc bubbles. It was the first time I was called out on my craw-unsculpting, really trying to eliminate poop tracks, when it doesn't seem to be at all of a concern to the locals. We had aims to check out a few more bars/shows that evening, but we climbed those spiral stairs and crashed, leaving A&S to party till 4 am. 

Saturday - Jazz fest day 1. Magazine walk ritual, to Breauxmart for groceries: eggs, sausage, local cold brewed coffee, and back to our beautiful home to make breakfast for A&S to soak that 4 am liquor. 

Drove along the Bayou St. John. Walked through city park, one of the oldest urban parks in the country (1854), evident in the girth of the oak trees, with their ancient whimsy stems bending to the ground and wrapped in a sweater of subterranean sub-growths. Past many a taunting lemonade and cold beer salesman-child, past the elegant cabrini high school, through house-gaters circling kiddy pools of crawfish and finally, entering the fenced enclave of the 2016 Jazz Festival. Thousands and thousands, bare flesh, boots, mardi gras indians, $9 small cans of bubbles with straws, expensive cheap beer. 

We walked loops before settling on some bleachers to watch our first show: Big Freedia at Congo Square stage. Obsessed with Big Freedia. Big Freedia, Tank and the Bangas, booty everywhere. A New Orleans genre of hip hop known as "bounce music." Purple sequin flares, a tight white, ruffled button-up, big caramel-colored hair, and a fantastic face of makeup. Her dancers did not stop shaking their ass; thick, juicy, dimpled in real flesh, perfect cellulite in a groove, an exotic, hardly felt thrill  As is her custom, Freedia invited audience members to come twerk on stage, along with some of her nieces, and the whole while Red is eating fried chicken out of a ziplock. Freedia singing, "I just want to have a good time. I came to twerk, twerk, twerk, and work, work, work." Closing with "I would Die 4 U" and "Purple Rain" in tribute.

The clouds were a palate of ominous grays; rain fell. Ponchos, umbrellas, garbage bagged bodies. We perched in the gathering mud outside the lineup of food booths, picking & pulling at crawfish. Headed to the Blues tent for Jon Cleary & the Absolute Monster Gentlemen through lightening cracks and thunder cackles. A mix of wind and powerful rain edged bodies from the outside further into the tent, and then they cancelled jazz fest. Stevie wonder, beck, snoop, etc. cancelled. Rain gathered rivers, floating beer cans, motorized wheelchairs half-slogged; the water came up to our shins. We hurried to get more fest food, including one orgasmic cochon de lait po boy: slow roasted pig with white pepper gravy and cole slow.

With white wrinkled prune fingers A took us to his favorite place for beignets and cafe au laits, Morning Call, where each of us devoured self-powdered pockets of dough, warming. Picked up some shrimp po-boys wrapped in parchment for later. After hot showers and hot naps we rallied for the sold out show - Pimps of Joytime at Tipitina's. We missed Pimps but made the Motet, who was electric, soulful, funky, and who also paid tribute by playing D.M.S.R. Totally rallied after by waltzing the Marigny, looking at art & goods at the Frenchman St. art market, and having frozen irish coffees dusted in coffee grounds at Erin Rose.

Sunday - Red & I had plans to meet up with our friends, the beautiful red-headed Steph & her partner, Mustang for brunch at Two Sisters, which offers mimosas, omelets, eggs benedict, turtle soup, meats, grits & grillades, boiled shrimp & craw with Creole remoulade, ceviche, pates, cheeses, cornbread, homemade buttermilk biscuits, fresh fruit, pecan pie, bananas foster, bread pudding with whiskey sauce & king cake. The venue is gorgeous with black and white tiled floors, a beautiful outdoor patio with a tree so thick and spread that it acts as a ceiling between the diners and the sky, all white table cloth, well-dressed servers & a jazz trio playing softly as we dined. In finishing, another thunderstorm erupted, filling the streets with brown water and pulsing flashes.

Worried they'd cancel the last day, we headed to the fest with the goal of eating our way through all the booths. Grilled chicken livers with pepper jelly, okra, collard greens, cuban samiches, gator po-boy, cajun boudin, red beans and rice, jambalaya, shrimp monica dripping hot yellow cheese down our lips with curved necks bent beneath umbrellas, pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo. With pleasure, we ordered and ordered, as everyone sludged through deep mud and ponds of water, batting the smell of wet garbage and porto. Checked out the Punch Brothers at Fais Do Do. Bone chilled, we picked up some food to go and warmed ourselves once more with beignets & coffee. After, I laid in bed as the light fell with a glass of rosé to recoup. Dropped into Igors for bevs, then Trolley Stop for to-go roast beef & shrimp po-boys.

Monday - Took a drive through audubon park's allees of ancient oaks and lagoon & avenger park (the fly) off Tchouplitoulas, where A used to hit up chicks and eat samiches. The drive featured jasmine monsters tangled in a swarm on wires, poles and the faces of houses.

More of the french quarter for street music, big ass beers, fried seafood platters. Looked through men's underwear boutiques as a weathered man sang duet with his dog near the Cornstalk Hotel (1860), with its ornate cornstalk iron fence and whose insides carry relics of Louisiana sugar plantation home craftsmanship, stained glass, fireplaces, oriental rugs and canopy beds. A told us it was designed for a wife, lonesome; "supposed to quell the homesickness of the Colonel Short's wife, a native of Iowa, and far more accustomed to fields of corn than acres of marsh." Walked into the roomy dba for a surprise show of Washboard Chaz featuring The Dude. Back on Magazine St. to the dingy Half Moon bar; cigarette machines, sunken leather sofas, dim, termite swarms against the neon bar sign. The men got tattoos at Idle Hands in quick, passionate gusto - symbols of arms, of home. Dancing in the dark, in the car to Freedia, to Coops Place off Decatur for one of those meals you never forget: smoked duck quesadilla with jalapeno sour cream, fried crab claws,  and rabbit & sausage jambalaya embellished with shrimp, craw & tasso.

Tuesday - woke with a singular focus to eat at Willie Mae's in Treme. In what used to be a bar, a barbershop and a beauty salon (1957), Willie Mae's is a white house in the middle of pocked streets and the culture of porchstep musings and collar-less cats. Ms. Willie Mae Seaton was given the James Beard award for "America's Classic Restaurant for the Southern Region." We ended up with a party of people, sitting in a back room of the house, all of us ordering the fried chicken & sides of cornbread, butter beans and rice, macaroni & cheese, seasoned green beans with gravy & sweet tea. The skin of the chicken was thin & caramel-crystalled in fat and flavor. The white beans thick, buttery, easy to give in mouth's warm embrace.

I think we were thick to the neck in chicken-full, so we viewed what we wanted to from the car windows, stopped at Central Grocery (1906) for their pie-sized muffulettas to take home, drove along the lakeshore, packed up our beautiful garden district dwelling. A drove us through the neighborhood where he grew up, where he used to watch girl's mow the lawn, the house where the murderer lived, the community ball field. Then, a daiquiri at Daiquiris and Creams. A couple oysters to go. Stopped where we started, in Kenner at Harbor Seafood for that pre-flight seafood oil beneath the fingernails, a few more pounds of crawfish, corn, potatoes & a final pitcher of Abita in toast.