This Happened

Last night I combined Etta's preprandial walk with a stop at my friend Nadine's wonderful shop, which I often do, since the company is always entertaining and it's all of a block away. Tonight there was a book signing by Deb Shriver for her new book In the Spirit of New Orleans. After saying hi to Deb and getting a glass of wine, another neighbor, Mrs Grima* arrived.  She was heard before she was seen.

Finally, something that snorts louder than Etta.

Don't get too fresh, Lady!

Yes, Mrs Grima is a miniature pig, and very friendly, as the picture above shows.

* After the Hermann Grima House.

Happy All Saints Day!

Etta on the gallery yesterday afternoon. She spite-peed shortly after unburdening herself of this horrible mask. I shouldn't blame her, really.

Soup of the Day

Thursday comes but once a week.

A Streetcar Named Desire

While drinking my morning coffee, I got a call from a friend that another artifact in the urban palimpsest that is the French Quarter, a section of the original Desire Streetcar line, had been exposed during the shambolic repaving of streets in the French Quarter. While defunct sections of streetcar line are visible throughout the riverside portion of New Orleans (particularly on Felicity Street in the Lower Garden District), Desire had a special resonance, as it is associated with the height of the French Quarter's bohemian phase (a tradition I uphold though penury and bad housekeeping). Intrigued, I strolled down Royal to see a relic of Dixie Bohemia.

The Desire Streetcar Line was active from 1920 to 1948, when it was paved over and replaced with busses using the same overhead electrical lines. In the French Quarter it ran in opposite directions down Royal and Bourbon Street, turning at Canal Street at the same point as the St Charles Line (still running) before running to and from Desire Street in the Bywater (hence the name).

Streetcar lines in New Orleans in 1945 - Desire is B

The Desire Streetcar going down Bourbon St. (late 1940s)

The best exposed section

Reaching the location of the best section, ironically in front of the Historic New Orleans Collection, it was more evident by the cobblestone section in the middle of the street. I guess the track was left in place and rusted - the principal evidence was streaks of oxidation.

One can almost smell Dixie Bohemia looking down Royal

With a little imagination,  I could almost smell when the French Quarter was Dixie Bohemia, the Greenwich Village of the South (Or was that the snotty ponytailed art dealer's BO?).  Given the haphazard scheduling of repaving, this section could be exposed for a few weeks.

On the way home, I stopped at Faulkner House Books and bought this book. It's available from the usual online sources, but I'm sure the nice people at your local bookstore will happily order it for you.

Make Yourself At Home, Why Don't You?

Continuing the process of patination...

What's free?

Oh....

Now Reading..

The Pilgrim Hawk, Glenway Wescott

While visiting a wealthy friend in rural France, narrator Alwyn Tower is fascinated by a peregrine falcon during a surprise visit by a particularly self-involved couple. The falcon's wildness, hunger and frustration mirror the narrator's experiences in love and art.

Just finished (re)reading:
The Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Rereading it in anticipation of the Wachowski siblings' movie adaptation. Can't wait to see white Halle Berry (she's lovely in any complexion) and cannibal Hugh Grant.

Coming up on deck:

Waiting for Sunrise, William Boyd

(if it's in at Faulkner House this afternoon. Otherwise I'm rereading Flash For Freedom)

Graffiti

Graffiti is a fact of life in any urban area. While it can reach the level of art, as demonstrated by Banksy and Roa:

Sacred Crane by Roa on Hanbury St. (from Spitalfields Life)

Banksy in New Orleans, (from WebUrbanist)

Or display a level of verbal/visual wit as I have noted in earlier posts, much of it is more comparable to this:

Which is why I was so disgusted to find this on my front doorstep one recent Saturday night returning home from NOWFE:

not Banksy

One design issue with my building is its gracious vestibule open to the street, which can lead to vagrants camping out in inclement weather (I try to think of them as ornamental hermits), various musical performers, and random people having a smoke with their coffee from across the street. It recently gave shelter for about 30 seconds to the above tagger. 

This was done sometime before 11:00 pm on a Saturday night on a holiday weekend, on a very busy pedestrian street (police?). It was also done on marble and rare white granite (the quarry closed about 5 minutes after these steps were installed in 1858, and the dead stock used up shortly afterwards). In general I understand that graffiti can be a justifiable release, which is why many cities have places like the Banksy Tunnel in London. Unfortunately, the Grey Ghost, a local anti-graffiti vigilante (see image #2), managed to convince City leadership that every skate kid who saw Beat Street one too many times is evidence of a growing gang conspiracy. With no legitimate outlet, historic buildings get tagged. (I'm trying to put the kindest spin on things now: my immediate reaction was a desire for a more violent resolution.)

A quick test with soap and water just spread paint chips around, so I decided to call in the big guns. My post-Katrina job at FEMA left me with a good contact list for historic specialists, among them my friend Mark Soeth, a masonry conservator residing in upstate New York (Katrina drew deeply from national talent in the early part of the disaster). He promptly replied with a list of suggestions, particularly Prosoco products. As it was a holiday weekend, all stores were closed, as was the Vieux Carre Commission - all exterior work in the quarter must get VCC permits, leading to the famous assertion that  the VCC controls paint colors in the Quarter (while there IS a list of pre-approved colors, they'll approve any color if you ask nicely).

I contacted a staff member at the VCC, who explained that they had to get guidance from the National Park Service on the matter (the Vieux Carre is a National Historic Landmark District, so the NPS takes special interest). Unfortunately, their contact was on vacation/ extended conference duty. I was busy with work anyway, so I just checked in from time to time, finally getting an answer two weeks later (which closely followed my friend Mark's advice). At which point all local distributors of Prosoco told me it was a special order, with delivery in about a week or 10 days!

My landlords were losing patience, and various tenants had already tried hardware store paint remover with predictably poor results. Fortunately, my next door neighbor Mercedes had a suggestion:

And not only a suggestion, she had the material at hand, which she was happy to lend. It turns out that the French Quarter Business Alliance and VCPORA participated in an anti-graffiti clean sweep a year or so ago (I was out of town), and the above solution was VCC-approved - they just forgot about it (they're very understaffed and frantically busy). It has the same active ingredient (ascetic acid) as Mark's suggestions. After about a half-pint of this stuff applied with a nylon bristle brush and about 2 rolls of paper towels (and a wash down afterward with a borate solution to neutralize the pH), this was the result:

After paint removal, 150 years of filth is still intact!

On problem with graffiti is that removing it often just provides a fresh canvas (as the Grey Ghost discovered).  Fortunately, my doorstep is also the entrance for a beloved and busy local institution, Fifi Mahoney's, so general outrage was broadcast throughout the neighborhood, perhaps even to the perpetrator, who might be a patron of another nearby business not to be named. We shall see.

Last Nice Weekend for a While

I love the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the French Quarter. It's usually pretty quiet. There was a Saints game in town today, but the Who-Dats were relatively silent. Except for an idiot in LSU facepaint screaming that under my balcony Saturday morning while I was watering plants.

Everything is getting a little yellow and it's time to start trimming. The canna behind the metal chair blooms until the week before Thanksgiving, so I always give it some TLC before I cut it down to the dirt when I have to bring it in for winter.

The croton and amaryllis were inside on my writing table, but I thought I'd give them one last fling before spring. I finally found my paperwhite bulbs from last year, and they're soaking in the little bowl.

My neighbors' ferns are looking a little worse for wear. It's been a dry summer/fall and they've neglected to maintain their automatic sprinklers.

If there is a ray of sun outside, Etta is there, even if it's freezing (for a while, anyway). I'm home today working, getting the last of my balcony time before a front comes through tonight and finally brings winter. Until it warms up to 70 again in a couple of weeks...

WWOZ Birthday - correction

Oops! I thought it was a 2nd line for Coco Robichaux, but instead it was a birthday parade for WWOZ. Oh well.

That's right: TWO brass bands!

Yes, we do things different down here. RIP Coco.

The View from My Office

Lately I've been quite busy sending out resumes, responding to RFQs (requests for qualifications) and brushing up on my CAD skills. My current contract is winding down, but that's the nature of consulting. There are many opportunities out there, some in NOLA, some out in the Great Elsewhere. Until these materialize, I'll enjoy the view from my worktable in my bedroom.

Thanksgiving in Kentucky

With both parents in their 80s, I come home for ALL major holidays. My parents are both relatively healthy for their age, but things change quickly at that age (sometimes it's like a sad version of watching a toddler grow up) and I don't want to regret missing time with them. I love to come here in the summer, when everything is green and alive, but the holidays are bittersweet, with many quotes from the Book of Better Days.

After a busy morning helping cook Thanksgiving dinner, eating Thanksgiving dinner, and finally cleaning up the good silver and china we use for Thanksgiving dinner (no dishwasher for these), I decided to take a walk, and finding my camera in my jacket pocket, took the only non-New Orleans photos on this blog. We've owned the farm since the turn of the last century, and various branches of my family have lived in the general area since Kentucky was part of Virginia.

This is the house we always refer to as my grandmother's house (I grew up in a comfortable 1960 bastard-colonial ranch across the road, where I'm writing this post), although my great grandfather bought the place. The original part of the house (on the right hand side) was a hall and parlor house built in 1835 that may have replaced an earlier house on the site. The house grew over the years until it arrived at its current configuration shortly before my family bought it.

My grandmother grew up here and later presided over a farm, children and numerous grandchildren. My father was born here, a late 7th month baby whose doctor didn't bother to weigh him; his 82nd birthday is in a couple of weeks. Alas, the only people who seem to be interested in the house (like me) live elsewhere, so the house has fallen into a sad decline - my grandmother died in 1986 and not much work had been done to the house for many years before that.

Behind the house are a series of fields and pastures. The dairy barn is now used to board horses, but there are several tobacco barns like this that are still in use, even after the end of tobacco price supports. In the summer this field was planted with soybeans and looked like a rich green tapestry when I visited in early July. It will soon be planted with winter wheat, and when I visit my family after Mardi Gras we'll see the acid green shoots coming out of the dark earth.

If the weather holds, I'll take more pictures of my lovely hometown as the weekend progresses.

Etta

We're both getting a little grey...

All the Images, None of the Text

Some of the links....

Introducing The Quarter Rat on tumblr. Maybe I'll post a little more often.

I'm Back!

Actually, I was here all along.

My first long silence was the result of simple lassitude. This time, it seemed like the universe conspired to quiet my voice.

No, I wasn't in jail.

Shortly before my last post - in September '09 - my elderly Mac finally died, leaving me with only an iPod Touch for recreational internet. While I'm quite sure that there are people who can manage to post on Blogger using such devices - today at lunch (Satsuma Cafe in the Bywater) my friend Donovan informed me that Kar Wai Wong is shooting a movie with an iPhone - such ingenuity was beyond my ken. Then shortly after my last post, which was done on a work computer during lunch, every computer on our network was infected with vicious spyware (less from my intermittent blog posts than from everyone's addiction to Facebook and YouTube), ending all recreational internet at work. For a while, anyway.

Then I changed jobs. More money (a little), more stress (a lot), and an even tighter firewall, so no blogging and not much internet. I filled the gap with the printed word and my reading pace got back to grad school levels.

And my office is now at the lakefront. Where my old commute was 6 blocks, my new commute is 6 miles, so a car was in order (more on that later). This and other random expenses (and extravagances) compounded to keep me away from the Apple Store. Until now.

I also went through a period where I suspect that I wasn't very much fun. Stress at work was a major factor, as was an illness in the family (which showed me how trivial my other problems really were). Since I didn't have much to share beyond predictions of impending disaster, I kept my counsel. Fortunately both situations are currently in abeyance and I've returned to my usual sunny disposition. And I have observations to share.

But not tonight. My drink is empty, and it's time to go to bed.

Current Reading

The Edwardians, Vita Sackville-West
A slightly fictionalized account of life at Knole (Chevron in the novel) at the height of the Edwardian period. Probably her best novel.

My Other Life, Paul Theroux

A work of fiction with the attributes of an autobiography - the main character is named Paul Theroux and has written books with the same titles (My Secret History, The Mosquito Coast, etc). In this book he has such experiences as giving poetry lessons to an arms dealer in Singapore, fending off advances from wealthy literary groupies, hosting a dinner with a drunken Anthony Burgess and a ridiculous bibiomane, being interviewed by someone who appeared in The Great Railway Bazaar (and was unhappy with her portrayal), and receiving life-advice from QE II, which leads to him writing The Happy Isles of Oceana.

Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters, John Richardson

Scurrilous gossip about the great, the good, and their pilot fish. Intensely entertaining. With phrases like " a libido like an electric eel" (describing Dali's horrendous wife Gala), he approaches Vidalian levels of wit and erudition, especially when he writes about artists and their hangers-on. His descriptions of Armand Hammer and Dr. Barnes ("The Beastly Dr. Barnes") are priceless, and his portrayal of Andy Warhol's secret (he was intensely religious) is very touching. There's also a very good essay about poor Mario Praz.

The City of Florence, Historical Vistas and Personal Sightings, R.W.B.Lewis
I'm about halfway into this one. I don't know why I bought it - I've had a distaste for Florence ever since the Great Gelato Incident of 1998. Perhaps it's time to forgive and forget.

Katrinaversary

"Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio."
Lafcadio Hearn, 1879

Fortunately, I have managed to avoid the sackcloth and ashes. So far.

Friday on the Gallery

In the Quarter, balconies and galleries are prime social spaces - generally breezy in the summer and great for people-watching. If one is lucky enough to have one, one spends less time in bars because one's apartment becomes a destination. This has been the case for much of August, which has been surprisingly (OK, comparatively) mild, despite the 99% humidity. So on Friday, my friends Jennifer and Scott, who were celebrating their impending adoption of a rescue frenchie, randomly showed up, as they will do (in all fairness, I drank much of the contents of their wine fridge a couple of weekends ago). I was actually next door drinking grappa on my neighbor Mike's gallery (note to self: grappa gives a vicious hangover, especially when consumed with more than one bottle of red wine) when they hollered up from the street (as people will do), but soon enough, things moved over to my spot.

Scott watching the parade below.

Bugsy wants to know what all of this noise is about. No, we weren't playing French Quarter Lifeguard (Out of the pool!), because I couldn't find my whistle. Etta stayed inside, sniffing the contents of Jennifer's bag.

The humidity (around 99%) made the lights twinkle more than usual. Or maybe it was the booze.

This is what it felt like while cleaning up.

A Pack of Two

Seven years ago today, my closest, most reliable friend entered my life. We made it through The Poor Years, Katrina, and even FEMA.

Deciding the best plan of escape from the breeder, with Etta

A few months before I babysat my friends' pug, Bugsy, for a week and was inconsolable when I had to give him back. Accepting responsibility for my new-found need for a pug, my friends Jennifer and Scott drove me to a breeder on the North Shore (of Lake Pontchartrain). I was going to pick out one of the show-quality boys, but Etta had the most personality - she was in time out for fighting with her littermates. She also was half the size of her brothers and had a corneal abrasion. When I suggested that maybe she needed a couple of weeks still, the breeder - one of the strangest people I've ever met (remember, I live in the French Quarter) - told me to pick out one of the boys, as he had no problem selling female puppies. I finished the sentence mentally: "to a puppy mill." The picture above looks like it was taken just after that exchange (Etta is the dark spot behind my hands). Shortly afterward I paid this strange man and fled with the scrawny, purebred rescue puppy. The rest is French Quarter legend.

A couple of hours later back home

Yes, the tongue was out even then

A week later she met her Uncle Bugsy.

It's been a rocky relationship ever since.

Parents always hope their children make smart choices.

I watch her a little more closely at the park these days.

Last year, just before the Gustavacation.

A couple of months ago hunting on the gallery.

I think that this occasion calls for a Ramos Gin Fizz at DBA (where she is always welcome), followed by some food somewhere outside to enjoy the unseasonably cool weather. Yes, I usually share...