29 Nov New Orleans Report – Thanksgiving 2022 Edition

Greetings once again, Gentle Reader(s), in this, the fall/winter of our discontent. Of my discontent at least. It doth boggle the brain most verily, but a cursory examination of the record indicates that it has been 5—count ‘em, FIVE years—since my last New Orleans Report. How is this possible? Is some sort of discombobulation betwixt and between Time and Space to blame? Or have I just been Goofing Off? Tough call. Well, whatever the explanation, I am here to rectify matters and provide the update that all of you… some of you?… one or two of you?… have been waiting for, lo these many years.

 

No need to thank me. Not yet, anyway.

 

I spent a significant amount of time this year in the burg of my birth, partially by choice and partially by necessity. Either way, it was good, all good, and I’m eternally grateful to have good ol’ Ink South at my disposal. The place continues to hold up exceptionally well despite everything that the City That Forgot to Care has thrown at it—the heat, the humidity, the hurricanes, the etcetera. The city has its issues, of  course—there never seems to be any shortage of those—but the essential calculus of costs vs. benefits of urban life seems to be getting a bit more fraught as of late. As in, things be gettin’ more expensive but life ain’t gettin’ much better. Potholes, quality and quantity of public services, crime—all sliding up and down a dismal sliding scale. Nothing new about that, but Mayor LaToya Cantrell seems to be in the crosshairs of public discontent at the moment.

 

I don’t vote in New Orleans and have not done so since the late ‘70s, so I didn’t have any say in Ms. Cantrell’s election—and re-election last November—but I do own property and pay taxes and insurance premiums and utility bills (doooon’t get me started!) in the city so I feel like I got some skin in the game. Whatever your perspective, it seems that Ms. C undeniably stepped in doo-doo when she and some staff undertook significant international travel on the public peso earlier this year and, in the process, spent $29,000 on upgrades that were specifically verboten by city ordinance. When this transgression became public knowledge a huge ruckus ensued and Ms. Cantrell was obliged to reimburse the city.

 

Other questions regarding expenditures for security and a personal stylist have since come to light, as well as the Mayor’s extended residence at a deluxe city-owned apartment in the Upper Pontalba on Jackson Square. Said apartment has traditionally been available for the use of the mayor, but not for long term occupation. It has also been suggested that significant portions of this extended occupation have taken place in the company of one of the Mayor’s bodyguards (Ms. Cantrell is married and has a daughter).

 

So, that’s a summary of the Cantrell hoopla as of late. Mix vigorously and add in a liberal dose of driving conditions that can resemble the Battle of the Somme (trench warfare, that is), a massive uptick in carjackings and other violent crime, and rising prices on just about everything and the result is a seriously disgruntled electorate.

 

The result of a seriously disgruntled electorate has become a large and apparently well-organized campaign to recall Mayor Cantrell. Signs for the recall are all over Uptown, including a half-block long banner installed on the fence of a large mansion/high-dollar event facility across St. Charles Avenue from Sacred Heart Academy. Somewhat incongruously, it seems that ground zero for the recall movement is a short distance away at Miss Mae’s—the 24-hour watering hole at the corner of Magazine Street and Napoleon Avenue. If support for the recall ranges from St. Charles Avenue mansions to the denizens of Miss Mae’s then I’d say that Mayor Cantrell has a potentially serious problem on her hands.

 

Recall organizers are required to gather the signatures of 54,000 registered Orleans Parish voters to trigger a vote and as of this writing they have collected approximately 20,000. They have a long way to go—the deadline is February 22—but it could be close. The kind of financial footsie that Ms. Cantrell has, or allegedly has, gotten up to might not have elicited much more than a collective eye roll in the past—this is New Orleans after all—but there’s more to the story than that.

 

Mayor Cantrell is Black. She is a woman. She is a Black woman and a Democrat as well, and there seems to be a notion out there that she has an attitude. An arrogant sort of attitude. But what if Mayor Cantrell was a man? A White man? Even a White man with an arrogant attitude? What then? Ya feel me on this? 

 

So, more to come, no doubt.

 

On a more pleasant note, one of the first orders of business upon docking up at Ink South is to climb aboard ye olde Inkcycle and hit the streets—typically headed uptown on the side streets above Magazine towards Audubon Park. It’s a 2.45 mile ride to the Prytania Street entrance to the park and just across from the entrance is the preferred hang of a couple of my favorite New Orleanians: Goose and Swan.

 

Swan has been a denizen of Audubon Park for quite a long while. For years it seemed like Swan was pretty much of a loner, but then, one day, Goose arrived on the scene. I do not know the particulars of Goose’s arrival—whether Goose arrived unassisted or was perhaps introduced to Audubon Park with the specific intent of providing companionship for Swan. But if Swan was pining for companionship, why a Goose? Why not another Swan? Tis a puzzlement.

 

Anyway, Goose and Swan have become pretty much inseparable in the intervening years. Swan, being a water bird, spends a significant amount of time paddling regally about in the lagoon while Goose prefers terra firma. Goose is a talker, or a vigorous honker to be exact, while Swan maintains a dignified silence… most of the time. I happened to be on hand on one occasion when an interloper in the form of a Canada goose paid a visit to the park and tried to bust a move on Goose. Swan did not take kindly to this presumption and went mildly apeshit—long neck arched, wings spread, hissing like an enraged cobra, scattering startled joggers, dog walkers and bicyclists in all directions. Canada goose got the message and took off again for the Great White North. Or City Park, perhaps.

 

Despite their various differences, Goose and Swan seem devoted to one another and I’ve always thought that was a lovely thing. I’ve often wondered, is Goose a goose or is Goose a gander? Is Swan a cob or a pen (yes, that’s the gender specific nomenclature for swans)? Who knows? And who cares, really?

 

It always does my heart good to see Goose and Swan together. I look for Goose and Swan when I make my first visit to the park upon arriving in town and I always find them, eventually.

 

(Goose and Swan are on Instagram—of course—and credit for the lovely portrait at top goes to the fellow admirer who maintains their page.)

 

This year in New Orleans heralded my first return to Mardi Gras—the actual day of Mardi Gras—since… 1979, if addled memory serves. I’ve been around for portions of Mardi Gras season in the intervening years, only to beat a hasty retreat by Lundi Gras. This time around I was recuperating from more brutal slicing and dicing in Houston and was into my third week of recovery, still feeling a bit bashed up but fully ambulatory. Word had come down from SonnyBoy that the Golden Commanches were now based at Tip’s and that they’d be hitting the street on Mardi Gras morning at 9:00 in the AM. Dearest Hailey was also in residence at Ink South and we lit out good and early to walk over to admire their finery and cheer the tribe on its way.

 

We loitered about the intersection of Napoleon and Tchoupitoulas for over an hour with a sizable crowd of fellow hopefuls. Other than the occasional tease from a Spy Boy sticking his head out the door and shaking a tambourine at us, all was for naught. We gave up and headed back to Ink South. Hailey had to work (her schedule being tethered to the allegedly ‘real’ world) and I had to prepare to launch into the fray and rendezvous with the Commodore at the corner of Canal and St. Charles at 11:00. The day was looking promising indeed. The morning chill was burning off, the skies were blue and the sun was shining. (The Commanches finally got in gear and Hailey shot some video of them dancing up Laurel Street past Ink South at around 11:00 AM.)

 

My plan was to bike down to Lafayette Square, secure the vehicle there, and then walk the short distance down to the Quarter. This went smoothly and sure enough, the Commodore was at the appointed spot at the appointed time, decked out in (partial) bright yellow chicken attire. We were hoping to catch the final stretch of Zulu’s traditional route where it hangs a left at St. Charles and Canal, but they was messing with our haids and turned away from the river back at Poydras. Oh well.

 

As we waited for Zulu not to arrive the Commodore took the opportunity to engage with the small cadre of firebrand fundamentalists on Canal berating the crowd with signs and t-shirts that proclaimed warm and fuzzy sentiments such as: ‘GOD HATES MARDI GRAS!’, ‘YOUR PRIEST IS LYING!’, ‘GOD HATES BOOB FLASHERS, BEER DRINKERS, BEAD WHORES and the GAYS’, and the ever popular ‘REPENT DRUNKEN CATHOLIC PERVERTS!’ Wow. Talk about swimming against the tide! The Commodore attempted to get them to opine on the Church of Latter Day Saints but they demurred. Ah, Life’s Rich Pageant!

 

Mardi Gras 2020 had taken place about three weeks before the nation went into covid lockdown and it turned out to be one of the first really big superspreader events of the American pandemic. Carnival was cancelled outright in 2021, but now it was back—with a vengeance. The weather was absolutely miraculous—warm and sunny—and the vibe was really lovely. We dropped in on old friends whose spacious apartment overlooks Royal Street at the corner of Dumaine—one of the best ways to experience Carnival—and spent the balance of the day reeling aimlessly about the Quarter, taking in all the glory of street-level Mardi Gras. At about four PM we decided to git while the gittin was good and the Commodore headed back to Old Jefferson and I returned to Lafayette Square to retrieve the InkCycle. It was so ridiculously nice out that I kept riding and continued on up to the park to say hello to Goose and Swan. Ahhhh, whatta glorious day! One for the records books indeed, Gentle Reader(s).

 

I was back in the city again in April and May for JazzFest, which was enjoyable, as always, if not transcendent like Fat Tuesday. But then I don’t really expect transcendence from JazzFest—more like a mildly inebriated slog. Fest had been cancelled in 2020 and 2021, so the crowds were prodigious despite the exceptional heat, but just being there with Bro DanDog and the Commodore and assorted other posse was enough for me.

 

Two landmark closures of recent have spelled the end of an era—or yet another era—in the Ink South neighborhood. First of all, Barcia’s Grocery & Po-Boy Shop. I’m not sure of exactly when Barcia’s opened, but throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s when I was a kid it was a classic, old school New Orleans corner store. Our house was at the downtown/lake corner of our block at the intersection of Foucher and Laurel, and Barcia’s was at the uptown/river corner at Antonine and Annunciation. If I wasn’t in there every day of the week I was at least in there most days. We had an account at Barcia’s and every now and then my mom would send me around the corner with a blank check to pay the bill. Mr. Henry or Miss Josie, the proprietors, would pull the account ledger out from under the counter and tally it up on an old fashioned push-button adding machine.

 

Barcia’s sold produce, meat, cold cuts, cheese, milk, canned goods, soda (Big Shot, Barq’s), beer (Dixie, Falstaff, Jax), cheap borracho-quality wine (Night Train, Thunderbird) and an assortment of household goods. Barcia’s had a box of fresh Cloverleaf donuts on the counter every weekday morning. They sold cigarettes by the one as well as postage stamps and they provided basic banking services for people in the neighborhood who didn’t trust banks and didn’t want to risk keeping their money stashed at home. They had a pile of used comic books behind the counter. I would bring in my old comics and trade them in for new ones, some of which were already years old and would probably be highly collectible today. They had a great candy counter and a couple of gumball machines which received much of my trade.

 

There were a lot of poor working folks in the ‘hood in those days and many of them didn’t own cars. In the ’60s the nearest large grocery store was the A&P several blocks away, across Louisiana Avenue on Magazine Street. Our neighborhood, like many older areas of the city, had an abundance of thriving corner groceries and small pharmacies. When I was small our block was home to Barcia’s as well as a small pharmacy at the uptown/lake intersection of Foucher and Annunciation. Mr. Kelly’s store was across the street at the downtown/lake corner of the intersection of Laurel and Antonine. There was another grocery a block further uptown at the corner of Amelia and Laurel. At the downtown/river corner of Antonine and Magazine was the International Market—a dark, densely packed grocery that catered to a Latino clientele (now an über pricey wedding gown emporium). These family-run establishments were literally everywhere, but especially in the part of town along the river, extending from the Irish Channel up past Napoleon through the neighborhoods that are now designated as East Riverside and West Riverside.

 

Beginning in the late ‘70s and with increasing frequency in the ‘80s, these little family-run groceries began to slowly disappear, one by one by one. The neighborhood went through fits and starts of gentrification, more people owned cars, and larger chain groceries opened locations on the periphery of the neighborhood. In the early ’70s, a huge Schwega-Bros opened down Tchoupitoulas near the St. Thomas projects. This location was celebrated for its innovative shade-free rooftop parking, where you could fry an egg on your dashboard in the summertime, and the slow-death elevator from hell that delivered you downstairs to the store.

 

Most of the old corner groceries that shut down were converted into residences, though most of them already were, to a degree: The proprietors typically lived in the back, behind the store, or up above if it was a two-story building. You can easily spot these former groceries all over Uptown: They are always on corners, they always have a front door placed at a diagonal to the corner, and they often have an generous awning that extends out over the sidewalk.

 

Sometime in the later 1980s Barcias began its transformation from a full-service corner grocery to a po-boy shop. As that aspect of the business grew they began to cut back on the regular grocery offerings, removing most of the shelving in the center of the store and installing tables. For the many years that Ink South was my dad’s studio, Barq’s and po-boys from Barcia’s were a beloved ritual, especially on Fridays when they served up the shrimp. If memory serves, a po-boy at Barcia’s cost $7 and change. (At Mahoney’s, an arriviste po-boy emporium a few blocks away over on Magazine Street, sandwiches will set you back in the range of $12 and up. In October, when Wedgely and the Commodore and Your Humble Narrator convened for lunch at Bevi’s in Mid-City, the tally for three ersta & swimp po-boys plus two waters, one soft drink and tip was $75. I shite thee not. Makes a body want to jump into a Uptown pothole and just be done with it all.)

 

Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Barcia’s was a vital hub for the remaining residents in the neighborhood and for the emergency workers then swarming the city. The sandwich trade gave Barcia’s a second lease on life and by the early to mid ‘90s it was the only corner grocery remaining on the river side of Magazine Street above Louisiana Avenue, all the way up to the park.

 

In the end, it was Covid that finally got the better of Barcia’s. Mr. Henry and Miss Josie were long gone so they didn’t have to witness the demise of the scrappy little business that had brought prosperity and stability to their family for four generations. Barcia’s closed their doors forever late last year and the building is now up for sale—homemade po-boy signs included.

 

The inevitable decline and fall of the New Orleans corner grocery is a sad thing. These vibrant, compact establishments were pure expressions of the city’s unique culture—each one its own little world, a funky, folksy microcosm reflecting the personality of not only the proprietors but of that portion of the neighborhood, of the individual block that it occupied and the patrons who frequented it. I truly miss the world of mom and pop commerce, but no establishment more so than Barcia’s.

 

Harry’s Ace Hardware wasn’t exactly mom and pop commerce—it was affiliated with a national chain, after all—but nonetheless, it was an integral part of our neighborhood since it first opened its doors in 1958 at the downtown/lake corner of the intersection of Foucher and Magazine. The building was already there—it had been a car dealership starting in 1925 and then home to the tantalizingly-named Mother’s Home-Made Pies from 1935 until 1954. When I was a kid the proprietors of Harry’s were famously named Jake, Charlie and Sid—the three sons-in-law of founding hardware mogul Harry Offner. The Magazine Street location was the flagship of the Harry’s empire, which once encompassed six stores across the city. Now there are none.

 

So, here’s the scenario: I’m sitting there in Ink South of a morning, nursing my cup of CDM, and methinks to myself that it’s time to replace the air filters in the a/c intakes, that I’m short on paper towels and that I need some wood putty, a roll of paper tape, a 3/8 inch steel drill bit, a key made, some wooden clothes hangers and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. I walk out the door and within 15 minutes I’m back in the studio with everything I need. EVERYTHING! Plus, perhaps, a couple of items I thought of when I was wandering through the aisles.

 

Landing on the moon—okay, that was cool; the Louvre and the Uffizi and the Met—very cool places; Chaco Canyon and the Pyramids—very, very cool indeed; discovery of the polio and covid vaccines—all hail!, but for me, being able to walk over to Harry’s on my own two feets and walk out with all my worldly needs fulfilled in 15 of your earth minutes—THAT is what I call civilization.

 

I am but a simple man.

 

What a goddam luxury it was to have Harry’s in the neighborhood! Losing Barcia’s AND Harry’s within a year was a real gut punch.

 

I’ll never get over it.

 

But I’ll get over it.

 

Among the other various and sundry items that were occupying my thinky-thing and the front pages during my most recent sojourn in the City That Forgot To Care were the crazy-low water levels in the Mississippi. It’s hard to get a feel for the depth of the Big Muddy while riding the bike along the levee—the river looks vast no matter what—but shipping traffic was apparently having real issues getting through without scraping barnacles off the hull. The water along the batture was obviously low, but then it would be at this time of year anyway, relative to the springtime highs. Despite riding the levee practically every day, or at least every day that I wasn’t laid out from the slicing and dicing and the aftereffects thereof, I saw precious little ship traffic on the river. The tugs and barges, being shallow water craft, were more or less managing to do their thing but I saw very little in the way of larger oceangoing craft—mostly unladen vessels heading upriver. The Army Corps was in the process of constructing some sort of underwater levee to forestall salt water from the Gulf seeping upriver—the first time I’d ever heard of such a measure.

 

And speaking of the batture, the ever-creepifying True Detective Murder House (as Hailey has christened it) remains as creepy as ever, though the premises are now apparently vacant. The two vehicles that had been parked out front, slowly getting entangled by creeping jungle creepy vines, disappeared earlier in the year and a brave soul in the employ of some sort of remediation business appeared and was clearing out bag after bag after bag of… who the hell knows what. And I don’t want to know what the hell what!

 

Now the Murder House doesn’t even have a front door and the vines are continuing their slow but steady progress over the building, over the door, and over the chaotic, moldering piles of who the hell knows what that remain inside. Creepy.

 

Reporting to Hailey on the decline and yet further decline of Ye Olde Manse de Murder she inquired if I had gone inside. Me? Go inside? Uh… no. No thank you. Not gonna happen.

 

What other news can I summon forth? How about the most inconsequential hurricane season in many a year—not one serious threat to the city in the entire June-to-December run in 2022. Something for which to be thankful. An entire month of absolutely pristine weather this October—crystalline blue skies and moderate temps every single day—most welcome, indeed. And, sadly, despite my numerous forays on the levee trail from Da Fly up past the Mighty Huey P. to Harrahan, no additional sightings of the legendary, and legendarily elusive, Louisiana Batture Dingo. Eternal vigilance!

 

So there you have it. That’s all the miscellaneous whatever that I can summon forth as regards my benighted hometown. Besides the ebbing and flowing of political fortunes, crime statistics, the river, and cherished institutions such as Harry’s and Barcia’s, some things thankfully remain constant. Goose and Swan abide. And the ol’ Sittin’ Oak towards the back of Audubon Park abides as well—a peaceful refuge since I were but a wee lad.

 

So I give thanks for Goose and Swan and for the ol’ Sittin’ Oak, for dearest Hailey and the Commodore and Bro DanDog and Wedgely and the rest of the posse, for the many good years of Barcia’s and Harry’s Hardware, for the haven of Ink South. And, despite it all, for the privilege of being a natural born son of the City That Forgot to Care. 

 

Until next time then, Gentle Reader(s).