I almost moved to New Orleans when I was nineteen.
I was working at The John Thomas Steakhouse (which was sadly claimed by COVID), and I decided that I was going to get out of my hometown come hell or high water. Moving to The Big Easy to learn Cajun cooking sounded like just the ticket.
The staff lovingly called our restaurant "The Big Dick on the Hill" and if you don't get why, this little video will fill you in.
(oooh thank you very much)
The head chef and I were roommates at the time and we decided to move to NOLA together - sight unseen. It's silly, but if I'm being honest I am pretty sure we got the idea from the groundbreaking (at the time) computer game we were playing - Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father.
(such incredible graphics!!)
When we broke the news to our boss that we were leaving, I learned a valuable life lesson. One of the best ways to get a raise is to become indispensable then threaten to quit. We didn't leave for another couple of years.
I finally visited New Orleans was in 2000, two years after moving to Los Angeles. My beater car had died so my aunt and uncle let me have their old one. Since I was driving the car across the country in January, I took the southern route. Stopping in New Orleans added hours to my drive, but I had to finally visit after all those years. I had one drunken night on Bourbon Street before moving on in the morning. I was on a schedule.
(Bourbon Street)
The second time I went to New Orleans was with a film shoot in late 2004. When I got the opportunity to go on location for the first time, I jumped at it. It was one of the things I'd dreamed of doing since I started working in Hollywood.
The project was a kids movie starring Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, and Elizabeth Shue called Dreamer. We were taking advantage of the Louisiana's film tax credits and doubling Louisiana for Kentucky.
(the best film he's ever been in LOL)
Most of the time we were based in Mandeville, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, and shooting on a farm in Covington. But we did shoot a couple of days at a horse track in Metarie, and spent some downtime in the French Quarter. I was aghast when, just 10 months later, I watched the news as those same neighborhoods were covered in water by Hurricane Katrina.
(tragic)
The third time I went to New Orleans was in 2015 for my bachelor party. My incredible friends and brother planned the trip and kept the destination a secret until the last minute. We watched live music, drove around the bayou on an airboat, and partied our asses off. Every meal was an event. It was the best bachelor party that ever was, period. Change my mind.
(late night chicken and rice on a curb on Frenchman St)
But I wasn't going to New Orleans, at least not right away. My first stop was one hour west of there.
HOUMA
I chose Houma (pronounced like Roma) because that’s where Emma the bartender in Fayetteville grew up and she recommended it. It is a small town down on the Bayou that's a center for fishing, primarily shrimp and crawfish.
(bustling downtown Houma)
The drive to Houma was uneventful. I made it to Shreveport the first night, catching the corner of Texas on my way through Texarkana. I walked to the Harrah’s, quickly lost $100 at blackjack, ate a po’boy at a local restaurant, and called it a night.
On the way out of town I stopped at the Cafe USA, which was a patriotic fever dream of red white & blue nicknacks and signs with quotes like “In God we trust, all others pay cash”. It was a little overwhelming, but they made a mean breakfast.
(same)
On the wall was a poster featuring the Statue of Liberty with a quote from Yakov Smirnoff. This seems like a bizarre combination to me. Why would you put a patriotic image with a quote from a Ukranian comedian whose jokes included things like
"I only make fun of Cleveland because all Americans do. Every country has one city that everybody makes fun of. For example, in Russia we used to make fun of Cleveland."
But, as it turns out, Yakov Smirnoff became strongly patriotic after getting his US citizenship. He put his energy into painting later in life after his one-trick comedy career dwindled. After 9-11 he channeled his shock and hurt into this painting called “America’s Heart”. He even spent his own money to put it up as a mural at Ground Zero. What a country!
(In Russia, joke tells you!)
Back on the road, I spotted a small alligator roadkill. It occurred to me that you can tell what part of the country you’re in by what animals you see dead on the side of the road. A couple hours later, in the southern part of the state I saw a full-size gator carcass. I tried to imagine the damage one of them would do to a regular size car if you hit it. The final stretch was two hours along the 90 from Lafayette (Dreamer also shot at the horse track there) which undulated hypnotically.
I arrived in Houma in the afternoon. Just two months after trudging through feet of snow at Crater Lake, I found myself in the soupy swamp air of Louisiana. I drove around town to get my bearings.
(downtown's outdoor sitting area)
Since I was only there for a few nights, I grabbed a hotel instead of an Airbnb. It turned out to be on highway 3040. There was no sidewalk, just a wide shoulder. It clearly wasn’t designed with pedestrians in mind, but I suppose that's understandable given how few people must walk around in the oppressive heat they get much of the year.
(downtown park)
Since the area is known for its fresh seafood - particularly shrimp and crawfish - I looked for the best boil I could find. I settled on a little hole in the wall called Bayou Cane Seafood Market that had fantastic reviews from locals.
(one of the Houma canals)
Bayou Cane's basic signage confused me so I accidentally pulled into the parking area for the aptly named bar next door, Just One More. As I looked for a place to lock my bike, a guy who introduced himself as "Bruce - like Bruce Wayne" stumbled out and proceeded to tell me - unsolicited - that he was driving his girlfriend Maggie home because she was too drunk.
He was clearly correct about Maggie's state, but Bruce smelled like a distillery himself, which made me wonder how drunk you would have to be for him to decide you're drunk. Besides, how is this guy about to get behind the wheel of a car?
Bruce informed me that after he dropped her off at home, he was planning to return and would love to buy me a drink. I declined as gently as I could and walked my bike to the seafood place next door.
(thank you Google Street View)
I ordered the shrimp and crawfish boil with cajun seasoning and a red cream soda - when in Rome. I got a massive pile of food, but crawfish can be deceiving. They are big, but there isn’t a lot of meat on them. I sat there for an hour writing while I polished off every shrimp, crawfish, sausage, potato, and corn. This was my first time eating fresh shrimp and it was revelatory. They were so sweet and tender I couldn’t believe it.
(nom nom nom)
I biked back to the hotel with a bulging belly, puffing in the heat. After a short rest, I set out on a quest for dessert. There was a cookie shop across the highway and down a ways so I walked. Rather than take the long way around on the hotel driveway, I made for the street on the direct path - right through a shallow grassy ditch.
(my tracks of embarrassment)
As I took my first steps into the ditch, I realized my mistake. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that ditches in swampy areas - no matter how much grass is growing in them or how well that grass is groomed - have a decent chance of being wet. My foot sank up to the ankle, but my momentum carried me forward. If I didn’t want to face plant in the mud, I had to finish crossing. By the time I emerged on the other side I was a soggy mess.
(oh fer tha love)
Dreams of cookies forgotten, I changed my shoes and pants in the parking lot and went to the front desk. The aptly named Serenity didn’t bat an eye. She took me to a cleaning closet with a tap and shallow sink on the floor for filling mop buckets. Once the majority of the mud had been rinsed away she changed my $5 into quarters and pointed me to the guest laundry.
An hour later the dryer ate my quarters, so Serenity ended up drying my clothes in the hotel laundry facility. While I waited I went looking for the hotel pool I’d seen signs for. I discovered the pool had unceremoniously been filled with concrete and made into a sitting area. They didn’t even bother removing the pool signs. The whole evening had turned into a wild debacle, but at least I'd had a few good laughs at my own expense.
(no diving)
The next morning I ventured downtown to find coffee. Right next to the park and outdoor sitting area, I found “Downtown Jeaux” - a name that only made sense to me once I said it aloud.
(recess)
I walked around the streets, which were bizarrely deserted. I wandered by a school where kids played on the concrete outside a church and discovered a sewer drain you could only find in Louisiana.
(We all zydeco down here)
That evening I went to Boudreau and Thibodeau’s Cajun Cooking Seafood Restaurant for dinner. The building had caught my attention on my first drive into town. The outside had a colorful mural and the inside was kitschy and plastered with jokes.
(how could you not want to eat there?)
Boudreau and Thibodeau (you pronounce the "Th" as "T"), I discovered, are something like a Cajun Laurel and Hardy with a litany of jokes usually highlighting their stupidity and redneckedness. Gems like this:
Boudreau and Thibodeau decided to go to the casino. Once there, they thought it would be best to split up.
Boudreau said, “I’m gonna play right here, an’ you go ova dere on da udda end of da casino an’ play.”
After playing for awhile and losing all of his money, Thibodeau thought he’d go and see if Boudreau was having any luck. What he found was Boudreau laughing and having a blast.
“What’s da matta witchu, Thibodeau?” asked Boudreau. “Ya look so sad!”
“Sha Lawd. I los’ all my money, me,” said a disappointed Thibodeau.
“May, ya gotta find ya a hot machine like me,” said Boudreau. “Watch dis. Erry time I put me a dolla bill in dis slot machine dere, I win me four quarters!”
And another:
"Marie," Boudreaux whispered to his wife late one night, "if I died, would you get married again?"
"Mais, yeh, I guess," she replied.
"Would you sleep in de same bed with him?"
"Well, it's de only bed in de house, so I guess I'd have to."
"Would you make love to him?"
"Cher," Marie said patiently, "I guess, since he'd be my husband."
"Would you give him my pickum-up truck?"
"No, Boudreaux. I wouldn't never give him your pickum-up truck." she yawned, "Besides, he don't know how to drive a stick shift."
After dinner, the server asked me if I wanted dessert. She went through the list of options including something she called “p'cone pie". I asked her to repeat it twice before I realized she meant pecan pie, but the nut was unrecognizable with her accent.
I found a local chiropractor and fit in a couple sessions to work out the kinks in my back and shoulder that had resurfaced. I went to a restaurant called Spahr’s that Emma swore had the best seafood in the area. Turned out she could have been right. I had crawfish stew and fried catfish that were out of this world.
(the Bayou)
The last day I was there, my former partner called me to tell me that she and most of her department were victims of the latest layoffs her company had been doing. This news was a kick to the gut, though not nearly as much as it must have been for her.
Despite the fact that we were divorcing, I still cared about her and wanted to make sure she was okay until she secured another job. We decided to pause the divorce process to ensure that if it took her a while to find a new gig, she’d be able to get on my health insurance.
NEW ORLEANS
The next day I drove an hour east to New Orleans. “But wait”, you’re saying. New Orleans is the obvious place and you’ve been there before - that breaks your two rules. To which I respond: Houma is the official stop for Louisiana even though I was only there a few days. Plus - my trip, my rules. I’ll bend ‘em if I want.
I hadn’t planned to go this far south on my first pass across the country, but as I was mapping my route I realized that I would be near Louisiana when Jazz Fest was happening. Jazz Fest, or the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, is an event featuring local artists that has been going since 1970. It has evolved into a full blown music festival with huge acts spanning 8 days.
(what a lineup!)
I had wanted to go to Jazz Fest for decades. My grandmother acquired a 1977 Jazz Fest poster somewhere along the way which she handed down. It hung in my room growing up and I still have it. When I realized I could finally attend this year with only a slight detour, I didn’t hesitate.
(1977's commemorative poster)
Because of Jazz Fest, the city was pretty full, so I booked an Airbnb fifteen minutes from the French Quarter and the Fairgrounds. After getting settled, I took an Uber down to Bourbon Street. Traffic jammed up a few blocks away so I got out and walked the rest of the way.
(hitch & bubbles)
When I emerged onto Bourbon Street I was smacked in the face by its telltale smell - stale booze, vomit, and piss. The smell is so deeply ingrained from years of abuse, you’d have to knock down the buildings and tear up the street to ever get rid of it.
Thirty feet from me, an obliterated man in his 60s was being carried/dragged around the corner by his two sons and wife.
Looked like Bourbon Street hadn’t changed a bit.
(Touchdown Jesus, St. Louis Cathedral)
I grabbed a beer and walked the length of Bourbon taking in the sights and sounds. It was my first time back since my bachelor party, so I decided to retrace my steps from that epic weekend.
(Abita is the local brew of choice)
My brother had made me a giant hat out of coat hangers and aluminum foil in honor of the liberty spike mohawk I wore to my senior prom. My prom photo is in the basement in Portland, but I’ll find it and post it in the future - I promise. I wanted my hair to be chrome silver, so I finished it with spray paint and had to shave my head after. I walked at my graduation full cue ball (those photos are in the same album).
I wore my brother's unruly contraption along with a plastic crown and pink feather boa every time we went out. The first night, we ended up at Boot Scootin’ Rodeo, a country western bar on Bourbon Street that had a mechanical bull, which of course I rode with drunken aplomb.
This resulted in one of the Top 5 Best Photos of Matt of all time.
(I'm so happy!)
(bull's still there)
We ended the night (or so I am told) at Clover Grill, a small late night diner at the end of Bourbon.
(wow, just wow)
(diner's still serving)
The next night we were having drinks at the Hotel Monteleone, when we suddenly had to pay the bill and leave because we were “going to be late for our dinner reservation”. When I walked out the front door a big brass band started playing. Confused, I looked around and realized they were all facing me.
Then BWOOOP! a police siren went off, red and blue lights started flashing, and the band marched down the street. My friends, laughing their asses off, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me along.
(Hotel Monteleone, then and now)
We turned right on Canal Street, then right again, and marched the entire length of Bourbon Street. My brother broke out a bottle of booze from his backpack and passed out shots to the people watching us go by.
My friends surprised me with my own second line parade complete with police escort. I told you - it can't be topped.
(one wild weekend in 50 seconds)
After finding all the major landmarks from that trip eight years prior, I walked to Frenchman Street. Frenchman is a lot smaller and less chaotic than Bourbon, but still has a great party atmosphere. Live music poured from the doors of every bar - jazz, bluegrass, blues.
(every single place on Frenchman had live music)
Artists sold their pieces in an outdoor market. Sketchy kids sold nitrous balloons filled from a giant tank the dragged around, improv poets banged out verses on mechanical typewriters, and a melange of enticing food smells filled the air.
(poetry in analogue)
A brass band struck up on a street corner outside of a chicken joint and the crowd that formed took over the whole intersection. God, I love New Orleans. There is truly nowhere else like it in the world.
(I would hate to drive there)
JAZZ FEST
The next morning I had breakfast near Jackson Square then went hat shopping. I've always been a baseball cap kind of guy, but If I was going to be in the sun dancing all day at Jazz Fest, I wanted to shade my face and look stylish doing it.
(iconic Jackson Square)
(which one do you like best?)
Jazz Fest goes for 8 days stretched across two long weekends. The lineup on each day is different, and there are 15 stages, so there are over 500 acts. It’s held at the Fairgrounds, which sprawls across nearly one square mile. My point is that it’s massive and, no matter how you try, there is no way to see it all.
(Jazz Fest map)
I had tickets to attend two days on the first weekend since I needed to be in Louisville during the second weekend. I got to the venue and wandered around for a couple of hours. I spent a while in the Blues Tent, then a while in the Gospel Tent, then a while in the WWOZ Jazz Tent. I ate an alligator sausage, some crawfish mac & cheese, and chased it with a chantilly snowball.
(what do you think of the hat I chose?)
As I was making my way through a crowd of people I stopped and stared in awe as one of the Mardi Gras Indian (or Black Masking Indian) tribes marched past.
(Big Chief coming through)
I had first learned about this uniquely New Orleans tradition from the excellent and underappreciated HBO Show, Treme. There are around 40 tribes in New Orleans. They spend the whole year making ornate beaded and feathered costumes. On Mardi Gras, they emerge in the community and make their own parade route through the city, playing drums and chanting. When two tribes cross paths they have a theatrical impromptu "battle", strutting their costumes and dancing.
The roots of this tradition are murky, but they date back to the first interactions between the African slaves and the Native American population in the 18th century. The Mardi Gras Indian tradition is thought to have started as a way to honor the native people who helped many slaves escape.
(a fantastic 6-minute video that's worth a watch)
Late in the afternoon I made my way to the Festival Stage to watch Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway. I’d never heard of her until I started listening to musicians performing at Jazz Fest in preparation. She’s got a wonderful bluegrass sound and I loved her song Crooked Tree, which is a celebration of being an oddball that doesn't fit in. Toward the end of her set, she shared with the crowd that she has alopecia which made her a crooked tree growing up. She pulled off her wig and sang the song bald and proud.
(Crooked Tree)
After Molly Tuttle, I had a difficult choice. Chris Stapleton’s Tennessee Whiskey had been following me around the entire trip and I wanted to see him, but I decided to walk all the way to the opposite end of the Fairgrounds to catch Vampire Weekend on the Gentilly Stage.
(A-Punk)
My second day at Jazz Fest, I arrived later than I had planned and found the whole neighborhood around the Fairgrounds jammed with cars. Everyone who lived there was opportunistically charging for parking spots in their driveways or selling drinks on their lawns. I parked with an elderly woman named Linda who bent my ear for a while sharing stories about Hurricane Katrina. I was happy to put a few bucks into her pocket.
(statue in the Garden District)
Day two, the scene was much the same. I visited the tent that sold the official Jazz Fest merch. In 1975, Bud Brimberg, a graduate student at Tulane, had to develop a business idea for class. He came up with the idea for a commemorative poster for the local Jazz Festival, which was only 5 years old at the time, and made it a reality. There has been a limited edition commemorative poster made every year since. I didn't realize that my poster from 1977 was only the third design made.
(a selection of posters from over the years)
In 1981 Bud added an annual commemorative clothing print and the company BayouWear was born. Bud oversees the production of the posters and clothes to this day. I picked up a HowAhYa© shirt in 2022’s colorful pattern.
I got the chance to see Michael Franti and Spearhead play that afternoon. They play a blend of reggae and rock, full of happy lyrics. I spontaneously saw Michael Franti for the first time in Oregon just a couple of weeks before I left my marriage.
I was full of stress and anxiety, knowing that things weren’t working in the relationship and it needed to end. His energetic and interactive show turned out to be exactly what I needed - it was like mainlining positivity. That was my first glimmer that despite the trouble ahead, everything would be okay. It was a pleasure to see him again less than a year later when things were indeed going well.
(I Got You)
I wrapped up my time at Jazz Fest with a 1980's throwback - Heart. Ann and Nancy Wilson are now in their 70s, but they’ve still got it.
(Barracuda)
LAST DAY
My last day in New Orleans I wandered around eating everything I could fit in my stomach including the most absurd stuffed french toast I’ve ever seen at TOAST, another crawfish boil, and a muffuletta from Verti Marte.
(I mean, come on!)
That evening, I went to a drive-through daiquiri shop (yes, they are actually a thing) then parked at Lake Pontchartrain and walked along its shore at sunset. A few lonely people and large birds fished its dark waters. Formosan termites swarmed around the street lights.
(hoping for a catfish)
I absorbed the glow of the warm night, reflecting on my time in New Orleans. I’ve had the opportunity to visit this wonderful place in four phases of my life. I’ve been a very different man each time, but I have always enjoyed myself. I found myself wondering if I should try staying in New Orleans for an extended stretch at some point.
I decided that it was a distinct possibility, but a question to consider down the road. I still had 40 states to go, starting with my long drive to Kentucky the next morning where my second big event awaited me.
Yes, and…
Matt
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