Old Stories Part Three - Meanwhile, back at Bourbon Street

Here is part two of my New Orleans trip dairy. Funny thing is that when people originally read these stories the assumed I was miserable and had a lousy time. The convention we attended was miserable to be sure, but I actually had a really fun time in NOLA (note that I call it NOLA, as my three days there now gives me the cred to call it that).

Friday May 27 1999 - New Orleans Hilton.

Morning comes fast when you've been up most of the night. We actually got in reasonably early, but the fact that we had gotten up at five in the morning the day before turned the entire day into a marathon. All I can say is that the hair of the dog has never tasted this bitter. I felt poorly coming into this town and I had no business drinking anything last night. Travis and Bob aren't doing much better than I, we seem to have mutually infected each other with a combination of cold/flu/poor judgment. In search for the groups enabler the verdict comes in that we're all guilty. On top of the cold/flu I came here with, it seems like I now have a slight case of alchohol poisoning or at least the nausea that I would associate with it.

I'm looking out the window and I can see the air. The humidity here is the kind of thing legends are made of. You sweat while you take a shower. I'm wilting and I haven't even gone outdoors yet. It seems that the only livable time of day is the evening, and even then the air is stifling.

In going down to the convention hall I learned what should be lesson one in the art of naming a business; consider regional takes on your chosen name. It seems that people in the south aren't amused by the name Slave Labor Graphics. I've gotten more than one disapproving look in the half hour I spent down in the hall this morning. Of course the security guard standing in front of my table was African/American. “Slave Labor huh?” he said, looking at me as I plopped my stuff down on the table. I decided to not respond, which might have been the best thing. Most of the service sector of the economy in NOLA is staffed by African/Americans. A lot of the bosses seem to be fat white guys with a plantation owner's mentality. I don't anticipate too much trouble while we're hear, but I'm going to go with SLG Publishing for the duration of the show just to be safe.

The show has started and things are going very badly for our team. While most of the people I know look at my travel schedule and say “Its so cool that you get to travel to all of these places.” What they fail to take into consideration is the tedium and mind-numbing boredom of having to work a booth at a trade show or convention for nine hours a day. This tedium is doubly bad when the show you're at is a dud... like this one is turning into. If there were a hundred people here today it would be a generous estimate. This is turning into one of the worst convention disasters since we exhibited at a Star Trek convention in Fresno. At least at that show, the promoter gave us our booth space for free and kicked in with some free food (of course I had to sit through a full scale Klingon/Federation friendship ceremony, but that's a story for another time.) Here, well, we're into it for a good pile of cash. In the end this thing is going to cost me over $2,000 to attend and we didn't even break a hundred dollars the first day of the show. Its raining like crazy outside, which might be keeping attendance down, and it is a Friday, so I'm holding out hope that the weekend will be better.

Even good shows take a toll on your brain, though, which is probably why we end up drinking so much and partying so hard in the evening. Going to San Diego and Chicago and Washington and New Orleans looks good on paper, but since most of our day is spent in a hotel or convention hall, we get to enjoy very little of what those cities have to offer. Right now I'm in a convention center three blocks from the French Quarter, but I won't be able to get out of here until after 7:00 PM. Most of the retail shops will have closed by then, which leaves us with just the bars and restaurants to hang out in.

After the debacle that was Thursday night at Pat O’s, we all decided that drinking heavily wasn't going to be in the cards tonight. Still, we were here and we had to do something, so we ventured back into the French Quarter in search of food. The cab dropped us near Jackson Square and we wandered around some of those streets and alleys for awhile. We crossed through one street and were bombarded by bats feasting on low-flying insects. Given New Orleans legendary vampire population, I had to wonder if we weren't being sized up as someone's dinner for later in the night.

One place I was sure we were being sized up was at the Cafe Pontalba. This was a nice looking place that served some good food in good portions. Its major claim to fame was that it was located in the oldest apartment building in the United States. The help, though, was something else. Our waiter couldn't have given a damn that we were in his section, eventually we got served by a waitress from a different section. The attention we got from the busboy was unwelcome and unwanted. This busboy kept asking where we were from. He kept checking out Travis’ tattoos and asking him if he was into heavy metal. The he turned his attention to me and asked me if I went to college. I was wearing one of my wife's patented homemade fish shirts, which as anyone who has seen can tell you attracts attention everywhere I go. I was also wearing the lesser of my watches (a steel Rolex) and this caught his attention. Very unsubtly the bus boy stared right at it to see what kind of watch it was, then he disappeared into the kitchen. Right then and there we knew we were being sized up as potential targets. If Travis weren't such a man-mountain, I'm sure we would have been rolled within minutes of leaving the restaurant.

I got sized up again walking down Bourbon street later in the evening when a drug dealer wearing a Gilligan style hat asked me if I wanted to buy some coke and tried to hustle me down a side street. I waved him off and later that night I saw the guy being escorted to jail by five of New Orleans finest. Its kind of funny, all of the literature we've read about NOLA told us to stay away from deserted streets. Yet we felt the safest on the streets with the fewest people. The areas where all the tourists hang out had the largest number of unsavory characters in them. The deserted streets in the French Quarter were the mostly residential areas where people who didn't live there just wouldn't want to go.

The Architecture here is wonderful, if it weren't for the humidity, I could really enjoy living around here just to be living in some of these old buildings. Bourbon Street pretty much lives up to its billing as an adult Disneyland, and underneath all of the neon and vomit there is some beautiful building design.

Vomit is pretty much a recurring theme walking up and down Bourbon Street. The smell of stale beer and puke permeates the air. Ordinarily that would make me ill, but here it works. Bars selling take out booze are everywhere. Strip joints are also ubiquitous. I found it hard to resist the club that offered to let us “Wash your favorite dancer.” You could see right into the place. We passed it by, but the temptation was there. It was really odd to see families with children walking up and down Bourbon Street. Maybe they didn't know what Bourbon Street was all about but man, why would you let them stay once you did know?

When we got to the end of Bourbon Street we wandered east a little until we came into a high-rent district lined with antique stores and some really cool hotels. We stopped for a drink in a small hipster-doofus club along the way called the Shim Sham (notable for its Dean Martin shrine above the bar and the fact that the only beer on tap was Pabst and Guinness), then made our way back to Cafe Du Monde for a cup of coffee and some Beignets.

Beignets are basically a donut covered with powdered sugar, but the description doesn't do them justice. They're amazing and were the highlight of the night.They really cake the sugar onto those babys and you can't help getting covered in more white powder than your average coke dealer. Ordering a cafe au lait in New Orleans doesn't seem as hipster as it does in a Starbucks in San Jose.

Sadly there were signs of encroaching mass-market bullshit in the French Quarter. On the outskirts of the Quarter there is a Hooters, a Planet Hollywood, a House of Blues, a Bubba Gumps and a Hard Rock Cafe. The only thing missing is a Starbucks. There was also Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville which, while not out of place, is also a chain. On the other hand, Pat O’Brian’s just opened a club in the City Walk at Universal Studios Orlando, so really maybe were just seeing the entire culture becoming homogenized. I doubt we'll ever get to feed live chickens to alligators in San Jose, our loss maybe.

I ended the evening by having my tarot cards read by a gorgeous young woman who had set up a table St. Anne's street next to Jackson Square. Her name was Veronica and she was from the house of Ishtar, whatever the hell that is. This one street had dozens of little street vendor mystic types lined up and down it. It was late and all three of us were struck by how cute she was, so I decided to throw down for a reading.

Of course she said all the right things. I'm going to be rich, but Ill have to work hard for it. everyone I know is also going to prosper and things generally look good for me. Of course, she had no clue what my future was going to be and I didn't think she would, but it seemed like a good way to sample some local color. About midway through the reading, some guy who looked like he just stepped out of an Anne Rice novel walked up and greeted our reader with a spooky "Good Morning," (it was, of course, near midnight). He was wearing a top hat and a cape and he smiled like a psycho. His name was Jess and apparently he is a prominent member of the Sanguine Society; a group of people who live like vampires, sleeping in coffins and only going out at night. He looked down at me and said “You have chosen one of the better ones.”and then he walked off into the night.

That just seemed to be very New Orleans.